Lafayette, La.
NPS Website; Local Website
WHAT IS IT?One of six separate National Park Sites dedicated to preserving the “natural and cultural resources of the Mississippi Delta region”. This Site focuses on the Acadian (or Cajun) peoples’ early life in the New World, exile from Nova Scotia and their adaptation to life in the Louisiana Bayous.
BEAUTY (5/10)
The building housing the Acadian Culture Center looks a lot like your local public library. Nothing architecturally stunning. Inside, the bookstore is spacious, the theater comfortable and the museum exhibits alive with color and sound, much like the culture that was on display.
HISTORICAL INTEREST (6/10)
The Acadian Cultural Center attempts to explain the Cajun culture and history. This is especially handy, since most visitors to Louisiana feel as if they stepped into another country. The Museum provides a terrific, easy to ingest immersion into a distinctly American way of life.
CROWDS (6/10)
Less than a dozen people were touring the site while we were there. They didn’t affect our visit.
EASE OF USE/ACCESS (4/5)
The Acadian Cultural Center is located near the center of Lafayette, just a few miles from Interstate 10. The exhibits are all on one floor and easily accessible. Oddly enough, the movie’s subtitles, which appear in red on a handy ticker below the screen, are in French.
CONCESSIONS/BOOKSTORE (4/5)
The Center’s Bookstore reminded us that Christmas is just around the corner. All of its wares were attractively displayed as potential gifts. Cajun seasoning, recipe cards and cookbooks, wooden toys, musical triangles and washboards - all eager to be purchased. The book selection could have been better. Samples of novels set in Louisiana and Cajun folklore had us wanting more.
COSTS (4/5)
The Site is free.
RANGER/GUIDE TO TOURIST RATIO (1/5)
One Ranger on-site. She made few appearances from her office in a back room. Attempts at engaging her in conversation were not successful.
TOURS/CLASSES (7/10)The Center shows a 40-minute film, The Cajun Way: Echoes of Acadia, every hour on the hour from 8 a.m. to 4 a.m. The male narrator’s slow French accent coupled with the female narrator’s breathy voice (presumably she was the spirit of the land, the wind or maybe even the Acadian people, who knows) made the 40-minutes feel like 40 hours. And jeez, the story was unbearably overwrought and its retelling of history quite confusing to those without prior knowledge of the Cajun story. Just ask Gab.
Michael came to know the Cajun story through the lovingly reverential films of Les Blank. The filmmaker portrays the Cajun people with a vociferous zest for life through their dance, food and family. This film showed none of that passion, just an endless whine about the miseries of exile, pious Catholicism and the horrible treatment by the British. The last two minutes of the film show dancing, crawfish eating and fun. You would have thought the Cajuns to be dour, self-flagellating pilgrim-types had that ending not been included.
A second 16-minute film focuses on the Atchafalaya Swamp. It focuses on the Louisiana swampland, its inhabitants and its transformation in the last one hundred years from a small human community to a pristine natural environment. We are tempted to go even though it is not actually part of the National Park System. We will find a way to canoe in the Bayous.
The Museum is a much better introduction to the Acadian people than the film. It is affectionately done and covers all aspects of their life, immigration and customs. The Museum teems with large panels filled with evocative photographs of the Cajun people. Their zest for life is here. This place sparks fascination and is a catalyst for innumerable questions. Profiled here is a true American culture, that of Louisiana, not just Acadiana. It is a mélange of ideas, backgrounds, food and peoples. The Museum is terrific.
FUN (5/10)
When we first entered the Center, we weren’t quite sure where to go. No one was too eager to offer any suggestions. A larger group of people walked in after us and were warmly greeted by a volunteer who seemed to appear out of nowhere. We jumped in with the group and were kindly escorted to the theatre, where a new film was about to start.
The first film was a bit of a downer. One of us was thoroughly confused about places and dates - Gab has problems with non-linear scripts. So that was no fun. Thank goodness for the well-designed museum and the fabulous meal we had in Lafayette earlier that day. Now we have a better idea of what being Cajun is all about.
WOULD WE RECOMMEND? (6/10)The Acadian Cultural Center is in Lafayette, LA, the largest city in Cajun country. The food you see pictured in the museum is on sale at all of the local restaurants. The music you hear is on the radio. The accents from the main characters in the films are heard thick and strong all around you. The Acadian Cultural Center celebrates the present as much as the past.
If you want more of the past, you can always tour Vermillionville, a reconstructed Cajun Village right next door to the Center. That costs $8.
TOTAL 48/80
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