Against the Tide - The Cajun Story - Documentary

Louisiana she's the exception and never the rule she's a mystery that asks not to be solved but simply to be experienced Louisiana where you can come as you walk and believe different additional funding is provided by the Friends of Louisiana Public Broadcasting and the foundation for excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting this is the story of the Cajun people of Louisiana it's a story that begins nearly 400 years ago when French peasant farmers left Europe to carve a new homeland in the wilderness of Nova Scotia after a brutal ethnic cleansing the ancestors of the Cajun people were scattered around the world they were able to end their exile and reunite their families here in the Louisiana [Music] [Music] [Music] the people would have been brought down to this area and this dry creek would have contained water and they were loaded into the boats and brought down to the - basin where they've been loaded on the transports and taken away from their homeland forever European settlers came to this place over 400 years ago it's amongst the most fertile and beautiful farmland in all of North America today it's called Nova Scotia but did the original French settlers this place was called La Caille de in 1604 sixteen years before the Mayflower pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock French colonists came to Acadia and established one of the first permanent European communities in North America a Cadiz early years were precarious but beginning in 1632 the first families began to arrive at the Port Royal settlement over the next 20 years some 60 families came to make a kadhi their home these were the ancestors of nearly all the Acadian peoples of Canada and Louisiana today these people already knew each other somewhere around 60% or so of the people who have been who became the Acadians came from from the same neighborhood from around 20 mile a 20-mile radius around one little town in northern Poitou they already knew each other they already had a sense of identity a sense of cuff of community a sense of society and essentially this little Society was was uplifted in and and boated over to what we now call Nova Scotia what they called la cadena after the name that the Micmac Indians used to call the place the colony grew rapidly spreading outward from Port Royal to grant pray the - basin bobasa and shig nikto small families expanded into large clans these clans form the base of Acadian society the family was so important for those people that there couldn't be a country there couldn't be a people if there was not basically the groups of families that were all related to one another so they kept on helping each other to survive for instance if one man named Cormier would die then the LeBlanc would take over the kids but keep the name Cormier so that the descendant of that man would know where they came from from the early start of the 17th century when acadia appears on the map as a small french colony the french inhabitants that later on would be known as Acadians really had no choice but to take care of their own affairs France was far away the major French settlement in the area was also far away in the st. Lawrence Valley which is now Quebec the Acadians released the colonists French colonists who colonized the Bay of Fundy Basin were refugees from the very bloody very intense religious civil war that plagued France for almost a century in the mid the early to mid sixteen fifteen hundreds up until in culminating in 1628 the fall of La Rochelle much of their warfare much of the worst hiding took place in northwestern Patri province and the Acadians who were peasants in that area were caught in the cross in a military crossbar as generations past memories of the mother country began to fade isolated from France the Acadians began to think of themselves as an independent people evolving a culture and a way of life uniquely their own developing a distinctly North American mentality the Acadians were the first group of European settlers in the new world to use a name for themselves that no longer had anything to do with the old world they were profoundly North American they were what my colleague Mattie Allen refers to as Omo Americanos the first example in fact of that new species [Music] work was done as a community whether it was building their homes harvesting crops even holding back the encroaching seeds through an elaborate system of dikes and sluices Lizabeth all the Acadians reclaimed over 13,000 acres of saltwater marsh and turned it into the richest farmland in America French Acadia was mostly in what is now Nova Scotia around the Bay of Fundy there is where you would have found the great majority of Acadian villages and the great majority of the inhabitants of those villages were farmers and they put together sort of a very original way to share crop lands by building dikes sort of to take from the sea a special kind of harvest and in French they would they would call these the system Oberto this made them very prosperous farmers that had to work together because at low tide they could work in the fields but if the tides especially the tides over being Funday which are one of the the highest in the world when the big tides would come in they would had to fight the tides away by building these dice but it was not just the sea that was threatening