Raceland, Louisiana (AP)

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita scattered 8,000 members of the United Houma Nation. Tribal Chief Brenda Dardar Robichaux is still searching for 1,500 of them – more than 8 percent of her tribe’s 18,000 members.

During the college spring break, as many as 80 volunteers at a time were camped out in her yard while helping the tribe. Robichaux sent out 10 search teams daily with lists of names, addresses, and supplies – to find more of her people.

“It’s not like you could call someone,” said Robichaux, 47. “Every day they would leave with their supplies in hand... We’re still finding them.”

In trying to track down tribal members by going to their last known addresses, “we’re finding totally destroyed houses, but not where they relocated to,” Robichaux said.

Her people are spread across Southern Louisiana. The southeast half of the state was hit by Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29, and the southwest by Hurricane Rita on Sept. 24.

Lacking confidence in the federal government, she turned to the Red Cross and American Indian Web sites, media outlets and organizations.

Before long, trailers bearing food, clothing and furniture showed up at her home in Raceland. The Red Cross posted fliers in shelters nationwide to try to reconnect with Houmas who had fled their ruined homeland.

Because many older members’ education was limited, the fliers included the United Houma Nation logo, Robichaux said, “so that even if they couldn’t read, they’d know that the tribe was looking for them.”

Some relief organizations distributed clothes out of garbage bags. Not Robichaux. She and volunteers cleaned out her grandfather-in-law’s general store, which had been closed for 50 years, and arranged the merchandise on its shelves.

“When people saw they could pick stuff off a shelf that was new, everyone was brought to tears, and that included us,” she said.

Until she closed her yard to campers at the end of April, Robichaux set up workshops so volunteers could learn about Houma culture. And she cooked for them every night.

“I learned how to cook really big meals, like gumbo and jambalaya and red beans and rice,” she said. “It was really good because it was a sense of community for the volunteers.”

Robichaux is still at it, with some help. She is especially concerned about helping her fellow Houmas, many of whom depended on fishing for a living.

“My husband says, ‘Brenda, you’ve got to slow down. You’re going to hit a brick wall,’ but there’s no time for that right now,” she said. “I don’t know when I’ll slow down. Being able to hire someone will be a great help, but there’s still so much work to be done.

“If you speak to our tribal members, they say, with tears in their eyes, ‘We just want to go home.’ I will do everything, to the best of my ability, to ensure that people will have everything they need to go home.”

This will be especially hard, she said, in lower Jefferson Parish and in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes because the infrastructure is still in tatters.

“It’ll be a long, long journey,” Robichaux said.