What does it mean to be Cajun? The story behind the identity.

[Music] i lived in a place where there are more boats than cars i don't remember any of us speaking french you know there was so much variation you know ethnically linguistically in cuisine yeah it is it is quite distinct i mean even if you go right next door to mississippi you know you know you realize right off this okay this is a different place [Music] it was very much a town of the wetlands and that affected our lives i mean i was one of those kids that you know got out of school early in the spring because it you know their dad needed them to help on the shrimp boat being cajun is is you know it's just not that simple a thing seems to me that cajun pride is is stronger than ever and yet there are fewer cajuns than before who who speak french and even fewer cajuns who are who are roman catholic cajun is just it's not an identity for people of color some people of color today will say oh well that's not true and theoretically they'll think they'll speak to theory but in practice you know it's a white identity what does it mean to be cajun the question could just as easily be what does it mean to not be cajun because when we talk about identities in south louisiana answers get caught up in centuries-old stories that overlap stories that are often interpreted differently by different people as the historic dwellers collection presents cajun document acadiana 1973-1974 we take a look at the people of the 22 parish area known as acadiana or cajun country while it's called cajun country this region is made up of diverse peoples including native americans european african asian and middle eastern immigrants and their descendants and identities are well complicated two of the populations most commonly associated with the region though are cajuns and creoles they're the people you'll see most often in the exhibition and to know what cajun means we need to first discuss the term creole well this is where it gets kind of complicated and confusing and i think anyone who says it's not confusing is being a little disingenuous you know so historically creole uh literally meant a latin person native to louisiana so it can mean black it can mean white it can mean mixed race usually was an identity by people's book romance languages and who were roman catholics but who were born here uh it's just because of their ability to trace themselves back to the acadians these people who went through the expulsion experience from nova scotia they tend to view themselves as a distinct type of creole but the fact of the matter is a lot of cajuns today don't think of themselves as creole people tend to say that creole is complicated because it involves people of different racial identities who share a common uh identity whereas cajun uh is uh predominantly people who identify as white and so it seems simple but in fact it's all part of the complex nature of identity evolution as you can tell the terms are very similar and by definition occasion is a creole but whether or not there are any real differences is subject to debate so cajun identity comes out of that um it's not a historical identity yes it was used uh towards certain um impoverished local louisiana creoles it's one of the arguments used by some people who say you know cajuns really shouldn't even call themselves cajuns anymore they should call themselves creole it was just sort of used as a slur socioeconomic slur towards people who were working class and poor but who didn't want to assimilate american culture and values because there's very little difference between the two cultures and that's true but you've already got several hundred thousand people running around calling themselves cajun i don't think they're gonna stop we will come back to that but to understand why this debate even exists we need to understand how these communities in south louisiana came to be here's the back story [Music] the story of today's cajuns begins with the acadians in 1755 catholic french-speaking people in acadia a part of canada were expelled from their home by the british this was called le grand de gershmon around 3 000 acadian refugees found their way to louisiana in the following decades where they found a welcoming group of french settlers in the recently turned spanish colony of louisiana from right from the start it was a very diverse community when the acadians arrived and they intermingled mixed and adopted local culture including creole identity within the first two generations from there acadian settlers naturally began to spread and intermarry with the people in south louisiana including those of other races and ethnicities this lasted into the 20th century and formed a largely french-speaking population in the region this is where the americans come in the united states purchased louisiana in 1803 and over the next 200 years their influence profoundly changed the region in multiple ways the first of which was through race under french and spanish rule louisiana society was divided into three separate categories white europeans and their descendants three people of african descent enslaved africans and their descendants people from any of these groups born in louisiana could have been and were considered creole american authorities seeing only a distinction between black people and white people quickly changed this dynamic in new orleans the center of the domestic slave trade american values and the english language caught on quicker than the rest of the state that racial question did become central in americans figuring out how they're going gonna deal with the locals how we're gonna identify who is who in this community where all these different people share the same identity after the