The majority of the Houma people live in the southern portions of Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes in south Louisiana. This author grew up in the Houma community that had formed in lower Plaquemines Parish, about thirty miles north of the mouth of the Mississippi River. The Houma community there was centered near the town of Venice with extended family groups clustered along the local waterways. The Half-Way House, Tiger Pass, Spanish Pass, Stryker's Woods, and the Village were the major Houma settlements with a population that would fluctuate over the years, but would never grow to more than a few hundred individuals. In those years it was to them a paradise; the waters were filled with shrimp, crabs, and fish, and the marshes teemed with muskrat, nutria, coons, otters, and minks. Dardar does not recall ever being scared of hurricanes, but from an early age his father taught him to respect the natural world that surrounded them. In this article, the author recalls the hurricanes that he witnessed in his youth and relates how his family and his people survived them. He goes on to describe the impact of more recent catastrophic hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, and how the building of levees, the blocking of bayous, and the digging of canals in this region had left an unprotected coastline ripe for destruction.