Sample Student final exam answers 2019
(2019 final exam assignment
)

Part 3:
Model Research Reports

LITR 4340    
American Immigrant Literature
(Model Assignments)
 

 

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/