The now defunct Journal of Basque Studies in America was a journal published by Society of Basque Studies in America to promote Basque culture by publishing in English articles that would be of interest to a wider American audience. The goal was to essentially disseminate information about Basque culture that otherwise would not make it to an English speaking audience. That journal, which ended publication in 2011, was transferred to Boise State University and its Basque Studies Program.

Fast forward to today and the journal has been reincarnated as BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal. BOGA has the same basic aims as the Journal of Basque Studies in America, but with a bit more rigorous peer review. Those aims are nicely summarized on the BOGA website:

This journal aims to be a part of the long-standing tradition of Basque higher education as symbolized by the Basque Country’s first university built in Oñati, Gipuzkoa in 1548 (incorporated into our website theme). The town of Oñati also holds additional significance for Boise State University’s Basque Studies Program because it served as the first location for the studies abroad program in the Basque Country in the 1970s. This journal is a multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed academic publication dedicated to the scholarly study of all aspects of Basque culture with the aspiration to foster a better understanding of Basque culture and heritage in its diverse aspects by disseminating original works of interest to an English speaking audience and to encourage interaction–learning links–among academics from various learning traditions; e.g., linguistic, philosophical, anthropological, ethnological, historic, literary, artistic, religious, economic, cultural, international relations, etc. The Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza stated that to move forward, one had to look backward, and that is conceptualized by the rowboat image as the rowers make progress while looking behind. This journal hopes to contribute to the shared “rowing” effort among institutions and individuals to mutually support efforts in Basque Studies.

Many familiar names are associated with the journal, including: John Ysursa, William Douglass, Pedro Oiarzabal, Sam Zengotitabengoa, and Joseba Zulaika, among many more.

The inaugural issue is not online yet, but promises to have very interesting perspectives on a number of Basque topics, if the articles that appeared in the Journal of Basque Studies in America is any indication.

I’m personally very excited to see the launch of this new effort. There are a lot of aspects of Basque culture, history, and linguistics that simply are inaccessible to people who do not speak Basque or Spanish. This journal will provide a vehicle for at least some of those ideas and discoveries to reach an English audience.

Zorionak!

Benoit Etcheverry Macazaga has been a presence the internet, promoting Basque culture, for a number of years now. His newest venture, 8 Probintziak Elkartea, rekindles a theme he initiated a few years back of trying to draw together with stronger ties the Basque Country and the Basque diaspora. Part of his goal is to simply make Basques in the Basque Country more aware of their cousins in the diaspora, and vice versa. The goal of his website it to facilitate this by sharing links and news items that might be of broad interest to Basques, support genealogical research, promote physical exchanges between Basques in the Basque Country and in the diaspora, and exchange business ideas between all Basques to encourage economic development. As part of this, his website lists the feeds from a number of other Basque websites, including this one (thanks Benoit!)

In fact, the name of the site — 8 Probintziak Eklartea — emphasizes this idea of an 8th Basque province, the diaspora, that has it’s own contributions to make to the Basque experience, that the diaspora is a significant part of Basque culture. By promoting these connections and establishing stronger ties between the Basque Country and Basques all around the world, Benoit is trying to strengthen Basque culture world-wide.

A companion project is a radio program, 8HZ Radio. Co-hosted with Robert Acheritogaray and Adelaide Daraspe, the program directly engages the Basque diaspora and brings their views and activities to the Basque Country.

The only thing he is missing is a snappy logo!

Update: Benoit pointed out to me that he does have a snappy logo, on the Facebook page for 8 Probintziak. Sorry Benoit! 

Do you remember that AT&T commercial from 2000 featuring a Basque sheepherder, mingling with his flock in the American West, talking on his cell phone with his family back in the Basque Country? Pedro Oiarzabal does. He uses this commercial, featuring the late Dionisio Choperena, to lead off his article on the Basque Diaspora, an article requested by Facebook for a new initiative they have called Facebook Stories.

