Louisiana has become the most attractive state for business opportunity, according to a Forbes.com article earlier this month. This is a nice take on our state that others may find out of the ordinary.
But I’m more inclined to wonder why someone would find this peculiar. For 22 years I have been under the impression that Louisiana was the best place to be on either side of the Mississippi River.
Economists and the business-minded-folk at Forbes see it as the result of the state’s improved governmental integrity and more pro-business tax policies. For the most part they’re right, but they rely on numbers too much.
Of course, our geographic location must be considered as well when deliberating business opportunity. Having the mouth of the Mississippi at our behest is a blessing of endless value.
However, the most essential part of business is the people who run it.
It is the blame quite often, and we struggle just as hard to explain it, but it is just as much our culture as it is the policies and geography.
Sure, hearing about “our culture this” and “our culture that” has to be redundant to the outsiders, and frankly even I find it to be a bit monotonous. However, there are some concrete cultural underpinnings of how and why our state has reached such economic prosperity in this time.
We, as people of south Louisiana, along with our special culture, have evolved through the eras, but there are some essential aspects of our community that have remained, especially through times of trial: innovation, togetherness and work ethic.
These three facets of our heritage create the most definitive description of us — Louisiana resilience.
Focusing more on the Acadians and their influence, we see a common story throughout the history: adversity.
First, faced with settling the lands around Canada’s Bay of Fundy, they encountered a struggle with finding land suitable for agriculture. However, in what is considered one the most incredible developments of the 17th century, the Acadians invented a special drainage system, an aboiteau, that allowed them to control water levels during tide changes in order to farm the marshes.
All types of businesses, particularly in oil and gas industries, have been created by what I’d consider Cajun cleverness — purely innovative ideas struck up by Bayou Bill that are patented and revolutionized energy production generating millions of dollars.
Perhaps the greatest hardship faced was by the Acadians during the persecution and exile of the Grand D’Arrangement. Forced out of Acadia — present-day Nova Scotia — they traveled down the East Coast in hopes of finding a new home. Half perished during the exile, but the surviving eventually found their way back together in our home state.
In the past decade, it was easy to witness this type of banding together in the catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, but there are so many more localized occasions of our people coming together to the aid of fewer. So many of us are willing to pause our own lives and offer whatever it is we can to a community, family or individual with a struggle.
There is this inherent subconscious amongst us that family, friendship, as well as generosity to strangers, creates the support system that keeps a community alive and well.
I believe — and in all my bias — Louisianians have an easier time setting aside differences and sticking together.
Our work ethic does not reflect other labor ethics that are stereotyped in the South. Sure, we can be very Southern in nature, slow in pace and leisure seeking, but we are not a people of idleness.
We are a culture of self-made people that value and enjoy work.
It has been our story to struggle, but also to struggle together and to return with greater achievement.
Our people settled an edge of the earth that no one cared for. Our ancestors turned it into a paradise. Now people are recognizing it and they want to be a part of it.
Artists are known for creating glorious pieces of work from their emotion, but they can never explain its meaning. All of us who take part in being Louisianians are merely artists who cannot seem to explain our culture to anyone outside — we just live it.
It is up to those incoming strangers to trust and experience the art.
With Louisiana having the highest percentage of population living in birth state, it’s evident that what we’ve got is good, what we’re doing is right and we’re proud of it.
Stay resilient. Stay Louisiana proud. It’s contagious.
