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Sample Student final exam answers 2019 (2019 final exam assignment) Part 3: Model Research Reports |
LITR 4340
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Ronni Abshier
Assimilating while
Maintaining Cultural Identity: The Magic Recipe
Because my family has some heritage tied to the Louisiana
French Cajuns, I have always been interested in learning about their culture. In
doing this report, I am hoping to learn not only their reasons for coming the
America, but also how they were able to maintain such a strong cultural
identity, while still being accepted, amongst a country that seems to focus and
push so heavily towards assimilation. Cajuns are a subgroup of immigrants to
America that often gets overlooked when discussing people who immigrated here.
It could be because these people inhabited the lands that they live on now while
the United States was in its infancy, or maybe it’s because Cajuns already
embodied the mindset and ambitions that the dominant culture expected of
Americans. Cajun culture, and their roots and way of life, however, has remained
a very prominent facet of everyday life for these people, who have somehow
managed to both seclude themselves and immerse themselves in the dominant
culture. Is it possible to maintain the cultural identity that makes a group of
people unique, while still successfully assimilating into the dominant culture?
Just like their famous gumbo, it seems that Cajuns have found the magic recipe.
According to the encyclopedia, “Cajuns are a distinct
cultural group of people who have lived mainly in south-central and Southwestern
Louisiana since the late eighteenth century.” But before the Cajuns were Cajuns,
they lived in France, and then Canada, which is where their story begins. Prior
to their settling in what is now Canada in the early 1600s, the Cajun people
were originally from the Vendee region of Western France. Now most densely
populated in the southern part of the state of Louisiana, the Cajuns immigrated
to America from Acadia, or modern day Nova Scotia.
As with many other immigration stories, the Cajun
peoples’ reason for moving to America can be directly attributed to
less-than-ideal living situations where they came from. After several changes in
control over the lands where the then deemed Acadians lived, farmed, and fished,
the British finally captured control of the area, forcing the Cajun people out
when they refused to swear fealty to the Crown and British Church. Their refusal
to convert from their Catholic religion, as well as their refusal to fight for
the crown, caused them to be exiled from modern day Canada. They descended the
globe to their eventual home in Louisiana by the late 1700s and early 1800s.
The trip to America for these exiled Acadians was long
and hard, and many of the Acadian people did not make it. At the hands of the
British, families were separated, and lives were lost. Reports even show that
maybe half of those who left Acadia, as a part of Le Grand Dérangement, leaving
only with what they could carry, did not survive their relocation journey.
Searching for a place where their Catholic beliefs and
Acadian customs would not be persecuted, the surviving Cajuns settled into the
bayous that lied west of New Orleans, and they’ve lived in that territory ever
since.
While other immigrants to America found themselves coming
to the area once the United States was established, the Acadians had already
settled in North America by the time the Mayflower touched down on Plymouth
Rock, and while the Cajuns were making the arduous journey to the southern
United States, the country was in its infancy. This could be a large
contributing factor to the reasons why Cajun culture was able to remain
unchanged for so long, while still affording them the opportunity to be included
as a part of the dominating culture of their area. Since the land that would
later be included in the Louisiana purchase in 1803 is where they were living,
and in such largely concentrated populations, it’s almost as if the Cajuns were
the dominant culture in Louisiana, and anyone else who settled there was
inclined to assimilate to them instead.
According to pbs.org, one reason the Cajun culture was
able to be preserved so nicely, was due to the fact that they “were reviled and
feared by their English-speaking Protestant neighbors in the American colonies,
so they sought out isolated communities where they could practice their religion
and teach their native language to their children.” Because Cajuns were so
different from the Protestant people who were settling in the modern day United
States of America, it is easy to see why the group would continue to push south,
towards more remote areas that were less populated and more conducive to their
style of life with rich lands for farming and fishing. Due to their rather
unintentional ‘closing off’ from society, the Cajuns, who resembled the dominant
culture and believed in many of the same customs, even if they didn’t practice
the same religion, were able to preserve their culture while still being
accepted when America expanded.
Pride in one's roots seems to be a taboo subject when
dealing with immigrants, either from the old world or the new. Immigrants to
America are expected to have pride in America, while placing their pride in
their heritage on the backburner. Again, somehow in this regard, Cajuns have
been able to skate by. The Cajuns, in fact, still know and speak Cajun French,
which is a broken version of the French the ancestors spoke in present-day
Canada. Over the years, other dialects and languages mixed in with the French
language to create their own unique language. While they almost all also speak
English, this mixture of retaining the old language and learning the new is a
way the Cajuns are able to toe the line between assimilating and refusing
assimilation.
Another way the Cajuns were able to maintain their
individuality rather than assimilate to the dominant culture at the time was
through their religion. While the popular religion in America at the time of
their arrival and settling in the territory was Protestantism, just as the
religious climate in their former home of Acadie was shifting away from
Catholicism, the Cajuns were able to continue to practice as Roman Catholics. It
is interesting that the Cajun people found a way to maintain even the religious
aspect of their heritage, when many immigrants and minorities who have come into
the Anglo-Saxon America before or since, have felt religious pressure to
conform, despite the colonies being founded on religious freedom.
While their lack of assimilation has definitely
solidified them somewhere outside the overall dominant culture, it appears as
though the Cajun people are happy to live in this niche of a groove between
assimilated and x-assimilated, where they are overall accepted by the culture of
the United States, while still being able to maintain their separation from the
ideals that many in the current dominating culture reveres such as academic
pursuits, or the American Dream of constant upgrades as one develops his hard
work and skill into more and more pursuits. It seems the Cajuns are happy to
continue their lives as farmers and fisherman, merely subsisting within the USA.
Sources...
https://www.nps.gov/jela/learn/historyculture/from-acadian-to-Cajun.htm
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~jmeaux/Cajun.html
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/Cajuns
https://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/Cajun/