The tag line of Facebook Stories is “People using Facebook in extraordinary ways.” And Pedro, who many of you may know from his research on and close connections with the Basque Diaspora not only in the US but around the world, describes how social media such as Facebook have helped to bridge the gulf between the Basque Diaspora and Euskal Herria. This is especially pertinent to the Basques since, as Pedro points out, there are more Basques living outside the Basque Country than within it. And, today, with practicing culture being almost a lifestyle choice, anything that helps Basques of the diaspora connect with the mother culture and give them an outlet to explore, express, and enhance their culture is critical to ensuring it flourishes.

Pedro draws from his connections and experiences working with the Basque Diaspora to highlight how social media has brought new people together to forge new collaborations, how a family dispersed across the entire globe is discovering its roots, and how second generation Basque Americans use social media to connect to the culture of their parents and grandparents. I must also say eskerrik asko to Pedro for calling out this very page!

Pedro’s article is one of the first to be featured on Facebook Stories. It kicked off the series in grand fashion and is followed by a wide variety of stories, including one on how a scientist used Facebook to identify 5000 species of fish within 24 hours. Some fascinating stuff!

It seems like we are in a special time for Basque films. A number of projects are either in production or just wrapping up for release that promise to highlight numerous aspects of Basque culture. Here are a few that have caught my eye.

The first is Basque Hotel, by Josu Venero:

Basque Hotel is a U.S. road movie, a visual record, and testimony, in which stories are interwoven to create an overview of Basque emigration to this part of the world. It passes through the extensions of the old American West (Nevada, Idaho and California) and hits the streets of New York, the city where everything is a mix and comes to life. Five renowned novelists weave a web of real and fictional spaces through dialogue, history and experiences of the Basque community in the United States. In this literary tour, the voice-overs are heard giving fragments of the various novels of the writers (Robert Laxalt, Bernardo Atxaga, Asun Garikano, Joseba Zulaika and Kirmen Uribe). The testimonies of these players and their writings rebuild their visions and American experiences, sketching a spectacular journey from the Basque Country to the United States; and from the Basque Hotel to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

Izaskun Arandia-Richard’s film, To Say Goodbye, is an animated feature about the refugee children who fled the Basque Country during the Spanish Civil War to England, where they remained:

TO SAY GOODBYE is a powerful and inspirational film about the loss of childhood, the stripping away of identity and, ultimately, the hope of reconciliation, all set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War.Through innovative animation, the film tells the story of the 4000 Basque children evacuated to the United Kingdom in 1937.

Forced to bid a hurried farewell to their parents, these children were told they would only be in the UK for three months. 75 years later, some are still there, forever separated from their parents and their homeland, their families torn apart and their childhood destroyed by a brutal and bloody conflict.Through the voices of 14 of these children, now in their 80s & 90s, we reveal this tragic episode in history in a stunninganimated documentary that is profound, unexpected and uplifting.

Basques in the West, directed by Amaya Oxarango-Ingram and Brent Barras, is a filmed aimed at documenting the Basque contributions to the culture of the American West:

The Basques have been around for generations in these areas, herding sheep and adding their vibrant culture to the beauty of the land.

The documentary we intend to make features the Basque people, what they have done to add culture and vitality to the west, the sheep industry, and the central tension they face with keeping with their traditions and adapting to the modern world.

Released a few years back, Artzainak: Shepherds and Sheep, by Javi Zubizaretta and Jacob Griswold, examines the sheep industry, and follows the connection between the previous generation of Basque herders to the current Peruvian herders:

Artzainak: Shepherds and Sheepis a short documentary that exposes the struggles and hardships of immigrant shepherds in the hills of Idaho. The film traces a basic outline of the Basque and South American immigration to this breath-taking region of the American West. Spending as many as 9 months out of the year in the hills, these immigrants battle loneliness and despair while they remain thousands of miles from their families. With little to no command of the English language, the shepherds quietly make an honest living to send money back to their homelands. “Artzainak” tells these stories from the mouths of the shepherds themselves.The documentary was produced during the fall of 2009, and the filming itself took place in mid-October. Javi Zubizaretta and Jacob Griswold spent a week in Idaho, interviewing shepherds and watching them work as they brought the sheep down from the mountains. The film is currently being submitted to film festivals around the country to bring awareness to the problems faced by these individuals.

