As Michael Doucet tells it, the Acadian
people of Louisiana have in their blood a penchant for both
adaptation and preservation. They moved from France in the 17th
Century and colonized Acadia - in what are now the Canada Maritime
provinces and Maine. And many settled in Louisiana after the Great
Expulsion of 1755 and became Cajuns.
"I think our culture has always looked at this - and not necessarily intellectually, but more on an emotional level - that you would adapt to whatever was around," Doucet said last week in a phone interview from his southwestern-Louisiana home. "That's how the Acadian sort of ethnic culture continues to be vital today, because it adapted.
"That's what we're doing now, is adapting to where we are now."
