Dec 19 2008
What is Acadiana?
Before I go any further with this blog, I guess I had better define “Acadiana”. That word is one I use a lot to describe an area of South Louisiana. So, let’s break it down, shall we? In the 1700’s, residents of Nova Scotia in Canada were kicked out due to loyalty issues that will be discussed in a later blog. The ships that carried the Acadians out of that area landed at several points on the East Coast and a few made their way all the way to the marshy coast of Louisiana. These people settled in the Mid-South area of the Louisiana coast. They began fishing, trapping, growing rice and growing sugarcane. These people survived off of what they caught and what they grew. The Acadians nicknamed their new home “Acadiana”. In the opinion of many of my friends, there are five different areas of this great state–Orleans, Capitol City, Acadiana, Southwest LA, Cen-LA and North Louisiana. Louisiana is broken up into parishes. Most other states are made up of counties. Louisiana us unique. The parishes come from the Catholic Church and the way they broke up the area to “zone” the churches. Acadiana is made up of eight parishes with the heart of Acadiana being Lafayette. These parishes are Acadia, Evangeline, Iberia, Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary and Vermilion. These parishes stretch from the Atchafalaya Basin to Southwest Louisiana and up north almost to Central Louisiana (Cen-LA). Acadiana has it’s own language (Cajun French), it’s own dialect, it’s own food and it’s own heritage. Cajun is quite different from Creole, so don’t get the two confused. Acadiana even has it’s own flag. How proud I am to be a Cajun!