A final film, Emily Lobsenz’ Ipuina Kontatu, has finished principle photography and is entering the editing process:

They speak one of the world’s most ancient languages, established one of the world’s first democracies and lead Europe’s Age of Exploration. For hundreds of centuries Basques have maintained their traditions while flourishing among Europe’s most innovative societies. Yet, for centuries their way of life has confronted threats as powerful as the Roman Empire, as transforming as the Industrial Revolution, as tragic as a dictator’s genocidal aggression and as universal as immigration.

Who are these people and how have they navigated the ages as one of Europe’s most ancient cultures to be one of its most flourishing modern societies? And are the Basques capable of continuing their way of life even in today’s world? While unique and dynamic characters enact that drama on the screen, a complex cultural portrait emerges.

In the Basque language, ‘Ipuina Kontatu’ means telling stories. Basques have passed their language and customs down the generations through an oral tradition. The narrative design captures that tradition by exploring Basque culture through personal tales and perceptions of its protagonists. The characters’ personal tales will be woven together so that their stories not only complete one another, but also create a dialog between them that calls into question not only Basque traditions and their place in today’s world, but also cultural traditions in general and their relationship to social progress.

I’m a little behind, as usual, but I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention two articles that recently appeared about the Basques in the American West.

The first, Herding Sheep in Basque Country (Idaho), appeared in the New York Times last month and describes the Basque sheepherding experience via a chat with Henry Etcheverry, a herder in the Minidoka desert near Rupert, Idaho. The author, John O’Connor, spends some time with Jauna Etcheverry in the desert, checking on the sheep herds. O’Connor describes a bit of the history of the Basque sheepherding experience as well as the Basque culture of Boise.

My dad and my mom’s grandparents all came to the American West — a little further west than Minidoka, to the Jordan Valley, Oregon area — precisely to herd sheep. My dad originally came on a 3-year contract and made enough money to buy an apartment in Gernika. He was asked to return to the US and, during this second stint, met the granddaughter of other Basque immigrants. The rest, as they say, is history.

The article makes a point of noting that the new generation of herders are from Peru. My dad has sort of taken under his wing, so to speak, some of the Peruvian herders where he lives. One Christmas, some of these guys came over for dinner. I was talking to them and one mentioned that he was trained as an engineer in Peru, with a Bachelor’s degree. He was in the US because he could make more money as a sheepherder in Idaho than as an engineer in Peru. This simply amazed me.

Jauna Etcheverry mourns the end of the Basque shepherd, but, as he points out, his kids and the kids of other Basques simply don’t want to do that work. And this, to me, embodies the American dream. His kids, my dad’s sons, and many of the other Basque kids I know were taught to value education and hard work. Those kids built upon the foundation their parents built, working long days and months in the hills herding sheep, driving truck or working the farm. They made a better life for themselves, a direct consequence of the drive their parents had to make a better life for themselves. To me, this is the essence of the American dream, to be able to make a better life. The opportunity to do that for me and others like me was provided by these Basque immigrants.

The second article, 5 Basque American spots in Western U.S., by Bob Cooper in a July issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, focuses on another legacy of Basque immigration, the Basque restaurants that dot the American West. That these often family-style restaurants are popular is evidenced by how many comments and queries I get about Charley Shaffer’s Basque Restaurant List.  Cooper picks 5 spots, scattered between Idaho, California, and Nevada, where you kind find a taste of the Basque-American sheepherder experience. The oldest on his list, the Noriega Hotel in Bakersfield, was, like many of these, a boarding house before it became a more traditional restaurant.

Not that these restaurants are traditional in an American sense. Often family-style, you sit at a large table, often next to strangers, and the food is brought out not as individual servings, but in big bowls and plates that are passed around. This is a great way to meet new people and sample foods you might be a little shy about, since you are committing your entire meal to a new dish. I’ve only had the luck to try a few such places, but every one has been a great experience.

A big Eskerrik Asko to the Txoko Ona Basque Center in Homedale, Idaho, for the very kind write-up they did about Buber’s Basque Page!  I really appreciate it!

