CBC Interview during Congrés with Cynthia Maillet; August 13, 1994:

(0:04) - audio begins. At Université St Anne in Moncton

(0:35) - Perrin states that about 2500 people from Louisiana have come to Congrés

(1:05) - What can Louisiana Cajuns gain from coming here?

(1:10) - Perrin: Our Roots. Difficult to describe.

(1:52) - How many Cajuns are there in Louisiana now?

(2:00) - Perrin: Somewhere between 800,000 to a million indicated on the census form.

(2:34) - How widespread is the language?

(2:39) - Perrin: The language presents a perplexing problem. It is widespread in certain communities, it is found in all communities. But it is found less frequently spoken. Speaks about the French Immersion program.

(3:25) - You yourself, have you always spoken French?

(3:27) - Perrin: I have always been exposed to the French, but I like many individuals in their late 40s, my parents deliberately did not speak French to me because my older brother, who is 52, only spoke French and had problems in school.

(3:53) - What kind of problems?

(3:55) - Perrin: Unable to speak to his teachers and if he tried to speak French, he was punished. So my parents quickly realized the problem and said “we will not speak to Warren in French”. Now I always heard it and I had to speak it to converse with my grandparents and my great-grandparents so it was there. But I didn’t want to speak it either as a child, I didn’t want to speak it in high school and it wasn’t until after I got out of law school which coincided with the renaissance going on around me that I decided I wanted to speak French and I wanted to know more about my culture and heritage. My self-education has been an attempt to learn and speak French as much as possible.

(4:50) - Ask about Perrin’s petition of the British crown for the exile of the Acadians in 1755.

(5:00) - Perrin talks about his petition for an apology from the British government.

(6:14) - How far have you gotten with this? What kind of response have you gotten from the British government?

(6:19) - Perrin: Nearly unanimous support from historians, scholars, professors of international law, from most Francophone countries in the world. It evoked a response from the British Embassy, they retained lawyers in Houston, TX and we have been engaged in good faith negotiations since February of 1990 and those negotiations continue in private.

***Audio ends***