[LINK] "Cajuns on Gulf Worry They May Need to Move Again"

[rfmcdonald]

Susan Saulny's New York Times article does a better job than most of capturing the way I can easily connect Louisiana's environmental catastrophe with past and present issues in Atlantic Canada. Consider: both areas were originally French, populated by Acadians, later absorbed into Anglo-America but with their own distinctive differences, with histories of relative wealth and prominence recently given away to decline and poverty, and with strng traditional/neo-traditional cultures too profoundly rooted in very specific circumstances to survive much change. The Cajuns Saulny interviews sounds like nothing so much as the Newfoundlanders interviewed after the collapse of the cod fisheries. Could offshore oil development (further) wreck Atlantic Canadian waters, too?

In Chauvin, in south Terrebonne Parish, it is as common to hear people speak Cajun French while shopping at the Piggly Wiggly as on the shrimp docks. You can hear zydeco on local radio hosted by a D.J. who speaks the patois. Fried fish is not uncommon at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The economy in the parish of 110,000 people, about 50 miles southwest of New Orleans, is heavily dependent on the fishing and oil industries — precisely what the spill has hurt most.

While Cajuns on the coast may be able to hold on for now, the question of what happens in the long run remains.

“I would not expect to see any great migration away, regardless of what happens to these communities,” said James Wilson, assistant director of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “It’s a life-or-death decision for them: People can’t see a life anywhere else. If they can’t live the life that they’re used to within their culture, then that is death.”

Stanley Sevin, a mechanic, decided years ago to get out of the family business because he did not see a future in shrimp. He founded a company, SS Motorsports, and hopes to move away.

He still thinks his family should consider it.

“I’ve never seen them so devastated,” he said.

His mother said: “I understand he wants better for us because he’s seen us struggling. But living away, that’s something I can’t think about right now. We Cajuns are stubborn and hard-headed, what can I say?”

Slipping into the mix of Cajun French and English that he usually speaks, O’Neil Sevin said, “Here, it was never easy, mais yeah, it was une bonne vie.”