Anyone who has been to the Basque Country and visited any of the villages that dot the coast and the valleys between those peaks shrouded in mythology certainly knows the importance of the fronton to the Basque people. The plaza of most any town is often surrounded by the three corner-stones of Basque life: the Church, the tavern, and the fronton. I know best the one in my dad’s home town of Munitibar. Festivities may always begin with a mass at the Church, but they always center on the fronton, either a game of pelota or animal tests or a bertsolari contest. The fronton is the public space in which life happens.

The Basques who immigrated to the US brought their games with them. And, the fronton. A wonderful open-air fronton sits in my mom’s home town, Jordan Valley, Oregon. But, the oldest is in Boise. In fact, the fronton in Boise is probably one of the oldest sporting venues in the US. Like Wrigley Field in Chicago, it will turn 100 in 2014. The Jacobs-Uberuaga boarding house will turn 150 the same year. The Basque community in Boise is gearing up to celebrate these milestones, important not only in the history of Boise Basques, but Basques in the US as a whole. The fronton endures, just as the Basques have endured.

I personally am not overly familiar with Boise’s fronton. I may have stepped foot in it once as a kid. However, both Mark Bieter and Henar Chico have written wonderful testimonies about the role the Boise fronton has played in their lives. Mark describes the history of the fronton and how, to pelota players in the US, it is sort of the Wrigley Field of pelota. Henar, a newer resident of Boise, has become an aficionado of the fronton and the pala leagues that are very active. The fronton has become a very important part of her life in Boise. Both paint a picture, both past and present, of a building that has served as the cornerstone of the Boise Basque community for nearly 100 years. And, knowing the Basques, will likely be standing strong for another 100 years.

As I mentioned earlier, seemingly once I left home for school, my dad began making his own jamon and chorizo. Another tradition my dad has revived recently is making sheepherder’s bread.  Actually, the whole gang in Homedale has gotten back to their roots, so to speak, and they hold competitions for the best bread. It gets pretty intense, with guys speculating about whether this loaf will turn out or not. My dad is no exception. He treated us to the full experience over break.

Out in the hills, he would dig a pit in which to bake the bread.  At his home, however, he has a permanent pit, lined with a big concrete pipe. Most of the time, it’s covered with a board and it’s only rarely that the lid comes off and he makes a loaf, mostly because it does take some effort. He’s collected a large pile of sagebrush from the hills that he slowly is chipping away at.

I’ve had a recipe for sheepherder’s bread on my site for some time now, and from what I’ve been told and experienced from my wife’s own hand, it makes a very good loaf.  But dad’s (txitxi to my daughter) recipe is slightly different:

Txitxi Bread for a #10 Dutch Oven

1.5 packets active dry yeast
    (he uses Red Star)
1 quart + "a bit" lukewarm water
1 heaping Tbsp + 1/4 tsp sugar

Combine and let yeast proof.

Add 3/4 tsp salt and all
purpose flour until you reach
desired consistency.
Knead until smooth.

Let rise until doubled in bulk,
twice. Put in greased dutch oven
(preferably with bacon grease)
and let rise until lid is pushed up.

If baking in oven, 350 degrees
Fahrenheit for approximately 60 minutes.
Keep covered with lid or tented with foil.

However, if you want to be authentic, you’ve got to cook it in the pit.

First, we burned quite a bit of the sagebrush, just to get some ashes to use later.  These we dug out and let cool. We then burned another batch. These were for the hot ashes, the ones to cook the bread. Once the sagebrush had burned down such that we had maybe 5 inches of hot coals, we lowered the Dutch oven into the pit. This is where the cool ashes come in.  We covered the Dutch oven with cool ashes to act as an insulating blanket and to keep the heat in.  We further covered it with a little dirt. This seems to be the trickiest part: you want enough insulation to keep the heat in but not so much that you smother the fire. Dad said that you should be able to just barely feel the heat coming off when putting your hand near the top.

A critical step is to make sure the handle of the Dutch oven is up when you start burying it, as otherwise you won’t have anything to grab when you pull it out.

We left our bread in the pit for something on the order of 1 and a half hours. It was getting late and we needed to eat dinner, so we pulled it out, maybe a little early. The center wasn’t quite cooked.  Dad threw it in the conventional oven for a while longer to eat the next day. He claimed we had smothered the fire, put too much ash on top. In any case, the bread looked great and, the next day, the bread tasted great too.

While we were burning all of that sagebrush and the wind picked up some embers and blew them around, I asked dad if he ever had a fire get away from him in the hills. He said once, a fire started to get away, but he was able to put it out, so nothing really happened.  But he had a tale of another sheepherder who did have one get completely out of control. It burned quite a few acres, getting big enough that a fire crew had to be called in to put it out.  I don’t know how much it ended up burning or exactly where this was, but dad said that this sheepherder somehow became part of the fire crew, helped put it out, and got paid to do it!

This is a very simple recipe, with only 5 ingredients. I imagine it was important for a young sheepherder, cooking in a strange environment with limited ingredients while also trying to herd sheep, to keep things as simple as possible. I’m not sure how much these guys would have cooked back in the old country, but I imagine it was very little. I also imagine that the bread isn’t too sensitive to how it’s cooked as things aren’t precisely controlled in this process.  But, it sure does produce some very tasty bread!

I don’t know if it’s just an idea who’s time has come or if great ideas come in pairs, but there are two movies in the works about the Basque experience in the US West.

The first, appropriately entitled Basques in the West, is an effort of Canyons Studio.  I first heard about this one this summer, at Jaialdi, when I talked to the directors, Amaya Oxarango-Ingram and Brent Barras.  Basques in the West is still in production, but they have a clip showing selected scenes on their website here, and they have a Facebook page for the movie here, where they’ve just posted their official trailer to the movie.  Basques in the West focuses on interviews with Basques of all generations, those from the Basque Country, those raised on the ranches, and those younger Basques that are trying to continue the traditions however they can.

The second film, directed by Javi Zubizaretta and Jacob Griswold, is Artzainak: Shepherds and Sheep, which again deals with the Basque experience in the American West, but focusing a bit more on the sheepherder experience.  The trailer, on YouTube, shows the life of sheepherders, both an old time Basque as well as what I presume are Peruvians, the modern day equivalent of the Basque sheepherder.  Thus, it moves a bit beyond the Basque experience, examining how sheepherding has moved beyond those original Basque immigrants and now encompasses a new group of immigrants. Artzainak also has a Facebook page and a blog with updates about the promotion of the film.

As an aside, my dad was one of those Basque immigrants, coming to America to herd sheep. These days, he is still involved, but now he assists and guides the Peruvians that are the heart of the sheep herding industry in Idaho.  He drives them where they need to go, helps him move camp, etc.  While still an extremely difficult life, it is also a world away from what my dad knew.  When he was herding, they were in the hills for months at a time, with little-to-no contact with civilization.  Today, the Peruvians drive to the herds and have camps that are significantly more sophisticated than what they had 50 years ago.  Plus, while they probably don’t have a signal every where they go, they can take cell phones with them and thus have contact with the outside world.

Back to the films, both of these films celebrate the Basque life in the American West and thus, as the descendant of Basque shepherds, I am extremely interested in seeing them both.  I hope they both do well in the market and I look forward to following their successes.

The title of this post may strike some as romantic, but really it’s just that it has been so long since Jaialdi and taken me so long to do this post, that indeed I’m working on memories, and I don’t have the best of memories in the first place…

For those that don’t know, Jaialdi is the big Basque festival held every 5 years in Boise, Idaho over St. Ignatius weekend (the last weekend in July).  It brings Basques from all over the world together for a weekend of dance, music, sports, drink, and fun.  In fact, many come from the Basque Country itself, drawn by old friends or the reputation of a big party in the US, including my dad’s brother Antonio and his wife Eli, the first time they’ve come to the US.

We didn’t make it to every event but we did our best.  We started with Sports Night, on Thursday.  I went with my brother, my dad, and Antonio and Eli.  It was held right down town, across the street from the Basque Block in the same arena that the Boise hockey team plays in.  It was laid out with logs for the aizkolariak and stones for the harrijasotzaileak, as well as some other typical events.  Most I’d seen before, but there were a few, such as the relay carrying the heavy sack, that I did not.  One event, in which contestants try to pitch a bale of hay over a bar that is raised with each successful toss, was new to my uncle.  He had never seen that event in Bizkaia. At one point, two harrijasotzaileak “competed” with one another, each carrying a 100 lb stone around the arena.  One had to quit quickly, possibly having pulled something.  The other, though, hammed it up, engaging the crowd as he stood there, holding this huge stone in his lap.  When the night was over, children rushed into the arena, finding wood chips for the athletes to sign.

It was an interesting perspective, watching these events in this crowd.  On one side, I had my uncle, who is as much of a sports fan as any.  However, one thing you don’t realize as a Basque-American watching these sports, which we see only every so often in typically heavy doses, is that in the Basque Country, this is every day stuff.  As such, they don’t have such concentrated showings of it; festivals might have a few sporting exhibitions, but not hours worth.  My uncle was getting a little bored with it, though he of course got into it whenever things got exciting.  On my other side were some non-Basques who I guess had thought they’d check out some local color or something.  It was interesting and a bit odd hearing their commentary.  They sort of mocked what they saw, commenting on how simplistic the sporting events were, comparing them to the “sophistication” of American sports.  It showed they didn’t have much of a true idea of what the Basque Country is about and how this is one slice of the sporting scene in the Basque Country, maybe somewhat analogous to a rodeo in the US West.

On Friday, after attending NABO’s Annual Convention at which the New Mexico Euskal Etxea was officially accepted as a member, we headed to the Basque Block to check out the festivities.  And it was completely packed, from one end of the block to the other!  I must imagine that this was the best attended Jaialdi to date!  There were so many people that it was difficult to maneuver through the crowd.  It was that way Thursday night as well, though during the day, the heat added a level of discomfort.  But, people were singing, dancing, drinking and eating — generally having a wonderful time.  Again, I wondered about the demographics of the crowd.  It felt like there were just as many people who maybe had no Basque ties but were looking for a good way to spend the weekend.  This is a testament to the reputation of the Basques in Boise.

During the weekend, especially during the day, festivities moved to the Fair Grounds.  The official opening ceremonies were on Saturday morning and, as a representative of NMEE, I was asked to carry the New Mexico flag in the procession.  While waiting for things to start, I was able to wander a little behind the scenes, where the various dance groups were organizing themselves.  While adults shepherded children and tried to get them lined up in some semblance of an order, some of the groups did last minute practices of their dances.  Compared to when I was a kid doing these dances, there were a lot more groups with a lot more different costumes.  Especially noticeable were the girls’ dressed in blue, in contrast to the typical red, black, and white.  The opening ceremonies tried to bring together all of the groups who were to perform over the weekend, including the Klika from Chino, a number of groups from the Basque Country, and of course all of the dance groups from the US.  It was an awesome beginning to the weekend.

After that, all of my official duties were over, so I just enjoyed Jaialdi as much as I could.  My family joined me when they were able, and overall we had a wonderful time. This year, the vendor booths were moved inside to escape the heat and that was a superb change.  I remember last time that the heat (it reached 100 every day) and the wind kicking up the dirt at the fair grounds sometimes made being outside a bit unpleasant.  By moving the vendors indoors, they made that part much better than it had been.  A number of friends were manning booths, so it was great chatting with them, especially a few who I had only known before via Internet, not in person.

Truly, the best part of Jaialdi is seeing old friends and meeting new ones.  We ran into a lot of friends from our days in Seattle, who have a group that is going very strong, thanks in large part to the influx of new Basques into the area, who I had the great pleasure to meet.  We also ran into Joseba Etxarri, who is still a big fixture in many Basque festivals in the US.  One notable absence was Aita Tillouis, who passed away recently, but who was always a big presence in so many Basque gatherings.  But, it is the friends that make Jaialdi such a wonderful experience and, I have to admit, one of the things I lamented just a little.  Jaialdi has grown so big, it is less intimate, with so many people that you don’t bump into a friend around every corner, at least not as much.  Maybe for people who live in Boise it isn’t that way, but it was a little more that way for me than it had been in years past.  That said, it was still an awesome weekend and I’ll definitely be attending the next one in 2015.