Tu Vas Savoir Quand...

You will know when.
Quand je suis revenue à ma terre natale, je suis tombée en amour. Avec quoi est-ce que tu es tombée en l’amour, tu vas demander. Je suis tombée en l’amour avec qui je suis. Mais, je ne me savais pas du tout. Mes parents sont de Pont Breaux, Louisiane et je suis née juste à l’ouest en Lac Charles. Quand j’avais quatre ans, ma famille est partie pour le nord avec mes deux grands frères et moi. Nous avons laissé nos racines. Pour quatorze ans, j’ai oublié qui j’étais. J’ai demandé et j’ai oublié. Je savais de la Louisiane comme un État. J’ai écrit des papiers de la Louisiane et j’ai fait des posters au sujet de la Louisiane. J’ai appris de l’histoire célèbre, mais je n’ai pas compris pourquoi mon grand-père a parlé une langue je ne savais pas. Je n’ai pas compris pourquoi mon père a cuisiné la fricassée de poule ou le gumbo aux poules et les saucisse quand il faisait froid dehors. Je n’ai pas compris pourquoi mes frères ont joué le ‘tit-fer. Je n’ai pas compris pourquoi mon frère a décidé de jouer de l'accordéon et je n’ai pas compris pourquoi mon père a joué de la guitare et a chanté les mots ‘Chick-a-lay, chick-a-lay poo mom you.’ Mais, en réalité, il a chanté dans une langue avec une histoire. 

Quand je suis revenue à la Louisiane pour le college, je me suis trouvé. J’ai lu des livres des histoires à mes personnes. J’ai écouté de la musique de la terre de l’Acadienne. J’ai appris du Grand Dérangement de dix-sept, cinquante-cinq. J’ai appris pourquoi la langue française est une langue deuxième en la Louisiane. La réalité de l'étouffement des Cadiens fait mon cœur mal, juste comme la chanson de J’ai Passe Devant ta Porte. Ils chantent “J’ai crié, bye-bye ma belle. Oh ye-yaille! Mon cœur fait mal!” Nous faisant tous les choses parce que nous sommes Cadiens. Nous sommes les survivants. Nous sommes les futures. Ce n’est pas juste une chanson, ce n’est pas un repas plus longtemps. Je danse, je cuisine, je joue du fiddle et je chante parce que je voudrais vivre ma culture. Je voudrais parler notre langue parce que la langue française est à part de mon sang. Je désire attacher plus profonde avec mon sol natal et les mots de la langue sont le chemin.

Mais, je suis une étudiant et j’étudie des autres cours que de français. Je travaille à me supporter, aussi. Avec l’aide de CODOFIL, je vais avoir les moyens à continuer mes études françaises. Je vais retourner à la Louisiane et je vais préserver notre culture avec la langue. Je vais utiliser la langue française pour mon travail à Vermilionville et KRVS Public Radio. Je veux parler avec les francophones quand ils demandent les questions en français et je veux parler avec les francophones en general. Je vais utiliser le français pour mes études, aussi, pour mes cours de français et mes cours de la musique traditionnelle. Enfin, je vais légeur la langue française à ma petite sœur, mon petit frère, et un jour mes enfants.

Attaché au Sol Natal

"Très sédentaire parce que physiquement attaché au sol natal." 

They say we come from stubborn, agricultural stock. Hard-headed and gruff. I've come to learn that my hand is calloused and my pith is rigid. My hips are thick and my feet are set. But they have to be, they had to be. The past has sentenced my way of living to manifest into what it is now. The endeavor of the Acadians is akin to the air I've breathed. The great upheaval of my common people, the estrangement of my brio from a soil I am meant to till. It is taught to these folk the history of their people, the reason why this culture exists. It’s a form of common knowledge- something I never acquired, a history I never knew. My life was lived unconsciously for nearly two decades before my mind provoked a self-awakening.