a kadhi [Music] you the Acadians had built a prosperous independent homeland Fish and Game were abundant their archers were bountiful trade with their neighbors was lucrative epidemics like smallpox typhoid and cholera were unknown in academia they lived as well or better than anyone else in North America but what the Acadians had others would soon try to take away [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] less than 10 years into the colony's existence Port Royal was burned to the ground by English forces from Virginia this was only the beginning the French and British were trading pawns in a deadly game for the possession of North America with a chi D is the key strategic prize the colony had changed hands ten times in the first hundred years of its history before finally being ceded to the British in 1713 it was an uneasy peace the French ready to retake a kadhi or Nova Scotia as the British called it the Acadians however did not care about the color of the flag that floated over the Governor's House the Acadians had learned over the years that that for a while they might belong to France and for a while they might belong to England and then they would return to France and then they would return anyway they had learned by that experience did not place a whole lot of stock in who owned the colony at any given moment while they belonged to during the piers they belonged to England they didn't stop trading with New France and during the periods that they belong to France they didn't stop trading with New England when the British took control of Nova Scotia many of them wanted to get rid of the Acadians altogether but they couldn't not just yet anyway British weren't able to expel the Acadians to 1713 simply because they were dependent upon the Acadians for their source of supply the Katie was a backwater outpost outside of the main shipping lanes which went to Boston and Quebec and as a consequence the cost of maintaining a garrison from either Boston or London would have been extremely high so by threats and empty promises the British spent the next several decades trying to assimilate the Acadians each successive governor of Nova Scotia would try to force the Acadians to swear the oath of allegiance to the British crown unconditionally and always they would refuse they learned to be very independent fiercely and to sort of disregard institutional authority from afar throughout their negotiations with the British the Acadians insisted on three fundamental conditions the unrestricted right to practice their Catholic religion full ownership of their land and property and the exemption from having to bear arms they weren't as reluctant to it to simply pledge allegiance to the British but they were reluctant to accept all of the factors that were that came along with that one of them was that they were going to have to stop speaking French and and learn English another was that they were likely going to have to change religions and the most important one the most and the Acadians if there were anything they were profoundly pragmatic the the most important one was that if they became English subjects they would have to accept to fight against the enemies of the British which meant that they would have to fight against the big back Indians who had helped them establish himself there and with whom they had wonderful relations and they were gonna have to accept to fight against the French attempts to assimilate the Acadians had failed and the military situation was growing increasingly tense as England and France prepared for yet another war the neutral Acadians found themselves living between two heavily armed and hostile camps is essentially a flashpoint it's one of those areas where the two empires come into direct contact and it's also where military force is brought to bear right on the common boundary line and it's as a result of this that the area's importance is magnified especially where the Acadian population was concerned it's important to understand when when when considering this business of the oath of allegiance that you know people often ask why did the Acadians not sign the oath of these why they didn't accept it well the the British governors were being very careful for a long time and it's documented that they were they didn't want the Acadians to take that oath of allegiance they didn't want to deal with that because they didn't want they were trying to hold off and stave off enough time and not press this issue so that they didn't get the the Acadia getting a bunch of kiev Acadians jumping across the line and going to help the French before the English were well enough established to be able to resist that kind of attack and it wasn't until Lawrence got there that they that they finally felt like they had the numbers to protect the colony and that that's when they started to press it but but even then Lawrence said in in several letters you know I will present to them one last time the oath of allegiance and I will not they will not sign this but I will refuse as a pretext that they had refused it before to not let them sign it and if they don't sign it I shall deport them and if they should figure out a way to accept the terms and sign it I will deport them anyway no matter what they did whether they accepted or not the the plan had already been set into motion to rid the colony of these people his