Lalinn Disan Art

A Real L.Creole/Cajun, No Cosplay, Out Here Trying to Skate Uphill

Why? Because my culture is on the brink of extinction. Thanks to the very loud, insidious efforts of Anglo-America and gentrification. Here’s a quick breakdown:

1803 - The Louisiana Purchase / displacement of New Orleanians fleeing Anglo-American persecution. Most fleeing west to Cajun Country.

1904 - 1919 The Chitimacha removed all members of mixed African descent.

 1910 - 1970 The Great Migration / displacement of Louisianans via Jim Crow

1920 - Now Gentrification / displacement

2005 - Now Post Katrina / displacement

After outlawing, with violence and terror, our language(Kouri-Vini), our religion(Voodoo and other indigenous Spiritual Systems), and even the foundation of our ethnicity itself by imposing the One-Drop Rule, my culture continues to be consumed and commercialized by this perverse Capitalistic Exoticism. That would see my heritage, my language, my very identity sold as a trendy costume for someone else to wear. 

Meanwhile, less than 10,000 L.Creoles speak Kouri-Vini. Ten Thousand.

How would that make you feel?

…I cope with that by doing art. I act. I paint. I write. I model. I think. A genuine Dead Espri and proud Vakabon.

And sometimes it's not enough because “its” a lot.

The White-Washing, Black-Washing, and Red-Washing of my culture, via the rampant amount of misinformation about us out there, has turned our truth into a circus act.

Which is odd, because the truth was pretty scarce as a kid. Back then, when I googled my own people, I found next to nothing, and what I did find was inaccurate. I wanted answers as to why I was being treated as “other” by everyone, regardless of color.

But now? Now, google has a lot to say about us, and the same people who called me a Mutt as a kid are the ones who want to be a mutt, while still looking at me like I’m a mutt.

 It’s weird right? Your culture being both fetishized and forgotten. Mimicked and Disrespected.

Survivors of an attempted genocide with no acknowledgement. You don’t agree? Well…

An ethnicity whose foundation is based on the intermixing of multiple peoples, over generations, is now living in a two-color caste system.

The Chitimacha, the largest Tribe in Louisiana, kicked all members of African descent out of the Tribe. Black Creoles were made to identify as African-American. White Creoles were made to identify as White. And the poor Creoles, regardless of color, who fled New Orleans, west, from persecution would become known as Cajuns.

Yeah, I know what you heard but Cajuns aren’t simply just the “descendants of Acadians”. That’s an oversimplification.

Much like the UN’s definition of genocide.