LA PAROLE Newsletter of the Acadian Museum By: Chairman Warren A. Perrin Acadian Heritage and Culture Foundation, Inc. 203 S. Broadway, Erath, Louisiana 70533 (337) 233-5832; 937-5468 www.acadianmuseum.com May 11, 2012 • You are on the museum’s email list to receive La Parole. If you know of anyone who would like to receive it, please forward their name and email address to my secretary Darylin at:
[email protected]. If you no longer want to receive future issues, please advise at the email noted above. • Here is Mary Perrin’s take on the pejorative “coonass”: I have read and heard arguments both for and against the use of the term “coonass”. Being the wife of Warren Perrin, one can probably guess which side of that fence I am on. But my feelings about this word have not so much to do with my admirably militant husband, although he is a certainly factor, but more to do with the beloved elders of our culture, those still with us as well as those who have passed on. And now that I myself am becoming an “elder”, I understand better what it meant to them to be called that derogatory term. Today, in 2012, the designation is perhaps far less demeaning than it used to be--now, when the term "ass" is bandied about daily in the media and in casual conversation. And young people now are far removed from the days when being called the C-word meant that you were uneducated, unintelligent, perhaps poor, and spoke broken English--although how many people who denigrated Cajuns for their bad English in those days were themselves bi-lingual at all? Being bi-lingual is and always has been an asset the world over.