Desert Bayou

In the midst of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans in the summer of 2005 many hurricane victims were relocated to neighboring states, and still others to far off states that welcomed them and made provisions to house them at least temporarily. The 'Desert Bayou' is a story of 600 such victims airlifted to what they would later call 'the whitest state' (Utah) without their knowledge or for that matter, their consent. What began as a humanitarian effort on the part of so many well-intentioned people ended up raising deep questions and concerns as to 'whether or not such diverse cultures can coexist,' or whether the differences between those 600 Katrina victims and their new Utah neighbors were so extreme that the challenge was to great to overcome. This is a seldom told story of so many transplanted Katrina victims evacuated from their beloved but hurricane ravaged city and relocated wherever possible. It was one thing to be relocated from one southern state to another neighboring one, but this powerful documentary speaks to an extreme relocation from the Creole culture of New Orleans to a vastly different, very foreign and, sadly, an often hostile world in 'the whitest state in the union.'