solution was nothing less than a complete ethnic cleansing of the country Thomas [Laughter] [Music] in a plan masterminded by Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts infamous in his hatred for the French Lawrence took command of 2,000 volunteer soldiers they confiscated the Acadians firearms and their boats effectively neutralizing them as a military force still the Acadians refused to sign the unconditional oath on September 5th 1755 the men of Gras pray were ordered to report to their church for negotiations it was a trap [Music] once inside the men and boys were taken prisoner the soldiers announced that the Acadians would forfeit their lands to the British crown and be deported for days their wives and children waited at home some would never see their families again [Music] this was the beginning of lagron Darren Schmo before it was over Arkadiy would be destroyed many Acadians fled into hiding and over 6,000 of them would be transported by force and scattered throughout the British North American colonies the British found themselves in the in the untenable position of being in political control of a colony they didn't actually own the Acadians had been there for about a hundred years and they had not settled the worst lands they were on the best lands and British families they that were coming in to settle the colony we're having to go out and clear the woods and the rocks and that wasn't acceptable to the British government so what what they did very simply was basically boatlift everybody off those lands so that they could put good British subjects on them [Music] things are now very heavy on my heart and hands it hurts me to hear their weeping I'm in hopes our affairs will soon put on another face and I'd rid of the worst piece of service yet ever I was in John Winslow [Music] you will use all the means proper and necessary for collecting the people together so as to get them on board if you find that fair means will not do with them you must proceed by the most vigorous measures possible not only in compelling them to embark but in depriving those who shall escape of all means of shelter or support by burning their houses and destroying everything that may afford them the means of subsistence in the country by order major Charles Lawrence [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's not every Akkadian that passively resisted the deportation and accepted it with quiet resignation as the stereotype has often been presented there were some there were a minority yes but there were nevertheless some for whom this exercise was completely unbearable and they preferred taking refuge in the woods living with the the native people of the area and actively resisting all the incursions that the British soldiers would later inflict upon them it was under the the leadership of a Xhosa Brasa that was nicknamed Beausoleil boosted abu saleh was a very hard-headed and stubborn Akkadian we know this of him because he was implicated in a few trials during the British regime in Nova Scotia he spent many years with Mi'kmaq royal years attacking some brace garrison he was protected by well-connected Akkadian uncles and cousins who dealt sort of on a daily basis with the British officials but they never trusted Beausoleil Beausoleil was known to have fights with Akkadian men he was accused of being the father of a child out of wedlock Beausoleil Volusia was the leader of the Acadian resistance but in the end facing the imminent starvation of his family even he was obliged to lay down his arms and surrender Beausoleil spent the remainder of the war a prisoner of the British locked in the cargo holds of the prison ships there was no sanitation no sunlight not even room to move many of the exiles would die of hunger and disease before they ever saw land the Acadians were scattered throughout the American colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia but wherever they went it was always the same they were unwelcome aliens hated for their French language their Catholic faith and their refusal to be absorbed by the anglo-american culture colonies a khadiyah only to deport daily did Charles Lawrence at a the disperse a sage Allah Oh put it posh dissociated pork pork EAP public Isabel academic his consider academies of a Malcolm free la profe under the society don t take care of a comma say Arcos de facto city - Jacques Kallis a deja of all de partir mem de la France doc coins I said Li dispersed a poor poor Brazil associate a rajala or dissidents icons x8a oppose him the sauce did not eat a today Jethro for nearly 1,000 exiles were sent to Maryland within a few years their number had dwindled by as much as a third their kinsmen in Virginia faced even greater trials these exiles contracted smallpox were the two greats curses of the 18th century and disease they hadn't encountered in pre dispersal Oh kitty as a consequence when they arrived in Virginia the colonial government refused to allow them to debark remained aboard the ship and foreign team and the disease just decimated through the ranks of the Exile it was eventually decided by the government that they should be shipped elsewhere because it would never be given entry because of the the epidemic the ships were ordered to sail for England and during the passage to the ships sank the survivors made their way to England the British seaports were they placed in