Located in the heart of Cajun country in Erath, Louisiana, the Acadian Museum commemorates and honors the Acadian heritage and Cajun people of Louisiana.

The Acadian Museum strives to preserve a culture and heritage that has endured for over 400 years, both here and in the far reaches of Canada. The unique Cajun/Creole culture, along with the Native American culture, are the only cultures that wholly developed in North America. The term Cajun is the anglicized pronunciation of the French word 'Cadien, which is what the Acadians called themselves when they arrived in Louisiana, as far back as 1764.

Organizational Structure: The Acadian Museum of Erath, a part of the non-profit Acadian Heritage and Cultural Foundation, Inc., was founded in 1990 to promote awareness and appreciation of the mixed Prairie/Bayou Acadian culture of Vermilion Parish, which has a larger percentage of French speakers than any other county in the United States. The museum preserves and displays material traces of the history and folklore of this region, featuring exhibits about Acadian/Cajun politicians, musicians, religion, folklore, military, ranching, trapping and traditional life ways, including both domestic skills and traditional outdoor occupations.

Collection Overview: All exhibits in the Erath Room are in French and English. The Acadian Room has many rare Acadian artifacts dating to the 17th century and contains an exhibit on Joseph “Beausoleil” Broussard, leader of the first Acadians to migrate to Louisiana in 1765. The extensive collection in the Prairie Bayou Room of research materials on Cajun history, exhibits and genealogy are open to the public without charge. (read more)

The Queen’s Royal Proclamation: In January, 1990, we prepared a petition and had it hand-delivered to the British Crown and government. The petition sought a formal apology from those entities for their role three centuries ago in the 1755 illegal deportation of 15,000 Acadians from Nova Scotia, the lands that they had settled in 1604 when it was then the French colony of Acadie—16 years before the Pilgrims dropped anchor off the coast of Plymouth. Happily, with near-unanimous international support—and the adoption of resolutions backing the human rights initiative by the Louisiana Legislature and the U.S. Congress—the effort was successfully concluded on December 9, 2003, when Queen Elizabeth II’s representative Adrienne Clarkson, the governor-general of Canada, signed the Royal Proclamation. The implications were three-fold: an acknowledgment of the horrific wrongs committed against the Acadian people in the name of the British Crown; a symbolic reconciliation for the death and suffering resulting from the diaspora; and the establishment of July 28 of each year as a Day of Commemoration of the Acadian Deportation. In part, the motivation to launch the petition was the U.S. apology to the Japanese-Americans for their internment during WW II and the respect such an action would show for our Acadian ancestors.

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