civil war and the aftermath of reconstruction american society grouped creels of african descent with friedman consolidating two distinct populations based on their skin color in the 1920s schooling became compulsory and jim crow laws meant that strict black and white racial lines would come to define south louisiana for generations as jim crow divided school systems the second change brought by american authority rocked south louisiana and that was language [Music] people continue to speak predominantly french and louisiana creole up and right up until world war ii um and so when the education system comes around and teaches in english and teaches locals that they uh their native languages are foreign languages things like that that begins the process of the bifurcation because the schools are segregated racially in the 1920s the louisiana legislature forbade the teaching of french in schools for children this meant that they could continue to speak their first language at home but speaking french in the classroom sometimes brought harsh consequences not only did those children who were punished sort of self-censor themselves and stop speaking french as much but when they had children and i've heard this repeatedly they did not teach their children to speak french because they associated that as nothing but trouble that's just going to get them punished while the populations of south louisiana slowly became more americanized through language and racial politics world war ii brought about the swiftest changes for cajuns and creoles thrusting young men into a global fight and uniting people back home behind a common cause this is where south louisiana met its third and possibly most powerful influence of american authority [Music] culture a lot of cajuns came back from world war ii changed very proud to be american even if you were on the home front uh if you were the loved one of someone serving overseas you felt um swept up in the wartime fervor in the wake of world war ii south louisianians were a population in flux they had emerged from the war with a strong american identity and in the years after the population became swept up in the currents of everyday life in america there was a a meteor that uh that flew over south louisiana and crashed into vermilion bay and a lot of people saw it light up the night sky as if it were day and and a number of people thought that was the russians attacking south louisiana you know so that that went to show that the anxieties that were enveloping the rest of the country we're also doing that here so we were very much caught up in the mainstream of american history and culture at this point the people of south louisiana began to realize the impact of american influences and increasingly groups saw their cultural traditions as special and worthy of celebration and at the same time all this is part of what's happening around the country where ethnic groups you know the the battle of assimilation had been won and so now it was safe to raise your flag about your your ethnic heritage uh without being seen as as something uh anti-american and you know revolutionary potentially subversive this realization led to what scholars call the cajun revival [Music] contrary to popular belief there were glimmers of cajun pride well before the late 1960s there were two groups that pushed this movement forward one was composed of elite upper and middle class people and politicians you had a congressman named dudley leblanc who in 1955 which is 200 years after the cajuns got expelled from from canada uh arranged a tour to go back to canada by train it turned into this you know balls and tuxedos and gowns and cigars actual louisiana acadian or cajun culture was pushed aside in favor of this sort of pretend or idealized culture coda phil uh was founded in 1968 by james de mongeau uh he was from lafayette louisiana of acadian descent but bourgeois the leadership of coda phil being from that gentile acadian cast really looked down at actual cajun culture and spent an awful lot of time and money uh bringing in teachers from overseas they didn't even use the word cajun they didn't like it they thought it it smacked of sort of working class um uh ideals so they would they tended to use the word acadian so if the people credited with starting the cajun revival didn't want to be called cajun who did another movement came from a grassroots group that included musicians they embraced the term cajun and for the first time the word took on pride it was in 1964-65 that it two or three kg musicians were invited to play at the newport folk festival up north and to their surprise they were warmly embraced to say the least so they came home especially dewey balfa with a real pride that they had never felt before they realized they had something of real value and again i don't think he tried to start a movement but he he did he became a sort of unofficial spokesperson for cajun french music and therefore cajun french in general language uh was an important component in terms of memory um uh in creating and sustaining this cajun identity but it was really sort of anchored in music and genealogy uh the fact that they have genealogy from uh nova scotia and uh in france the upper class and the grassroots movement at some point they converged symbolically when dimaggio went to the first tribute for cajun music put on in large part by dewey balfa and and dimaggio realized that he had been wrong about the value of that music that he associated with you know average ordinary working class cajun just as american values defined the erosion of culture over time they also helped to define its resurgence and groups pushed for a return to language and cultural traditions that were disappearing though