Dr. Sandra Ott: "A central mission of the Center for Basque Studies here at UNR is to conduct research on the Basques and disseminate the results so that more people can understand and appreciate them, their language, art, history, politics and society."

When did you first hear about Basques and the Basque language?

I grew up in Pennsylvania and went to Pomona College in southern California as an undergraduate. I majored in English but then did my postgraduate work in social anthropology at Oxford University.  When I was a child I knew a Basque family, the Echeverrias, whose relatives owned a ranch in Wickenburg, Arizona. That was my first experience with Basques. As an undergraduate, I went through Chino, California one day with some friends from Pomona, and we ate at a well-known Basque restaurant there, el Centro Vasco.  I remember hearing men in the background speaking a language I didn’t understand, and I asked someone, “What’s that?”  And they said, “Oh they’re speaking Basque.”  I didn’t think anything further of it. 

What made you decide to research the Basques for your doctorate?

I did field work in a Gaelic-speaking community in Ireland for my master’s degree at Oxford.  For my doctorate, I wanted to stay in Europe but didn’t want to go to Greece, Spain, or Italy, because that is where most anthropologists were working at the time.  I was having lunch with my husband one day and he suggested the Basques as an interesting focus for my D.Phil. “What about the Basques?” he asked, and I thought, well, why not!  I wrote to Bill Douglass and knew there was a Basque Studies program at UNR.  This was in 1975. He wrote back and said, “Why don’t you think about Iparralde (Northern Basque Country), because nobody’s done fieldwork there.”  He recommended me to Eugene Goyeneche of Ustaritz.  I told Eugene I wanted to learn Basque and to stay in a relatively isolated Basque community, because I was interested in studying Basque customs and Basque social organization. He recommended Santa Grazi (Santazi) in Xiberoa.

How did you learn the Basque language?

Eugene, Ramon de la Sota and I went to Santazi to see a pastorale in the summer of 1976.  I found a local family that was willing to take me in.  They had a spare bed, and that is how I learned “Euska”, by following this woman and her son around, doing the farm work and herding the sheep.  I did go to one Ikastola (Basque school) that Eugene recommended called Mendiberri from Baiona.  They held classes in a convent and were teaching Batua (unified Basque language).  I didn’t want to learn Batua as I wanted to learn the Xiberoan dialect.  So they found me a tutor, a garage mechanic, who had never taught before, but who was a really passionate promoter of Basque culture and Euskara. He and I had tutorials every day.  I had an 18th century Xiberoan grammar book that I found in our library at Oxford.  That is what we used. Then, I lived in Eihalarri, near Donibane Garazi, with another family, just to get a sense of different parts of the Basque Country. I moved to Santazi and stayed there for a little over a year while doing research for my doctoral thesis.  The people were just super.  They were pleased that I was trying so hard to learn Basque.  I have been back every year since 1976.

How and when did you get involved with the University of Nevada, Reno?

When I completed my doctorate, I taught for a couple of years in England as an anthropologist.  Then I got involved in the University of Nevada, Reno’s study abroad program. I was the first USAC (University Studies Abroad Consortium) director in Donostia in 1983.  Kate Camino was one of my students.  I directed that program for three years then went back to Oxford, where I worked as a university administrator for a long time.  I wasn’t able to do any academic work but still kept in touch with my friends in Santazi.  When my current position opened up in 2001, I applied and I came here in July 2002 as an associate professor in Basque Studies.

What specifically did your research entail?

My research was originally supposed to be on the experiences of Basques during the German Occupation and in the Resistance, but I quickly discovered that there was a much broader story there.  My book actually goes back to the Basque foral law; it also considers aspects of Basques’ experiences in the First World War and the creation of a French national identity alongside a distinctively Basque identity.  A lot of things have spun off my research on 20th century wars in Euskal Herria.  I did eight months of field work for the book, which enabled me to meet many people, to collect and record the memoirs of men who fought in the Second World War, who joined the Resistance and who simply endured the Occupation and the difficult choices people faced in those troubled times.  

Knowing that I was interested in the impact of the war upon local families, one woman made me a scrap book that included letters from her two brothers and their photographs. She lost both brothers in the Second World War.  One was in the Resistance; he was denounced and killed by the Germans in an ambush.  The other brother tried to escaped forced labor in Germany, got caught and never survived. With such precious memorabilia I wanted to chart the experiences of people who had been in the Resistance and in the armed forces; but I also wanted to understand the experiences of ordinary men and women who had simply survived those hard times. The woman who made the scrap book for me still cries every day because she still misses her brothers so terribly.

I also worked in the departmental archives in Pau, just east of Xiberoa.  I had to apply to the French national archives to access classified files relating to the 1930s and 1940s. I was particularly interested in the trials of those accused of collaboration with the Germans. 

Oxford University Press published my first book, The Circle of Mountains, in 1981. French and Basque editions were published in 1993, but the book was never translated into Spanish. 

Are you working on any special research projects at the moment?

My work concentrates pretty much exclusively on Xiberoa, but I have wider interests as well, such as wartime letter writing.  I have been studying letters written by Basques during the First World War, as well as archival materials about Basques who evaded military service for France and emigrated to Argentina and the American West. By 1914, there were already so many Basques in the Americas. Many men got called up for military duty but never returned to France. Some defaulting conscripts sought refuge in Nafarroa or Gipuzkoa and either stayed there until it was okay to go home or joined relatives and friends in the Americas.  I have found correspondence in the archives in Pau that is now open to the public. One letter came from Stockton, California: Peter Oraxagai came from Arnegi and wrote home to tell his family about the cost of sheep.  I photocopied the letter and showed it to Kate Camino here at UNR, because I knew her family came from that community in Iparralde. Pete was in fact her grandfather!  She recognized the name of the house and thus identified him.  My research on Basques during the Great War adds different dimensions to studies of the Basque Diaspora, to which I hope to make an original contribution. One chapter in my forthcoming book (War, Judgment and Memory in the Basque Borderlands, 1914-1945, University of Nevada Press, spring 2008) deals with the First World War and female complicity in the desertion of Basque soldiers from the French army.

In the departmental archives, I also found 29 letters from a Nazi officer to a female collaborator in Pau. I have analyzed the letters in an article for a French history journal and am now learning German so that I can in due course work in the German military and municipal archives. Basque-German relations during the two world wars interest me greatly.

What are you currently teaching at the University of Nevada, Reno?  What attracts students to these classes?

I teach “Basque Culture” which normally attracts around 20-25 students, a few of whom are usually Basque. Many students want to learn about Basque culture because they know a little bit about Basque communities in the American West, and they would like to learn more. That’s usually a major motivating factor.I often have five or six students who have been abroad on our USAC program.  The course is well suited to students with an interest in other cultures. We look at the fundamental institutions and values of traditional Basque society.  I focus mainly on Iparralde because of my research. I use a lot of film in the class, alongside oral history interviews so that the students can appreciate the views and experiences of Basques who came to this country.  There are many different perspectives on Basque identity. What it means to be Basque is individual; there is no right or wrong answer.  We learn about aspects of Basque popular culture too, such as the pastorala, bersolaritza, food, sport and dance. We end the course with the Basque diaspora. I try to bring Basque culture to the classroom as much as possible.  Former students have danced for the class and played the txistu.  At the end of the semester, Louis Erreguible and his lovely wife Lorraine always talk to the class. (They own Louis’ Basque Corner in Reno.) Louis is a Xiberoan who immigrated to the USA in 1948. At the end of the semester he and Lorraine always join the students and me for a meal at their popular restaurant.

I teach another course called “War, Occupation, and Memory in the Basque Country”, which begins with Basques’ experiences during the Spanish Civil War and with an overview of the political, economic and social problems that Basques, French and Spanish citizens faced in the 1930s. In the Basque borderlands there was tremendous movement of people, in both directions, across the Pyrenees. I then explore Basques’ involvement in the First and Second World Wars. That class also normally attracts around 25 students, most of whom have little or no knowledge of those wars.

Why do you think Basque Studies so important?

For Basques it’s important to retain and make more accessible knowledge about their culture.  There are substantial, culturally proud Basque communities throughout the American West. So many Basque Americans feel very strongly about their heritage. Both of my courses focus on the issue of Basque identity.  What does it mean to be Basque? We compare and contrast notions of Basque American identity here with those in Iparralde and Hegoalde; and we explore the ways in which the boundaries of Basque identity shift constantly.  I saw that happen in Donosti during the 1980s.  For example, outsiders came from Valencia, or Extremadura, or wherever, and many learned Euskara, participated in Basque society and felt that they were Basque. I had a French teacher in Donosti who was from Valencia. She spoke Euskara perfectly and proudly, had no Basque blood and felt that she was, first and foremost, Basque.

A central mission of the Center for Basque Studies here at UNR is to conduct research on the Basques and disseminate the results so that more people can understand and appreciate them, their language, art, history, politics and society.

Do you think the Basques are being portrayed in a positive way in the United States? 

Unfortunately the media only mention the Basques when the news has something to do with ETA.  I lived in England for 30 years, and the media there takes a much closer, more well-balanced interest in the Basques in the wider context of European politics and society.  Here in Reno, we try to educate the public, as well as our students, and to make people more aware of the Basque people, their culture and their contributions to American society. A large function of our duty here is service, including outreach. I have lectured about the Basques to high school students and recently taught a 1 credit course for UNR on Basques in the American West. I regularly attend French history conferences and find that colleagues welcome learning about Basque history and society.

How can the Global Basque Community network assist you?

What I would love to use the network for is to find anyone who has saved any correspondence, letters between here and the homeland.  One fascinating project in Xiberoa focused on letters written during the First World War. One family in Atharatze had saved 375 letters and 109 postcards from a relative at the front. He survived five years of that war! I want to analyze his correspondence and it would be lovely to know if any families here have saved any letters from either the First or Second World Wars. We may well have lost the art of letter-writing, but there was a lot of communication between Basque families in Argentina , Uruguay, and California during the Great War of 1914-1918.

Anecdote:

The woman with whom Sandra Ott stayed with in Santazi, Xiberoa once told her:

“Sandi, guetzak euskalduna zira,
Zure izena ttipiegi duzu eta zure zangoak luhuzegi, bestelan, euskaduna zira.”

Sandy, for us you are Basque.  But you have 2 problems, your name is too short and your legs are too long, otherwise, you are Basque.