I was not born in Lafayette but Lafayette raised me. I was meant to be here.
My childhood in this town came by way of Providence and, like all good things that come to many of us, through the fervent prayers of my Cajun mama. My mom was raised in Lake Charles by two transplanted Cajuns who went west for work. Mawmaw and Pawpaw would frequently visit family back home and still lived their Cajun culture, so much so that my mother would yearn to call Lafayette her own home.
When dad got a job in the oil patch, he moved his family from Lake Charles to New Orleans and it wasn’t long before momma started praying to “come home” to Lafayette. She heard from some of the other oil field wives about the little Cajun Saint, Charlene Richard. Homesick, she began praying for Charlene’s intercession to God to make a way for our family to come to Lafayette. Mamma’s prayers were answered and Daddy got transferred to Lafayette.
Their first Sunday Mass at Holy Cross she was awestruck to find the priest celebrating was none other than Father Floyd Calais, Charlene Richard’s friend on Earth, and a promoter for her cause to sainthood. I was 3 years old then. Because of this miraculous turn of events, I have always felt that Lafayette is a part of me. In a sense, I was meant to be here, like we all are.
When I was asked to reflect upon the past 200 years of Lafayette’s cultural history and where I see Lafayette projected into the future culturally, I am reminded of two things: Culture is lived and culture is cultivated. The city of Lafayette has come a long way from the small little trading post at the Pinhook Bridge that was once called Vermilionville. With the donation of 5.6 arpents of land to establish L’eglise St. Jean du Vermilionville, which would eventually become our Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist, the city grew around the church square.
Jean Mouton, who donated the land, was an Acadian but there were French Creoles, Spaniards, Anglophones, Africans and later Americans in our town. Culture was lived.
Culture expanded and diversified as the city did: The Vietnamese, the Latinos, Lebanese, Indians, and many other peoples have chosen to call Lafayette home and enrich it culturally. Our music, food, languages, the way we instinctively relate to one another in charity, became part of a myriad of things that define Lafayette’s culture. This is living culture.
Looking forward, our culture in Lafayette must continue to be lived if we are to see it survive into the future. First, like my momma did, we must yearn for it and take action; cook the food we were taught to cook, speak our ancestral languages, listen to the music that was handed to us, dance the old dances. In this way, culture becomes cultivated.
Like the roots of the ancient oak at St. John’s, it becomes intentionally cared for. The culture in Louisiana is a valuable commodity. The tourism industry alone, according to recent reports, is a $18.6 billion industry.
But, is our culture merely a commodity? In the future, I see Lafayette’s culture continue to grow and diversify. We must continue to love it, yearn for it, promote it and protect it, live it and cultivate it. That’s the thing about culture; no one stands outside of it. We are all part of it and what we do creates it. In a sense, we are all meant to be here.
Kristi Guillory Munzing is museum curator and tour coordinator at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Lafayette. The Cajun musician and songwriter co-founded Grammy-nominated band Bonsoir Catin.