divided across black and white racial lines when the cajun movement began in the 1970s it was just a uh reaction for those people who were accepting that identity to understand that this is something that is going to be for white identified um only and the same is true for creoles no one our few people really sort of question um you know why is this being racially divided when we're sharing the same thing this is when popular symbols like the cajun flag and the term acadiana became widespread across south louisiana this is also when the photographers douglas boss and charles triub made the images that you'll see here in cajun [Music] document [Music] but as the term cajun was being reappropriated the dominant creole identity that had existed for centuries began to erode particularly among white people whether you called it creole whether you called it cajun varied from town to town from family to family from time period to time period and cajun identity began to leave creoles of cover out of the discussion for 200 years you know no one thought it important to um stress the acadian heritage of louisiana and then you know in the 20th century it became a thing and it has completely sort of sucked up any and every um discussion about culture and history in louisiana when in fact it's as as we discussed earlier uh very diverse at this tipping point for south louisiana culture the region suddenly became engulfed in international attention one of the catalysts for this was chef paul prudhomme and his restaurant cape halls right here in the french quarter which kicked off a national craze for a novel dish called blackened redfish when it opened in 1979. my friend michael ducey is a grammy-winning cajun musician i've heard him say okay nothing's been the same since paul prudhomme burned that first fish and passed it off as blackened the mech cajun this and the cajun that and taco bell has a cajun taco and uh there's cajun pizza and cajun beer this national awareness also accelerated the grouping of south louisiana cultures into a monolithic cajun identity everything that's culturally called cajun was called louisiana creole before that before the 1960s 70s that's when and that's something that's easily uh trackable in newspapers and magazines and things like that before the 1960s when you open a newspaper and you see uh culinary ads you see creole cooking you see french cooking and it's all the same dishes gumbo etouffee stews you know all the same things that are sort of hallmarks of cajun cuisine sometimes the cajuns themselves are blamed for this trend of calling things that are not cajun cajun i don't think that's so much the case i think it's the tourism industry and the media that bear the blunt of the blame because the tourism industry quite often oh you want to see cajuns i'll show you cajuns and then next thing you know you know the french quarter is this a mage amazing cajun place where you and i know that new orleans is really not that cajun in reaction to the movement to consolidate cajun identity groups are formed to preserve creole culture there's a movement underfoot to stop calling things that are creole black creole white creole mixed race creole whatever to stop calling them cajun and i think that's terrific one is creole inc it was an organization that was founded in lafayette in 1986 1989 um and then the other was the uncajun committee also founded in lafayette in the 1980s and both of them were essentially arguing that you know cajunism has usurped everything that is creole um in the state and has transferred the cultural capital from louisiana creoles to cajuns excluding louisiana creels history is always um messy it's it's what we remember and what we choose to remember and that's always going to be based on politics and so history as we know it and memory are shifting based based on prevailing politics of the day used to be people who were cajun would deny it and it became where people who weren't would would say they were it's a case of every individual person of acadian descent deciding for themselves what what traditional characteristics can i live without and still be cajun and as i mentioned the the conclusion among most cajuns seems to be you know i don't need the french language you know i don't need to be roman catholic you know with the current black lives matter movement and things like that uh lots of people are pushing for a more diverse understanding of the history and representation most importantly um in um louisiana they have their agenda as well um and they're stressing race and specifically blackness but in discussing blackness and stressing race you also leave out a whole bunch of people um you know who share this common culture who share some of the common burdens but who don't racially identify as black or african-american it's it's it's very welcoming i have never i don't think i've ever heard an argument where somebody is denying that someone else is caging you know if if you include yourself the arms are generally open the arms are generally open you know even if provisional even if you're on probation the arms the arms are generally open right now okay let's see y'all gumbo chicken gumbo okay it's uh very cheap this i believe there's four dollars of plate and you got a vegetarian salad rice and a few pieces of meat okay you take this highway from all the way uh they call that club [Music] right on the right hand side before getting

Channel: The Historic New Orleans Collection

Views: 18,967

Keywords: cajun, creole, south louisiana, louisiana creole, louisiana, acadian, acadiana, difference between cajun and creole, what does cajun mean, what does creole mean, new orleans

Id: Oh2o83jYbaM

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020