detention centres those who did survive were sent by the British to French French seaports in 1763 during the Exile the dislocation and loss of life was so great that the Acadian population of both the Canadian Maritimes in Louisiana combined is but a small fraction of the seven million demographers estimate it would be today had the gun or debt on Schmoll the deportation never occurred the Canton's had a remarkable communications network during the exile at the height of the dispersal there were Acadians living in France there were Acadians in the Falkland Islands Gideon's and northern coast of South America in the West Indies scattered along the eastern seaboard in Quebec the fact of the matter though was that the Acadians were able to communicate with one another each of these communities managed somehow to communicate with relatives elsewhere in the world Acadians began arriving in Louisiana from the British colonies especially Maryland in Pennsylvania nearly a generation later the largest group the Acadian exiles in France emigrated as a community the Spanish government in Louisiana provided each Acadian family with land tools seeds to plant and a musket the settlers began building farms and cattle ranches and within a few years they had achieved the quality of life comparable to the one that they had left behind in a kadhi Beau Soleil Broussard had led his people to this fertile grassland in the spring of 1765 that autumn he was laid to rest but he had lived to witness the founding of a new settlement a new homeland and the birth okay [Music] the Acadians had to adapt to the subtropical climate of Louisiana it changed the food they ate the crops that they grew the way they built their houses and even the clothes they wore but in many ways nouvelle Arkadiy was not unlike the old the people who became the Acadians when they came from France they didn't come with they didn't forget everything they knew and they didn't forget you know the way they lived when they crossed the Atlantic just as they didn't forget what they had developed when they came down to Louisiana after the Exile they had a way of building houses they had a way of cooking they had a way of they had songs they sang they they carried in their collective memories stories they told the women was so important that they were really the link between the ancestors and the future generation they had to give to the the people that were going to come out of that group they were just a tiny group at the beginning and now today were people where did we get all what we know our memory we got it from the transmission given by the women they would teach the children also how to be French in an English colony how to remain something that had been great one day and they were coming here in America transplanting an ancient culture to a new world when Acadian women married non Acadian men they acculturated them into their own french-speaking community the children of these Outsiders became french-speaking Acadians this was especially true after the Civil War but rather than diluting Acadian identity this served to enrich and to diversify it and that's why today we have Cajuns with family names like Romero shake Snider huff power Reed and Maggie well the Acadians arrived all of the exiles arrived with virtually nothing but over the following century you see the accumulation of wealth in the Han certain families and these families by the time of the Civil War are some of the most wealthy families in south Louisiana the vast majority of Acadians however remain a veto or essentially yeoman farmers pursuing a way of life that had changed little from the time of their their forefathers so you see two polar extremes developing in the Acadian community two distinct communities merging by the time of the Civil War Lee yeah Vedas a Kajaki of a mortal shell social or evasion Skaar Legare diseases you know a Nevada plantation only the pure Legare fully deer kick shows mela prepared is the cat jelly put his a baton he's a very n avoir baddest glove a traveler petite taro ma'am AC Anita Paula the travel a tape of a Saffy pure lie carefully absolutely mori idea Satya no bara the Civil War was a major turning point for French Creole society they saw in the Civil War the the possibility that they might be able to preserve their specificity their French myths that French culture and language which they had valiantly tried to preserve through several rewrites of the Constitution several and renegotiations of a place for themselves in what came to be called Indiana with the end of the Civil War and with the elimination of the possibility of seceding they finally got the message and they were not going so they knew that they understood that they were not going to be able to escape becoming part of the United States of America and all that that implied that and and the language of the future was English and and the the economy of the future was American and and they began to make the transition right after the Civil War they began to send their their children to English language schools and they began to participate in the economy in a way that they had not done before and their Cajuns on the other hand this very simply didn't get the message they weren't plugged into the same economic and political and social systems a century before Acadians had resisted giving their allegiance to imperial powers and