Upheaval, lifting or rising, forcing or throwing up, the root of major fray.

When my crown broke out, I was crying, wailing at the brim of my lungs because it hurt. It hurt to see the light, it hurt to feel the cold, it hurt to breathe the air. It hurt. To be taken from a place of such comfort and thrown into a state of uncertainty is eerie. There is no guide, no direction. No sure way to find the end. Wandering swallows any being that dare fall in, altering an ego into a wanderer. 1755 to 1762 was the course of the exodus. The Exile of the Acadians from Nova Scotia. The deportation of an entire culture because they refused to submit, they refused to take an oath of allegiance to the British government. The refusal to take that oath over many decades ended with Le Grand Dérangement. The cardinal of the expulsions began in 1755; it’s when Acadian homesteads were set ablaze, it’s when Acadian people were chained, it’s when the Acadian life was deprived of their livelihood. Ritual scalpings were done to captives, a blade running down the contour, tearing and ripping and spilling that vermilion blood. Bloodcurdling screams intertwined in the haze of the grey fog and the haze of the reddened earth. I can hear the children bellowing air from their lungs. I can see flames breach the heat weakened roofs. I can feel the torment that entices the rage. The history that I have come to know has given me an intimate relationship with the understanding of who I am, because of my predecessors. The pain of being raped of your identity, of your land, of your home, of your friends and family- I know all too well. The roots I set into the soil of Louisiana the day my mother separated my soul from her womb had been severed and ripped. Transplanted to a land so foreign to the south, into States that freeze, my roots froze. They tried to grow; they tried to heal, but that they did not do. The ones deported forcefully to an unfamiliar loam will never be satisfied, they never were. The thirteen colonies proved infertile for the alienated Acadians. Few were tolerated but most were detained, detained and malnourished. Imprisoned and impoverished, disease and starvation stricken- the Acadians are survivors. They were severed, they were ripped and cut. Taken from family, taken from land that they had come to know, come to love.

On July 11, 1764, the British government agreed to legally allow Acadians to return to their homeland. Many did, many went back. But they went back to nothing. An empty memory, just a façade of what once was. Their land was given away, their houses burned, their livestock slaughtered. Nothing was spared. Feet firm on the ground with only the hands of family and culture held- they wandered. I wandered with them.

Wandering- roaming or rambling, having no permanent residence, meandering or winding.

The Period of Wandering, a course of seventeen years in the history of the Acadians, derived the unforeseen settlement of Louisiana. It’s fathomable, completely. The Halifax band assumed a voyage from Nova Scotia to St. Domingue, it deviated into a route for Quebec through the Port of Orleans because of the words of maltreatment of French immigrants by authority. But they never made it to their desired destination. The bankrupt Spanish colony couldn’t offer any monetary support to the refugees once they made it to New Orleans, but instead offered permanent settlement. Into the wetlands and into the prairies they went. The Acadian sprawl along Bayou Teche was christened New Acadia, the place they've been looking for. A place so fertile with life, this is where they could continue their legacy. Be it with the waterways, the grand prairies, pine forests, or the marshes and swamps, they made this place their home. They brought with them their morals, language, music, culture and heritage and created the Cadien- Cajun. Je suis cadien. The tiny shards of my roots that managed to stay grounded stretched every time we made the voyage to this land. They grew with every visit, with every conversation, with every story told. My Louisiana rhizomes continued to grow and flourish underground while the roots I tried to plant elsewhere did not, they never bloomed. It wasn't until that self-awakening that I decided to unearth my longed for bedrock. I came back, I made it back. I found it. Under all that dirt, all that dirt and grime I found the rootstock that is mine, the rootstock that I am supposed to grow.  Natural soil, sol natal. To be attached to such again is breath taking, my vermilion blood is slowly making its way down to the core, down the course the roots paved hollow. The further down it flows, the higher the bud grows. Roots in bloom they are, roots in bloom they will be. Racines en fleurs.