JC
The Mercury News interviews Creoles living in Los Angeles to get their thoughts on the New Orleans natural disaster. These Creoles say that they feel out of sorts since this homeland of Creole culture has been distroyed, but refuse to lose their culture.

Lolita Domingue, 51, already felt that her parents’ Creole culture was slipping through her fingers before the hurricane. Now, she says, watching the city drown is like watching a loved one die. “I feel like I’m stumbling in a dark room with nothing to do. We all feel like we don’t know which way to turn,” said Domingue, who moved to Los Angeles in 1955 with her family.

Louisiana Creoles - loosely defined as people of mixed African, French and American Indian heritage who share a melange of French and African culture - contributed much to the distinctive flavor of New Orleans.

Thousands of Creoles left Louisiana after World War II to escape racism and find better jobs. Many passed through Houston and eastern Texas and wound up settling there; other significant pockets are in Chicago and Detroit.

But many pushed on to Los Angeles; perhaps 15,000 make the city their home.

Marion Ferreria founded the Los Angeles-based Association for the Preservation of Creole Cultural Heritage in 2003. Ferreria now holds a Creole picnic in Los Angeles every year and has tried to educate her children and grandchildren about their heritage. “I look at the devastation and cry because New Orleans is a very special place to all of us. We are losing the culture and we need to get people back together,” said Ferreria, 79, whose ancestor was a slave woman who had nine children with a French colonist….

B.J. Deculus, the founder of the Los Angeles-based Bonne Musique Zydeco Band, is among those hopefuls - although he’s also pragmatic. “The parents who moved here have all passed on, and the kids of these families did not keep up the traditions,” said Deculus, who learned Creole at home in Eunice, La., before he learned English. “But there are a whole lot of people living here from Louisiana who have a connection to Creole culture. Katrina will have an impact on bringing those people closer together.”