Full Interview with Sassafras LA - 7

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RC: It showed me how much in life I’d miss it if I didn’t get to go fishing.  Because that one summer, I was about to cry I wanted to go fishing so bad. It showed me, my life doesn’t consist of much but fishing.  If I’m not hunting or fishing, I’m on a couch playing a video game or something and I don’t like to do that. 

AN: I think it strengthened it.  I mean, I think we knew what we had but we took it for granted.  And when it was threatened in those situations, you realize how important it is, I always took for granted.  Then I started seeing that I could do this thing.  When I realized that, and that strengthened my love for it, to do something, and just spurred to action. 

RC: Hunting and fishing, that’s the way I roll. Scuba diving too.

CG: And oil always had a love-hate relationship with us because of some of the canals that oil companies cut, erosion is happening more quickly.  So we’ve always kind of dealt with oil in that aspect.  But it’s also really good for our economy.  So as much as it hurt us, it still does so much good for us. 

AN: We used to just be a fishing community and stuff and with the advance of oil we had a lot of people getting a lot more income and improving.  Without the oil field we wouldn’t have a lot of the things we have now, nothing.

CG: I just think it over all strengthened our relationship, just to mirror what everybody already said.  We love where we live.  We genuinely love it or else we wouldn’t be doing this.  And to see it threatened, it really kind of put things into perspective, so.

AN: Because you knew it could wash away.  And so that’s when we evolved into coastal erosion also.  Because the oil spill happened, you know, and we still work with it to help.  That’s why we’re on these different councils, to help and spread our message.  But at the same time, it’s really not threatening us as much. It’s the erosion.  The good part about it, if anything came out of the oil spill, it was money, first of all, and also awareness.  I think it scared us, but we’re coming back. 

RC: It scared us, but.

AN: We’re secure in it.

RC: I don’t know, I had a feeling we’d triumph.

CG: We all knew. 

AN: We’ve been through a lot of things, our culture has been through a lot a lot of things, and what the thing is that all these things we’ve gone through, we’ve always come back, we’ve always come out stronger and better. And we knew we would come over it, it’s just a matter of time or what kind of.  Like Ronnie said, we’ve triumphed over everything.

CG: We’ve always been a resilient people, you know, the Cajuns.

RC: We’re not going to put our tail between our legs and hide at the first sign of trouble.

AN: No.  We’re going to get in your face and tell you.

RC: We’re going to come head butt you.

CG: The Cajuns were exiled from Nova Scotia, you know, we came here, we fell in love with this land, we lived through it, it was just another thing to us that we were going to make it through.  Yeah, it was scary, it was –

AN: And a lot of times it gave us the freesons [goose bumps] you know, you have this bad feeling.  Fifteen minutes north they call them the goose pimples. All these arguments between schools.  But it’s not, it’s the freesons.  The goose bumps.

CG: The goose bumps.  The freesons. 

AN: Yeah, it’s those, that feeling, we didn’t know what to do.  And we’ve triumphed again.

CG: Yeah.  I think we all knew. Even, we could be as scared as we want, we knew, if anything was compromised, if our way of life was compromised, we were going to adapt, we were going to make it through, we were going to make it work. 

AN:  I guess, in my opinion, what you all are doing is great because we need to prepare for the next time.  You never know when there’s going to be another disaster.  But to focus on the youth and to have specified treatment I guess you would say on, you know, the fisheries, or the environment, but also on the people, the youth, and make sure you keep the culture, and all those different issues, those key points, and bring it all together, because if we have one link missing, it’s gone.  

OB: Thank you all very much for this opportunity. And for everything that you all are doing, because it’s awesome.

AN: Thank you all again.

Interviewer: Thank you so much.