a
CAJUN article

Cultures of Acadiana
a look at the French, Cajun, Creole, and Native American cultures of south Louisiana
(a project of Carencro High School - 721 West Butcher Switch Road, Lafayette, LA  70507)

Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, ?, 1997

The Other Acadians

In northern Maine, Acadians struggle to preserve culture

by Bill Decker, Staff Writer


FORT KENT, Maine--Every February snowmobiles take part in Fort Kent's Mardi Gras parade.

The nearby topography is dominated not by swamps, but by forested hills. The traditional dance is more jig than two-step, and potatoes replace rice as the starchy staple on local tables.

But an Acadiana visitor needn't fear culture shock during a visit to Maine's Upper St. John Valley. The Valley and Louisiana's Cajun country share common roots in Acadian history. And many people in the two regions also share a determination to keep the Acadian culture alive--to, as one Maine legislator put it, "preserve it, not embalm it."

Barry Jean Ancelet, a USL professor and expert on Louisiana's Acadian culture, has been impressed by Maine's efforts. He was in the Valley recently for a series of lectures.

"They're taking the high road," Ancelet said. "They're not selling out their culture."

That culture has a common link in war torn Acadia, now Nova Scotia. In the 18th century many of the Acadians who ended up in Louisiana were rounded up and deported.

But the Valley Acadians are descended from refugees who fled to Quebec or what is now New Brunswick to escape deportation. Eventually they settled in what they call the Valley or chez nous--"our home."

Hard living

The settlers in Maine found life just as tough as the first Acadians in Louisiana did. The men farmed in the spring and summer, and then turned over the farm chores to their wives and children. The men spent the winters in the lumber camps, cutting logs that would be floated downriver in the spring.

The foods were simple and without the abundant seasoning associated with South Louisiana food. Ployes are the local buckwheat pancakes. Pot-en-pot is a meat dish. Potatoes, still a major crop in the Valley, were served at every meal.

"We've had people from Louisiana here for educational exchanges and so forth, and we'd cook for each other," said Guy Dubay, an historian from the Valley town of Madawaska. "The things they cooked for us burned all the way down. The stuff we cooked for them seemed pretty bland to them."

Visitors will be glad to know that boudin and pork cracklings, called gortons rather than gratons, are available in the Valley as well as in Louisiana.

And in the Valley as in Louisiana, boucheries have also been part of the local social scene.

A common tongue

The local names provide more connections. Families named Daigle, Roy, Landry, Cyr, Theriault and Thibodeau still live along both banks, along with Quebec descendants named Nadeau, Pelletier and Levesque.

But the biggest connection, the key element of cultural identity, is the French language.

"The word 'Acadian' symbolizes the use of French," Dubay said "There has been a reawakening in the use of French as a second language."

The portion of western New Brunswick across the St. John from Maine is officially bilingual.

"The difference from one side of the river to the other is just astounding," Ancelet said. "On one side a true bilingualism is possible because of the French-Canadian influence. On the other side, it's not, because of the efforts to humiliate and punish the French speakers."

School children in the Maine side of the Valley were coerced into speaking English in the late 19th and early 20th centuries--an experience shared by Louisiana's French-speaking children.

Lisa Ornstein, director of the Acadian Archives at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, has an Acadian culture exhibit that includes photographs of the lines "I will not speak French at school" written repeatedly by a student as punishment.

Still, Dubay said, the Valley's Maine residents in their 50's or older tend to be bilingual today, sometimes switching seamlessly between French and English in the same sentence. But he thinks the Valley's younger people are falling under the far-reaching influence of English.

"With all the media and the standardization, young children like to belong to a group," Dubay said. "What's happening today is happening in English."

Keeping the language alive

Like portions of Louisiana, the Valley has turned to French immersion programs to keep the language alive.

Across the river in New Brunswick, the people rely more on French as their primary language. They have a different view of the Acadian heritage and its influence, too.

Eva Landry, a native of Connors, N.B., conducts tours through the restored Daigle-St. Jean home, built by a wealthy Acadian in 1848. It now serves as a museum for the Clair, N.B., Historical Society

Landry traces her family's roots back to Port-Royal, Acadia, where some of the first French settlements in Acadia took root.

"But I consider myself to be French Canadian," Landry said. Some insist on being called Acadian, but they're not really Acadian. They never lived in Acadia."

Across the St. John in Fort Kent, Carl Theriault is the town's economic development specialist. He grew up in Massachusetts, then traveled around the world to set up factories.

Although Theriault doesn't think people should be consumed by ethnic identity, he can trace his own family's history in the Valley back 11 generations.

"Some people really take pride in it." Theriault said. "Some people don't think about it. To me, the identification with the roots and the culture that is different from others parts of the States is important.

Preservation

Maine has many influential people who also feel cultural preservation is important.

At the urging of U.S. Sens. William Cohen and George Mitchell, Congress passed the Maine Acadian Cultural Preservation Act in 1990. The act calls on the National Park Service to help document, interpret and preserve Acadian culture in Maine.

Ancelet said some of the early work reminds him of the approach taken by the Jean Lafitte complex of Acadian historical sites in Louisiana, the first National Park Service facilities to be based on cultural and human resources rather than on natural history.

Don Levesque, managing editor of the St. John Valley Times, incorporates French into his weekly newspaper column. And the towns along the St. John have instituted annual festivals devoted to the Acadian Heritage.

Madawaska has an Acadian Week and Family Reunion honoring a different family each year. Fort Kent, Van Buren and Grand Idle have their own events.

Tangible efforts to preserve the Acadian legacy -- museums, restored Acadian houses and churches, and the new Acadian archives at Fort Kent's branch of the University of Maine--are visible along the Valley towns scattered along U.S. Route 1.

Will they be successful?

"By themselves? I don't know. It's one more process that's going to be helpful," Dubay said.

"Each generation is going to have to make its own choices. I hope there will be a few that get interested in this stuff and pass it on.

This article is copyrighted © by the Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser and is used with permission.  This web site was originated through a grant awarded to Carencro High School (Joel Hilbun/Bobbi Marino, Grant Administrators) by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund - 8(g).