Will the evacuation and transportation of New Orleans go down in collective memory like 1755 when the Acadians were deported?

Is that possible? Worthwhile parallels between Canada and the Katrina-Bush-FEMA Gulf Crisis ?

After the British governor ordered the Acadians deported in 1755 from the Maritimes settlements, the French-speaking 'colons' were scattered all the way from France to New Orleans. It was a brutal act of cultural genocide, resented by generations down to the present.

Hundreds of thousands of residents of New Orleans were just now bussed and flown out of that city. A decision was taken "on high authority" to scatter an entire population. Was it as draconian as the 'Grand Dérangement', or Great Expulsion, of British Governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council?

That is a question that is working itself out on the ground exactly right now and in the coming months. I hope it is not a lingering question after another 250 years. The question is still alive for Acadians, because of the suffering, and for the Francophones of Québec, due to their own similar experience as the brunt of British exactions and similar barn-burnings. Similar questions arise, today as well, all through the Maritimes -- thanks to lingering economic marginality in these vast territories (called provinces) where the collective memories run deep and over a long duration after former greatness, acknowledged once, is now forgotten. Are these fates -- in the Gulf and in, say, Newfoundland somehow linked?

The culture of the Acadians seems, on the surface, given their French mother-tongue and roots in a common homeland, easily distinguishable from the British, Scots, even Irish baggage of their new neighbours, those who moved onto the Acadian lands once the Frenchies had been expelled.

(Who is slated to take over New Orleans after the bodies are buried, the water removed?)

Like our view of the British in pre-Revolutionary America, with their expulsions, the vision gives me similar misgivings now seeing the vultures waiting to take over New Orleans tomorrow. Will the territory once inhabited by the urban, nitty-gritty grassroots in New Orleans end up being the New Acadia of the Rich -- the powerful shippers, oil magnates, taxpaying casino mafia?

All us 'nice folks' today across Canada, we never paid serious reparations to the Acadians who seriously got the shaft when these Cajuns ended up struggling to find a niche on whatever soil they could find in or near New Orleans in the 18th century.

Where will black Americans and whites end up several years hence, after the evacuation of New Orleans? Can they possibly hope to be sucked up into a nebulous middle class or will they harbour memories the way many a cultural Diaspora does down through time, anywhere and everywhere we look today around the globe?

Are African Americans from the Gulf Coast at risk of becoming North America's version of the Palestinian Refugee -- in or out of camps -- or will individuals with collective ties simply atomize or run like another saline solution dripping into the vein of middle america, almost as lost as a drop flung into Lake Pontchartrain?

Will these waters, drowning our families, evaporate like mist into lost memories? Who remembers today how many Acadians drowned at sea?

I would personally prefer that the people of New Orleans make a stand for their home turf. I would hope that the citizens, who surely did lay down deep cultural roots, start to take stock of their traditions and heritage, before they struggle to assimilate elsewhere.

After all, as African Americans they are uniquely placed to start drawing on the lessons learned collectively in the struggles against slavery, against lynchings under Jim Crow laws and KKK courts, and during the revival of hope in so many civil rights struggles. Do you not think some of the tradition of dignity will be lost beyond the boundaries of the Gulf in the inland waters and towns unknown to any of us -- so scattered they lie across the States?

It seems to me that it is better, somehow, to find a place to stand and fight against any plan for their land that would bring in wall-to-wall casinos or tourist distractions or any resettlement to transplant a new servant class for high-tech gas and port facilities. Any effort to resist that nightmare stands a better chance to hold sway -- better than the chances the Acadians had some two centuries ago. Who was it who finally did overthrow the British colonists? Do they have the faculty of memory in Washington, D.C. -- at least enough to understand the many meanings of the word "transportation" or does their memory have to be forced a little more?