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LAFAYETTE - As an ethnic group, the Acadians in Louisiana are looked upon by the rest of the country through the eyes of a generally misinformed population, according to Dr. Carl Brasseaux.

Brasseaux, the assistant director for Louisiana studies at the University of Southwestern Louisiana and a native of Opelousas, gave a lecture Wednesday to about 60 people at Vermillionville on the "History of the Acadians." 

The lecture was part of a two-week series planned for Congrès Mondial Acadien-Louisiane.

Brasseaux pointed to the "misinformation disseminated by the popular media" and said "it is in indirect proportion to their knowledge of the area."

Brasseaux singled out the film "The Water Boy" as a prime example of what some filmmakers have done to distort images of Cajun people. 

"Acadians are often portrayed as poor, uneducated, lazy, ignorant swamp dwellers living, at best, an indolent life," Brasseaux said.

In reality, Brasseaux said "Acadians lead highly stratified and diversified lives. The typical Cajun of today is a banker, architect, mechanic, physician, farmer, musician, policeman, priest or electrician."

Brasseaux opened his lecture by saying that he felt like a history student trying to explain the history of the world in 30 minutes because of the complexity involved in tracing the history of the Acadians and their eventual migration - forced and otherwise - to Louisiana.

"The Acadians were the first colonists to develop a unique character in North America," Brasseaux said.

The fact that the Acadian colony in modern-day Nova Scotia changed national hands 10 times between 1604 and 1713, and that the colonists maintained their individual character, attests to the resiliency of the people as a whole, Brasseaux said.

Between 1713 and 1754, the British finally had enough of the resistance put up by the Acadians and began to exile them, he said. Brasseaux compared the conditions and treatment the Cajuns had to endure during the exile to the treatment of slaves being transported to America. He said the detention centers along the Mid-Atlantic coast where akin to "concentration camps."

He also called the whole process of removing the Acadians was a form of "ethnic cleansing."

As of the 1990 census, Brasseaux said there were 700,000 people in Louisiana who are of Acadian descent. But Acadians are scattered all over the U.S. from Maine to Texas, Brasseaux said.

"France rediscovered Louisiana in the 1970's and the interest in the area has grown ever since," Brasseaux said.