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The Memoria Bizia (living memory) project aims to collect, preserve and disseminate the testimonies of Basque emigrants to the US.  In order to do so, a group of volunteers has begun doing interviews with elders in their communities. Historian Pedro J. Oiarzabal has just visited several of these groups to see how the project is going and he tells us about the importance of the community itself managing and preserving its own history. 

Bilbo, Bizkaia.   Historian Pedro J. Oiarzabal recently returned from a trip to the US, and Quebec where he visited various groups who are working on the Memoria Bizia project.  This project is supported by NABO, the Basque Government, the Etxepare Basque Institute and the University of Deusto in collaboration with the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“There are groups who have already started in Montreal (Quebec,) New York, (New York), Bakersfield – Kern County (California), Chino (California), San Francisco – Bay Area (California), Reno, (Nevada), Elko- Great Basin (Nevada) and Boise (Idaho).  Four more projects will now be added in New England, Mojave (California), Bishop (California), and Ontario (Oregon),” Oiarzabal explains. The groups are made up of volunteers who identify and seek out people in their communities with interesting stories to tell.  They interview them and then conserve and disseminate these testimonies.

One of the goals of the project is that each community be in charge of collecting and preserving these testimonies, basically to conserve the memory and the knowledge of their own history.  With this goal in mind, Oiarzabal, historian at the University of Deusto, traveled last summer to the US and Quebec to teach workshops on the project, and now, with the first groups being formed, he has followed up on their work.

“What I do is give them training to complete their tasks, techniques, and tips for interviewing and then how to process the interview…,” he tells EuskalKultura.com.  “In all, 50 people have been trained.  Now we are in the interviewing stage.  This winter has been difficult and I worked mainly on finding interviews, and now the groups will continue conducting interview.”  The progress of the teams will be published on Facebook.

“We have to stop this phenomenon of oblivion and forgetfulness.  That is why it is essential that the community assumes the role of preserving its memory.  For them it is essential,” Oiarzabal says.  The project is now also getting the attention of from various centers and communities outside of the Basque community that are interested in supporting the project like the Center for Oral History at Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec), Oklahoma Oral History Research Program (Stillwater, OK), and the Great Basin College (Elko, NV).

“This makes Memoria Bizia the largest network of volunteers and institutions that has ever been created aimed at the preservation of the history of Basque emigration and exile in the US and Canada, and possibly in the entire Basque Diaspora.  And we’ve only just begun,” Oiarzabal says.

The project will continue to create new work groups and many are under way in Utah, Wyoming, California (Fresno, Los Banos and Susanville) as well as in Vancouver, Canada.

If you want to get involved in Memoria Bizia email: info@nabasque.org.

Complete information is available on NABO’s website.