By Marta Tahja-Syrett
The marbled wood-grain of my great-grandmother’s shotgun sits propped against hung fabrics, quietly dusting itself in the corner of my parents’ closet. I only met her once before she died in Virginia on a street named for the beauty of bluebirds. The stale scent of present estranged from past sticks to these objects of physical bequeath; the greyed ash of a time since passed away collecting on her silky blue headscarf and pearl-colored earrings. A small silver dove necklace, blue-eyed and cold from the absence of my great-grandmother’s touch, hangs somewhere, quietly forgotten. But this was not all that was willed to me.
I was willed my Cajun heritage; bayou-drenched and set aflame by the cold-colored starlight that rises above muggy southern plains. Hair darker than blonde I was willed as well, alongside the pale light that is always sinking down from the moon and into the petals of red wildflowers past eventide. I was willed remembrance; all of the memories that slipped through the cracks between schoolhouse beatings, memories of slurred words hanging off the tongues of oil-field workers, summon themselves to me to be seen. And while I sit with the past, remembering what is mine, I understand that this year many Mardi Gras enthusiasts will throw their shiny beads, disregarding what was seen by all of the eyes before me. This Carnival season I recall the beauty, the blood, and the gumbo.
During the French and Indian War, French-Catholic Acadians were exiled from Canada in what is considered to be an act of genocide carried out by the British government. In a 2011 article for 64 Parishes Magazine, Shane K. Bernard reports that during the course of Acadian expulsion, it is estimated that “as many as half of the approximately fifteen thousand Acadians died from exposure, disease, starvation, and violence related to their deportation.” The article describes the moving of Acadians, as Bernard states, “British soldiers under Lawrence’s command ensnared Acadians throughout the colony, marching them at gunpoint to the coast.” The exiles were then shipped to various locations, including the United States, where some of them later migrated to Louisiana. It is here that the Cajun people come from, an ethnic group created out of poverty and cultural diversity.
During the Civil War, many of the people in Louisiana who had initially been associated with the upper-class were thrown into a state of poverty. Acadians, who were primarily poor already, began to be viewed in a more positive light by society now that a greater number of non-Acadians were finding themselves in a similar economic situation. Due to this growing acceptance, people of varying ethnicities (such as Spanish, German and French) began to marry Acadians, formulating a new identity that held Acadian ancestry at its core. This formation of people became what is recognizable today as the French Cajun ethnic group.
Reporting in The Daily Advertiser in 2016, Erin Segura also notes this admixture of cultures within the Cajun ethnicity, saying that “approximately 40 percent of Cajun people have some Native American heritage.” The mixed heritage of Cajun people is visible within Louisiana French, with some of the language’s words originating from Native American roots.
Since its emergence, the Cajun ethnicity has become something barred from expression within the United States’ cultural scene, while simultaneously serving as a previously untapped resource for many non-Cajuns to profit off of. The United States’ response to Cajun people is one of fear; Cajuns did not descend from assimilation, from the restrictive nature of Americanization. They are a people who, at their core, are unique and culturally-expressive. Against the wishes of society, the Cajun culture has yet to be buried; it persists in those who have chosen to remember. And if it were to be buried, it would lie shrouded in beauty, the weathering of those who vowed to destroy dissimilarity tainting what should have been kept alive.
Despite the ever-present livelihood of Cajun culture, the negative attitudes projected by this nation have left an impression on the Cajun people. Up until the 1960s, Cajun French was prohibited in Louisiana schools, and the children who chose to speak in their native tongue were beaten for rejecting linguistic assimilation. As a result, Cajuns stopped passing down their language to successive generations. As a child, my father remembers riding his bike at his great-grandparents’ house, unable to understand anything that was being said around him. This indistinguishable language present in the quick splice of his memory vanished just as fast as the passing of time; his grandparents, who were bilingual, refused to teach his mother how to speak Cajun French, understanding that the language would indicate a marker of differentiation between her and mainstream America.
Past and present attempts at erasure have not hindered the country from hoisting its spotlight upon us Cajuns, especially in recent years, as Cajun culture has been transformed into something of great market value. This is something that has definitely developed against our will — no Cajun grows hungry for Walmart boudin or seeks out Italian seasoning labeled by a big, fat sticker reading “CAJUN.” Bernard writes, “Reagan-era yuppy-ism, with its emphasis on conspicuous consumption of the new and exotic, fueled a veritable Cajun fad in the 1980s.” But this fad has definitely revamped itself in blatantly obvious fashion; visible by every Cajun food item sold at the local grocery store, the numerous Cajun restaurants across the country, and the commercialization of Mardi Gras celebrations.
The Cajun people are known for their role in Mardi Gras — a Roman Catholic celebration that precedes the beginning of Lent. Cajuns, as the successors of Catholic Acadians, still hold onto their religious past as a Roman Catholic people. Today, Cajuns are
associated with the folk connotations of Catholicism, as they oftentimes practice beyond what is described by official doctrines and rites. This, of course, doesn’t hinder them from being an integral part of Fat Tuesday festivities.
Gumbo Ya-Ya, a book of native folk stories from Louisiana compiled by Lyle Saxon, originally published in 1945, describes Mardi Gras as a celebration that “has festive echoes in the bayou country.” According to Saxon, Cajuns would go door to door on Fat Tuesday asking for a chicken to cook into their gumbo. They would then enjoy tea cakes, popcorn and doughnuts provided by their designated chicken-giver. Along with this, Cajuns loved to dance at the very popular Mardi Gras balls, which babies would even attend (mothers apparently sometimes taking home the wrong baby, after mixing up their child with another in the baby room).
Despite the extreme poverty which Cajun people have experienced, and will probably forever be associated with, they have always found themselves enveloped by the raw, honest beauty of life; something clearly illustrated by their joyful celebrations and traditional practices. As a Cajun man named Theophile Polite, quoted in Gumbo Ya-Ya, once said, “If a mans got him shrimps and oysters for his gumbo, and his wife and him still is loving each other like two little sweetheart doves, what more he want, I ask you, hein?”
Because of the respect that I have for the Cajun people, I remind everyone that the Mardi Gras themed celebrations held here in the diversity-lacking, affluent city of Olympia are truly a stark reminder of the disconnect between my culture and the culture which encapsulates the capital of our state. Before sprinkling some “Cajun” seasoning on your gentrified dish of burnt-roux whatever, you may want to sprinkle your brain cells with some real Cajun history. Avert your eyes from Trader Joe’s Cajun-style alfredo selection. Look away from all of those flashy, commodified Mardi Gras atrocities, and crack open an ice-cold book.
And please, never forget this: I don’t want your hipster gumbo.
