Don't call it FrenchFest

Let's set the context:  I'm a direct descendant of two of the original French settlers who arrived at Akaroa in 1840. Joseph and Magdeleine Libeau were professional gardeners from the area south of Nantes, France. They left Rochefort, France on the boat le Compte de Paris only to find they had arrived in a country now declared British. Despite what must have been an enormous shock and disappointment, they persevered through great deprivations and hardships, cleared the land for market gardening, vines, dairy farming, brickworks etc and prospered by their own hard work.

Naturally Akaroa holds an important place in my heart and in the personal histories of all the descendants of the French and German settlers who disembarked from the boat. For thirteen years The Libeau Descendants Society and the Comte de Paris Descendants Society re-enacted the landing on the beach at Akaroa to the delight of locals and tourists. It was simply and honestly done but success grew the event to where they needed help and that appears to have been our downfall.

These days it is called FrenchFest but on any other weekend you'd be hard-pressed to find much that was genuinely French about the place. It has become a charicature and a nice financial vehicle for certain festival organisers. Akaroa itself has a great little museum but there isn't that much there from the French and German settlers, there are less than a handful of French people living there, the shops don't bother to greet you with a Bonjour, the products have little of a French theme. I guess it is still a unique place and we descendants are very proud of our ancesters who were poor, mostly illiterate but hard-working people brave enough to launch themselves into an adventure 18,000 kms away. For most it was a one-way trip into the wilderness
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The re-enactment has been hijacked by 'Hollywood' types who care little for authenticity but prefer cheap shots, obscenities and woke pandering to certain groups. Ego reigns supreme. Actors from Auckland are flown in to perform stupidities in a bloated script. Rehearsals are held for weeks in Akaroa, effectively excluding most descendants from participating except as finale decoration. The script is 54 pages long. The French settlers arrive on page 53. 

But hey, let's have sexual inuendo between Captain Cook and Joseph Banks, references to cellphones, pest-control characters in green Steve Irwin outfits, deliberately stupid references to sperm (laughed by reference to sperm whales), a Maori 'entrepreneur'  selling multiple maps of Banks Peninsula (since when did Maori have paper-making technology?), totally unnecessary musical interludes, a camp male Queen Victoria. This appalling script is presented to families expecting to hear history. I was told many folks left after an hour, disgusted at the amount of obscenities used. In the end the duration of the play was 2 hours in freezing weather. When the descendants used to do it the duration was around 40 minutes.

The script is audibly insulting to Maori (yet Onuku Maori seem to go along with it). I wrote to the organisers requesting that they remove offensive lines from past scripts that were upsetting to Compte de Paris descendants. Nope still there. I had some lines to say but was never given the script before the final rehearsal. Hmm. It was stressful to have to cram an hour before.

The script describes our French ancestors - "These immigrants are all of the lowest order. I had to go around the pubs and taverns of Rochefort..... men and women reluctantly agree to the adventure."

In fact the venture was scarcely advertised because the French were scared of tipping off the British to the departure of the boat of colonists. The emigrants knew life was hard in post-Napoleonic France - crops failing due to phylloxera, high infant mortality and so they bravely sought to better themselves in a country none of them understood. The settlement was a hard-sell because information had to be kept secret and no-one knew anything about the bottom end of the planet. 

During the Landings play on the beach on the Saturday of FrenchFest there were instances of actors used in place of settler descendants where the real descendant got just one word to say "just" and that person even lives in Akaroa. Do we feel sidelined? Hurt? Disrespected? Hell yes!

For the second time in a row I was obliged to wear a truly laughable costume. Despite sending my measurements to organisers the jacket didn't fit though I suppose it was an improvement on the blanket around my shoulders in 2019. I told the costume person that I was 'now known as the torn blanket wrapped around her head woman. What have you got for me this year?' Hey, a cut off strip of old cardigan, complete with half a pocket, to wrap around my head. I told her my ancestor would have had a bonnet. She disagreed and said they would have been too dirty and too poor to have had a bonnet. My daughter was obliged to wear an old fur coat turned inside out. It literally fell apart before her eyes but she was told that made it more authentic and the arrivals would have been very scruffy. She just makes it up on the fly. The whole thing is degrading but you can't argue against the force of personality of this woman and her husband, who has no respect for true history, respect for the characters and no talent at all in writing a script. 

I listened to the despairing comments of fellow descendants who knew more about the hijacking of Akaroa than I did, over the weekend. They are not heard. They have literally been shouted down. No wonder they no longer want to be involved in the re-enactment which is now a farce.

I would rather they called the event AkaroaFest, not FrenchFest as there is no respect for history and the French theme is mostly pseudo. The French character of Akaroa is dying under a thousand cuts. The Saturday evening cabaret cost $79 per person with no food included and I have read several negative comments on Facebook about the lack of Frenchness and the disorganisation. I couldn't afford to go. Such events are now priced out of many people's pockets.

I made an effort to attend the Brocante on the Sunday morning. This is a French tradition whereby old stuff, occasionally antiques, is put up for sale. I came away with a little piece of French history which seems authentic. An old plate illustrated with King Louis-Philippe. He was the last king of France and who signed the agreement to send my ancestors to establish a French colony in the South Island of NZ. 

Few people would have appreciated the significance of that plate (or it wouldn't have been up for sale for $20) particularly over FrenchFest weekend but it's safe with me. I was pleased to meet the French Ambassador but there was no time to chat.

In short, there is little that is French now about Akaroa except the cultural appropriation required for FrenchFest. The play on the beach is insulting and hurtful and just a huge ego trip for the two people organising it. If I ever travel to Akaroa to attend FrenchFest in future I shall wear a more authentic style costume but I will not take part in the farce on the beach.

I would like to thank Black Cat Cruises for giving some of the descendants who came to Akaroa for the weekend a free 30 min cruise around the harbour. Someone appreciated us.

Photos show: On the beach, on the beach wth my daughter Laura, on the beach with Gaetan acting as my husband, Laura and I making the most of the adventure, the recreation ground, Laura with Steve Lelievre (another descendant) after our cruise around the harbour, British flag flying at the Britomart monument at Green Point.