Question: which  descendants of French colonists who settled in Acadia did John Grenier  writes that she is the premier scholar of
Context: French people have been present in the U.S. state of Nebraska since before it achieved statehood in 1867.  The area was originally claimed by France in 1682 as part of "La Louisiane", the extent of which was largely defined by the watershed of the Mississippi River and its tributaries.  Over the following centuries, explorers of French ethnicity, many of them French-Canadian, trapped, hunted, and established settlements and trading posts across much of the northern Great Plains including the territory that would eventually become Nebraska, even in the period after France formally ceded its North American claims to Spain.  During the 19th century, fur trading gave way to settlements and farming across the state, and French colonists and French-American migrants continued to operate businesses and build towns in Nebraska.  Many of their descendants continue to live in the state. Norridgewock was the name of both an Indian village and a band of the Abenaki ("People of the Dawn") Native Americans/First Nations, an Eastern Algonquian tribe of the United States and Canada.  The French of New France called the village Kennebec.  The tribe occupied an area in the interior of Maine.  During colonial times, this area was territory disputed between British and French colonists, and was set along the claimed western border of Acadia, the western bank of the Kennebec River. The Chaouacha were an indigenous people in Louisiana, best known in history for being the victims of a massacre in retaliation for the Natchez revolt on French colonists in which they had had no part.  When first described, they lived on the east bank of the Mississippi River, just south of New Orleans.  Following an attack by the Natchez on Fort Rosalie, colonists feared an Indian rebellion, or even worse a combined Indian and slave revolt.  Governor of Louisiana Étienne Périer ordered a force of black slaves to massacre the Chaouacha community.  In 1699 they were reported to be allied with the Ouacha/Washa and the Opelousa.  An 1802 mention by French colonist Baudry de Lozières describes them as "Tchaouachas: Reduced to 40 warriors.  A wandering indolent and lazy nation, settled near the French in 1712.  Corn is the only assistance one can expect of them." Acadia (French: "Acadie" ) was a colony of New France in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day Maine to the Kennebec River.  During much of the 17th and early 18th centuries, Norridgewock on the Kennebec River and Castine at the end of the Penobscot River were the southernmost settlements of Acadia.  The actual specification by the French government for the territory refers to lands bordering the Atlantic coast, roughly between the 40th and 46th parallels.  Later, the territory was divided into the British colonies that became Canadian provinces and American states.  The population of Acadia included members of the Wabanaki Confederacy and descendants of emigrants from France (i.e., Acadians).  The two communities intermarried, which resulted in a significant portion of the population of Acadia being Métis. French Canadians (also referred to as Franco-Canadians or Canadiens; French: "Canadien(ne)s français(es)" ) are an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to French colonists who settled in Canada from the 17th century onward.  Today, French Canadians constitute the main French-speaking population in Canada, accounting for about 22% of the total population. The Acadians (French: "Acadiens" , ] ) are the descendants of French colonists who settled in Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries, some of whom are also descended from the Indigenous peoples of the region.  The colony was located in what is now Eastern Canada's Maritime provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island), as well as part of Quebec, and present-day Maine to the Kennebec River.  Although today most of the Acadians and Québécois are French-speaking (francophone) Canadians, Acadia was a distinctly separate colony of New France.  It was geographically and administratively separate from the French colony of Canada (modern-day Quebec).  As a result, the Acadians and Québécois developed two distinct histories and cultures.  They also developed a slightly different French language.  France has one official language and to accomplish this they have an administration in charge of the language.  Since the Acadians were separated from this council, their French language evolved independently, and Acadians retain several elements of 17th-century French that have been lost in France.  The settlers whose descendants became Acadians came from many areas in France, but especially regions such as Île-de-France, Normandy, Brittany, Poitou and Aquitaine.  Acadian family names have come from many areas in France.  For example, the Maillets are from Paris; the LeBlancs of Normandy; the surname Melanson is from Brittany, and those with the surnames Bastarache and Basque came from Aquitaine. Estácio de Sá (1520–1567) was a Portuguese soldier and officer.  Sá travelled to the colony of Brazil on the orders of the Portuguese crown to wage war on the French colonists commanded by Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon.  These French colonists had established themselves in 1555 at Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro, in a settlement known as "France Antarctique".  He was the founder of Rio de Janeiro, now the second largest city in Brazil. The governance of the French colony of Acadia has a long and tangled history.  Founded in 1603 by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts, the territory of Acadia (roughly, the present-day Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, and portions of the U. S. state of Maine) was hotly contested in the 17th century.  It was claimed by English and Scottish interests, fought over by competing French governors, and subjected to raids and attacks from English colonists that sometimes resulted in years of occupation of some of its communities.  Most of the non-French claims were given up under the 1667 Treaty of Breda, but the territory did not come completely under French control until three years later.  From 1670 until 1710 the province remained in French hands, except for a brief period in the 1670s when Dutch attackers occupied several Acadian communities.  In 1710 a British expedition including Royal Navy warships and colonial forces from New England captured Acadia's capital for good, and France ceded an ill-defined territory to Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.  Although France continued to claim those portions of present-day Maine and New Brunswick that constituted part Acadia, it had no formal government prior to the British conquest of New France in 1760.  The first British governor of Nova Scotia was Samuel Vetch; he took command immediately after the 1710 capture. Naomi E. S. Griffiths is a Canadian historian.  Historian John Grenier writes that she is "the premier scholar of the Acadians" and that her "magnum opus", "From Migrant to Acadian", "on the growth of Acadian society and identity is the natural starting place for any study that touches on Acadian history."  She is a Distinguished Research Professor in the history department at Carleton University.  "From Migrant to Acadian: A North American Border People" received the Lionel Groulx Prize in 2006, which recognizes the best literary work published over the last year on the history of the French in North America. Old Mines (French: "La Vieille Mine" ) is the name of an unincorporated community and surrounding area in southeast Missouri that were settled by French colonists in the early 18th century when the area was part of the Illinois Country of New France.  The early settlers came to mine for lead, and their descendants still inhabit the area where, through a combination of geographic and cultural isolation, they maintained a distinctive French culture well into the 20th century.  As recently as the late 1980s there may have been a thousand native speakers of the region's Missouri French dialect.  This culturally distinct population has sometimes been referred to as "paw-paw French" and lives in an amorphous area in Washington, Jefferson, and St. Francois counties roughly 15 miles either side of a line from Potosi to De Soto.  The community of Old Mines itself is in northeastern Washington County six miles north of Potosi.
Answer: The Acadians