refused to bear arms in their Wars much like their ancestors the participate or considered themselves French neutrals and took no interest in ligado Confederate a two Confederate war but the South needed soldiers desperately and began conscripting Acadian farmers and great numbers Casa di poor poor Lele limit alarm a fella coughs crea if Ally lately for say the Rockland Army a mem la re V dollar may seize it a parcel where participation trattoria PA in part a if you're on Trish's you have a tutor system convey develop a so to Donnelly measured on a war food like a she is if Alec is gosh no Salman a yankee-doodle or my OCD suitcase a letter through their little metal army or it was not the cash I did the war when the Union army invaded Southwest Louisiana some Acadians greeted them as liberators but they soon came to detest these troops as much as they did the Confederates Union forces swept through their homeland taking the Acadians food their horses and as many as 10,000 head of cattle caught in the middle of a war between two American armies nouvelle a kadhi was virtually destroyed the Acadians had come to Louisiana nearly a half century before it became part of the United States remaining almost a nation unto themselves but with the Civil War America had come to them and a great wave of cultural change was rolling toward nouvelle Accardi the aftermath of the Civil War was really a very difficult complicated population there was tremendous devastation brought by the war the Confederate Army you see areas as a foraging area the Union Army used the area as a foraging area both sides attempted to take food stocks and other goods out of the area and the result was widespread devastation as a result of the devastation and on a series of years in which there was unseasonable weather natural disasters including floods on the scale of the 1927 flood and labor problems many farmers in the area were reduced from the status of freeholders to tenant farmers the great majority of Acadians living in Louisiana were uneducated poor and alienated from an increasingly modern increasingly Americanized society these Cajuns as they were called became an object of ridicule to the rest of the country the pre-party Kumho Tire OCB apparently politician a cappella journalist to power to Ladakhi observe a leakage a systematic moiety la caja de Paris a sow's official a the antenna so that the consider a pork or a post a sapper school is America of a comma in notional economy Katie bathysphere la progression Sora Sora lackeys easy on the Baku the darshan appropriately a lurker la pluie la gran parte de cachoeira program parte de casa t supplementation rocketed to the failure the failure participated firm Donna modular from a adjustable a simple fare la vie [Music] the Cajuns were viewed as little different from the destitute immigrants arriving in America at that time even though their families had been in Louisiana since well before the American Revolution much like the British over a century before the Anglo Americans felt that the best way to deal with the Cajuns was to eliminate their culture and to assimilate them all over the world there was this fierce nationalism that was causing countries to regularize language teaching and regularize social and cultural behavior in America you had Teddy Roosevelt saying you know there is room for but one language in this country and that is the English language for we must assure that the crucible turns out Americans and not some random dwellers in a polyglot boarding house he was also saying things like there's no such thing as a hyphenated American there's no such thing as a French American or German American or a Spanish American if he said if you feel French or German or Spanish go home you know we have something new happening here and this nationalist movement led to the well-known story in Louisiana of outlawing French and the schools at the same time as free mandatory public education was made available for the first time in the history of the Acadians so for the first time in their history they found this that they find itself obliged to go to school and in the same motion forbidden to speak French in those schools the most profound change in Acadian society in the early 20th century was the result of a compulsory education law of 1916 Cajun children were ridiculed and beaten in schools in a systematic effort to eradicate their language an entire generation of Cajuns was taught to believe that their french-speaking culture made them inferior to other Americans these kids were being told at school that the language they learned at home was not only useless it was a social problem it was a it was a stigma JD Paul de francais je a pretty Lake of the italic hole more Apeco mama siento como some more say the self-tan parole on ugly careful a schooner Concha commercially college to multi-touch a dude through the show-me pure plants or JG demanded for aroma from so she threw dirt Kubo a awkward popular from Seattle and Mozilla called a halt see the principal is repaid Mayo structure of a layup a la francaise result compromise your William attest need the Percy pie well doctor Elmo of Stacy same on entire Palace Elmo on from same I'm a policeman from say the wave you won't give a mistake news.com for little more francais toot-toot live wasn't with liberties on me come on Anna Nicole and Polly on Francie Impala Francis