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Regular Session, 2013 ENROLLED
SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 30
BY SENATOR LAFLEUR
A RESOLUTION
To designate July 14 as the annual commemorative day honoring Louisiana's diverse
French-American Creole families.
WHEREAS, the Associates of the Louisiana French Creole Cultural Educational
Coalition of the tri-parish region, including Avoyelles, St. Landry, and Evangeline, seek to
have Louisiana's unique, historic, and mutually-shared international, interracial French
Creole culture and all of its historic family adherents in all of our ethnic and racial varieties
preserved and honored; and
WHEREAS, all Louisiana French "native-born" or "Creole" families, from the
founding and especially after the founding, of the historic cities of Mobile, Alabama,
Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Washington/Opelousas, Louisiana, along with all other
Colonial period French /European, African, and Spanish settlements in Louisiana, in all of
their racial and ethnic varieties, do joyfully and intelligently comprehend and embrace their
uniquely shared, historic, international, interracial culture, language, and cuisine; and
WHEREAS, they have loyally resisted compromising their uniquely shared
Louisiana Francophone Creole cultural identity for any commercial, social, or economic
expediency; and
WHEREAS, their five hundred year-old cultures and traditions antedates even the
entry of Louisiana into the United States of America; and
WHEREAS, the Creole culture remains the historically undeniable foundation of
Louisiana's earliest culinary, linguistic, and social traditions presented to the first
Francophone colonists of New Orleans under the auspices of then founder, and governor,
Jean-Batiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville; and SR NO. 30 ENROLLED
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WHEREAS, the Louisiana Creole cuisine was made possible through the culinary
wisdom of the Louisiana Indians, the French settlers, African people and slaves, the early
Germanic people, and later Spanish colonial settlers; and
WHEREAS, they are thus forever united to the French maritime colonies where both
the earliest French "Creole" language, cuisine, and culture was born in the French empire;
and
WHEREAS, the shared culture and language was successfully transmitted to every
diverse ethnicity, thenceforth welcomed and assimilated into the North American territory
then known as "la louisiane"; and
WHEREAS, this age-old culture and language were reinforced with the historic
arrival of the Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri French/Canadians and
European soldiers and their Creole or native-born families from numerous forts formerly
held by the French throughout North America and duly surrendered to the British according
to the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the "Seven Years War"; and
WHEREAS, these French families settled in the historic Opelousas District and were
joined by their African slaves, Creole families of color, diverse Spanish Creoles,
Franco-Teutonic and Irish, and later "Foreign French" families; and
WHEREAS, these Creoles in all of their racial diversity would expand and
disseminate among a variety of other Francophone ethnicities their mutually shared and
created language, culinary arts, architecture, social and recreational traditions, and thus
preserve through oral and written transmission their shared historic culture through its
medium of communication, more recently known as "Louisiana French", which has survived
to this twenty-first century; and
WHEREAS, the beautiful words of the ancient Louisiana French will forever
preserve and speak to the memory, culture, tongues, and races of their diverse ancestry for
all their Creole families; and
WHEREAS, their historically later arriving cousins, the Acadians, whose offspring,
by fact of birth in Louisiana were also "native-born" or qualified "Creoles", did assimilate
and adapt both the historic Louisiana French Creole language and culture; and
WHEREAS, the historic Louisiana Francophone parishes of Avoyelles, Evangeline SR NO. 30 ENROLLED
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and St. Landry were from their earliest times populated by Louisiana French Creoles of all
varieties, including Americans, such that Evangeline and St. Landry parishes recognize a
dual cultural status of "Creole & Cajun", while Avoyelles, Pointe Coupee, and Natchitoches
parishes hold to their historic and predominant cultural taxonomy of "Creole".
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Legislature of Louisiana that
the 14th day of July is hereby designated as the annual commemorative day honoring
Louisiana's diverse French-American Creole families.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this Resolution be transmitted to the
Associates of the Louisiana French Creole Cultural Education Coalition.
PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE