There is a bald cypress tree in West Feliciana Parish, called Mama Cypress by some, 

that’s probably 1500 years old – old enough to have seen the comings and goings of all kinds of people,

speaking many languages, wearing all kinds of cloth and furs across time,

some sauntering in confidently to conquer, and some arriving forced and timid with fear.

And at one point a wave of exiled people who were Acadians came,

and went further and further South and became Cajuns here.

This identity – forged through adversity and perseverance – is inextricably tethered to the

Louisiana Creole identity, and still others that exist and existed in today’s Acadiana;

it’s important to note that how French Louisianians define themselves based on ancestry and geography

is still today a complex and vital conversation.

 

It’s beautiful to imagine a tree bearing witness to waves of people and happenings, 

the same strong and rooted living plant holding ground while centuries of change

occurred beneath and around its needled branches.

One thing holding fast while the terrain and society around it evolves.

One through-story – the mysterious and long life of this tree –

acting as a link for an infinite number of individual stories.

 

The Acadian ancestors were dispersed from their homeland with the intention of separating them,

and dampening their power as a collective.

Defining Acadian is a complicated task, and compiling a global registry of Acadian artists

is an ambitious and probably impossible one, but here is the noble act of reuniting a family

centuries after their forcible exile.

Reconnecting cousins by way of sharing art, and collaborating all these years later

to merge their visions and experiences and identities is a profound rebellion in itself.

 

While Southwest Louisiana isn’t the only place Acadians dispersed to after 

Le Grand Dérangement, maybe it’s the one we think about the most when we think of the landing place for those refugees. The idea of homecoming is an old one; some of us use it to describe what happens after we die –

that when we leave our corporeal existence behind, we return to where we belonged all along but were separated from due to some circumstances. Over time, we’ve all been displaced from our cradles in one way or another.

 

Here, in this room, with Mama Cypress, the cousins are together. 

They meet again, and correspond. 

And a very old story is picked back up to be told in a chorus of new voices.