de la cude leaked all concerned être people well season is at repair preponderance a Monica Bellucci the premier the premier fossil is at repay you sue money TPD the for nominating I click on the poeple the process rattled at all this afar console velocity day at all Daria for today take a brief yet the Cajuns were not alone in the struggle to preserve their language and heritage their cultural counterparts the black Creoles of Louisiana shared the same experience she said no paranoiac meet aunty Meenakshi - is it a very early pork you have a you know a book with the precio see - Jacques you're the moon the cooler the KeyFolio tomb on power on Greek tomorrow the veneer common America the arrival of the railroad revolutionize travel in south Louisiana before the arrival of the railroad everything was based on water communications primarily with New Orleans before they rival the railroad the prairie region had been a real backwater the rival the railroad brought the late 19th century directly to the crate the Cajun prairies the population within a ten-mile radius of the railroad was directly affected many pockets of traditional culture however remained in the area this was a redirect result of social isolation which in fact was a form of resistance against modernization but if American influences were trickling into Cajun society nothing prepared it for the flood of change that would come with the discovery of oil I'll provide it the strongest catalyst for change it's wrong as economic incentive because a farmer could make more in one day as a roughneck in the oil industry working in the Bosco fields and he could working in a month as a day laborer in the area right a tremendous economic incentive for change and the oil industry was dominated by Anglo immigrants primarily from Oklahoma in Texas advancement in the oil industry was predicated upon one's ability to function in that English language culture and this provides a strong economic incentive for people to move into into the Anglo American mainstream during World War wonderous nationalistic period with the exclusion of the front of the French language on school grounds of punishing kids humiliating kids forcing them into position where the first few weeks of school they had to wet their pants every day because they couldn't they didn't know how to ask for permission to go to the bathroom in English and they weren't allowed to ask in French and a language that causes you to humiliate yourself in that way causes you to be punished right a thousand times I will not speak French on the school grounds where a sign that you know calling attention to yourself as a fool you want to distance yourself from that language as fast as possible but then the same generation finds themselves fighting World War two and they many of them found themselves in the European theater in France and it occurred to me that of many of them that this language that they were told wasn't even real French and it was worthless worked just fine when especially when talking to French peasants and ordinary people in the marketplace and trying to get a date with the this pretty girl or get a bottle of wine or dry place to sleep and and their superiors notice this right away you know these people can speak to the natives and so they became interpreters World War two had a huge impact in Cajun society and I'd say it's one of the three most important events in the entire sweep of Cajun kaity in history from 1604 to the present first of all you had all Cajun males from the ages of 18 to 36 being susceptible to the draught so they were being picked up by Uncle Sam and being sent to camps and God knows where for basic training and there no one spoke French they were expected to speak English maybe some of these guys had never been away from their hometowns before or past the parish line so all of a sudden they're immersed in this english-speaking world and they had to learn to speak English in order to stay alive these GIS who came back home after World War two they were the ones who were populating the bars and the dance hall was trying to dance and drink and forget their troubles they what they wanted was to hear traditional Cajun music and we wanted to be home and they wanted to have their trisko and they're the ones who said you know what this language they told us wasn't real French works and they began to reconsider the whole thing in fact if there was a nationalistic movement associated with World War one there was a sort of a regional regional movement associated with the end of World War two this is when the Newport Folk Festival was developed there was a celebration a search for diversity in America we became as a country afraid of all looking alike and sounding alike and being alike and so we began to explore our own diversity in in that exploration in the 50s and 60s the Cajuns played a major part the Cajuns were were invited to the 1964 Newport Folk Festival Dewey boffin gladdie Thibodeau and Venus Luzerne went up there and and the the feeling here was that they're going up there to get laughed at but when they got up there they were considered instead heroes of cultural preservation as early as the late forties in fact even before the Newport Folk Festival yet people like I really John Lawrence Walker Aldous Roche Austin Peay Dewey bafa people like that leading a reconsideration of what was valuable in the