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In the past 25 years or so since everything "Cajun" got hot, I've met many interesting visitors from all over the United States and other countries. About six years ago I met and spent several hours with a lovely young lady from California, Janise Cook. She was ecstatic about her love for the Cajuns and their culture. She gave me a copy of a letter she had written which is self-explanatory. Here is a copy of what she had written:

"Over four years ago, at a low point of my life, my friend Susan finally convinced me to attend a Cajun dance in the Culver City, California area. I had no idea what anything Cajun was about, let alone the music and the dance. Out of respect for the friendship I went to the 'fais-do-do.' Little did I know that the accordion and fiddle would hook themselves into my heart, put a smile back on my face, set my feet to jumping for hours at a time, and send me off to the local library at the university to find out who the Cajuns were, and what was their place in U.S. history.

Cajun music and dancing has reminded me that, as an adult, it is still important to play as a reward for working hard.

Cajun music has given me a sense of community. My sister and I, the first generation of city dwellers, were given a sense of community by our parents, a sense of community common to the rural agrarian communities, where people care about each other, look out for their neighbors, and actually talk to each other. Los Angeles may try to be a community, but it is too large, too diversified to truly develop any sense of community. The transplanted Cajuns here welcome 'les Americains' to their dances, and the longer one participates and is known by them, the more the warmth of their hospitality are shared.

Sometimes I don't logically understand my deep love for things Cajun, but I just laugh, kick up my heels and two-step a few more hours. I pinch more crawfish tails, and savor yet another link of boudin, and sigh with happiness.

I suppose I may seem odd that a non-Cajun, especially a Protestant Californian from Los Angeles is so deeply attached to 'les Acadiens de la Louisiane'. Perhaps 'la main du bon Dieu' is involved. We share faith in the same God and he teaches to love. The Cajuns I’ve met have demonstrated His love, and I cannot help but respond in kind.

The Cajuns are some of the most gracious, generous and hospitable people I have ever met, and I cannot wait until the next time I visit them."

Andre Veniot, writer for the Moncton (Canada) Telegraph Journal, had met Janise in Acadiana playing the "ti fers" (triangle) with a Cajun band on her third visit to Cajun country in April 1994.

When I see so many strangers and non-Cajuns from other parts of the United States, and yes, other parts of the world, who love our music and culture so much, it grieves and saddens me when I see some people who are part of this culture turn their backs on this, their own culture, whose forebears have suffered so much to keep. It is beyond me why they are ashamed of this beautiful culture which was passed on to them with much hardships.

In September 1755, the British began a cruel deportation of the Acadians from their homes in Nova Scotia, where they had enjoyed abundance and prosperity for some one hundred and fifty years. With only the clothes on their backs, penniless, they were scattered "like leaves in gusts of an autumn wind, in midst of a people who hated their religion, detested their country (France), made fun of their customs and laughed at their language." Cast off in the 13 British colonies those proud people were turned into beggars, outcasts and vagabonds, they had no one to turn to for help. During the next few years the lucky ones made their way to Louisiana, where their customs, culture and music were passed on from one generation to the other.

True stereotyping of Cajuns as being ignorant, and unambitious and lazy began right after the end of the Civil War in 1865. Unsympathetic Northern journalists came to southwestern Louisiana and though they were enchanted by our region's natural beauty, they were repelled by the French-speaking Cajuns and Creoles.

The most notorious of those was the international famous lithographer, Paul Waud, who came here as artist/correspondent for Harper's Weekly. In Harper's issue of October 20, 1866 Waud wrote in part: "... The Acadians are the least intelligent of the Creole population, and occupy small patches of land along bayous and the coast which are not efficient to satisfy the wants of their simple life. Their dwellings contain two chambers. .... a curtain frequently hangs over the doorway to keep out the mosquitoes ... Without energy, education, or ambition, they are good representatives of the white trash, behind the age in everything." Waud continued with his diatribe and with the article he included a woodcut showing two Acadian washerwomen, their legs exposed to mid-thigh, a clear message of cultural and moral depravity. The picture also featured a Cajun woman smoking a corncob pipe and an idle man fishing watching the women work nearby. And for the next hundred years that is how the Cajuns were stereotyped by the people of other parts of the United States.

The final coup de grace was the 1921 Louisiana Constitution which forbids children from speaking French on schoolgrounds. In his book, "Acadian to Cajun: The Transformation of a People," historian Dr. Carl Brasseaux writes: "The children of these acculturated Acadians were in the vanguard of the early 20th century movement to Americanize the Acadians. Focusing on public education as the best means of bringing the state's illiterate French speakers into the national mainstream, the movement was propelled by the compulsory education act of 1916 and by the compulsory English educational provisions of the 1921 state constitution. Though the authors of these laws were Anglos, most of the teachers who implanted the English instructional program were drawn from the Acadian gentry caste. These teachers showed no more sympathy than their Anglo colleagues for Louisiana French, and French-speakers in their care were chastised and publicly humiliated for using their mother tongue on the school grounds." Professor Brasseaux continues: "For much of the 20th century, the Acadian/Cajun community would remain at war with itself as a result of socioeconomic and cultural changes wrought during the volatile 19th century."

And, in conclusion, I'd like to leave you with "A Cajun Pledge" written by Marc Savoy a few years ago:

"So you tell me you can't speak French even though you have lived in a French speaking area all your life. You say you never learned because no one ever showed you. Yet somehow you managed to become a normal stereotype close to Anywhere, USA even though no one showed you that either.

Bull....! I'll tell you why you can't speak French. It's because as you were growing up, you were so busy pursuing mundane trivia and making fun at those who did speak French that you could never find time to recognize the beauty of your heritage.

You turned your back on a hot bowl of gumbo in favor of a cold tasteless American hot-dog. Now that Cajun culture attracts worldwide attention you have decided to be Cajun also.

That's fine, but don't make a second mistake by trying to take credit away from the people who kept the torch lit when Cajun was a dirty word.

I pledge myself not to let this happen."

And with that, mes amis, I rest my case.

(Reprinted from the Bonnes Nouvelles)

Designed by L. McCauley