culture and by cut but by association in the language while the musicians waged the war of resistance on stage others were taking up the fight on other fronts politician and activist Jimmy DiMaggio founded the Council for the development of French in Louisiana Cota filled with a radical new mission now written into state law the Council for the development of French in Louisiana had very in the early going had a very elitist approach to things it was really it was saving French from the top down with schools and with you know social clubs and that kind of thing whereas there was a a grassroots surge that was was looking to happen and it happened under the leadership of musicians it was in 1974 that we put together the first cajun music festival it was the first expression of grassroots support this surge of cultural social power that came up from the bottom said you know we are concerned about this we're interested in this this is important to us and it was celebrated with music and it continued to be celebrated with music through things like festivals and do bonfires folk artists in the schools program and eventually coda phil married the - I mean Jimmy DiMaggio the president of coda Phil was very perceptive he noticed that language doesn't exist in a vacuum you can't just preserve French you have to preserve something to do in French French has to make you laugh and dance and and cry and it has to be part of your life so this cultural movement emerged alongside this linguistic educational movement French immersion in Louisiana is based on the Canadian model the Canadians had been doing French immersion since the 60s when Anglophone Canadians realized that their children would be at a disadvantage they couldn't get federal jobs if they weren't bilingual the way most french-speaking Canadians were and so it's a it's a matter of economics there in Louisiana the movement was spurred by parents of that Lost Generation parents whose parents did not speak French to them while it's not true that Cajun French is so different from what we call French that it's another language it also is true that it has its own particular era teas and and its own vocabulary word choice syntax style and it's important I think to as we as we work to preserve principles you know that we remember that what we're trying to preserve here is the way people here speak and the way the way because it's this language that produced Cajun music and the stories and and you know the way people think about things we can't just import University French from France or Belgium up in the background or anywhere else I think we have to be very careful to incorporate the way people speak here and we have to respect that you like or do it Philip what's the point of it yep I don't know I don't but I learn a lot man over fellas want some potato corn for Belarusian boo-boo [Music] is it possible say French Louisiana absolutely our last and best hope and that is the immersion program because it's the only thing that actually teaches the kids gets the kids to actually speak the language to live [Music] claim yeah yes it is possible damn right [Music] [Music] I was trying to explain to you in French smoking Oh Madame more yes why he said timeout you can take it on I can speak English now and tell me what you know and I should know [Music] the whole reason why I went to st. Anne's was because I wanted to be able to speak French as my grandmother [Music] big charts just the wind would blow I could hear it Creek and I had my I had my dictionary I mean I could pray in English but I had my dictionary trying to pray in French and I remember thinking you can you can pray in English it's okay but I didn't I thought if any opportunity to speak French with my grandmother it's now yeah because now you lose you could you hear me that was a remarkable thing to do and it represented to me at I remember thinking at the time it was it was really a an astonishing decision that you made because your mother offered you to come home ah and you said you didn't want to go no there was no way I could because I knew that if that my grandmother wanted me to do this and I thought if I come home [Music] [Music] Kevin [Music] [Music] Western Americana police issue a Rouge at the La Mesa - Donnie berry an aromantic a very very Maria where is he music himself after nearly 250 years in Louisiana Cajun culture is not only surviving but undergoing a renaissance what's amazing is not that some of the aspects of the culture have changed or even been lost but that the Cajun people have been able to overcome exile and resist assimilation and continue to sing their songs tell their stories and build their levees against the time [Music] Jiki gone through fall gone through - [Music] the Sheikh net will Bayou Teche underground I grow mama Jumanji preview version Asia [Music] Louisiana she's the exception and never the rule she's a mystery that asks not to be solved but simply to be experienced Louisiana where you can come as you walk and believe different additional funding is provided by the Friends of Louisiana Public Broadcasting and the foundation for excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Van J Gothreaux

Views: 46,027

Rating: 4.9185257 out of 5

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Id: ywHH1xAwdn8

Length: 56min 46sec (3406 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 18 2020