Jone Goirigolzarri Garaizar (Getxo, Basque Country, 1984) will participate, on July 30, in the Basque Studies Symposium in Boise, Idaho as part of the Jaialdi 2015 program. She will present her recently defended Doctoral Thesis there as well as catch up with friends, while staying with the Asueta’s−a Basque-American family with deep roots in Reno and beyond. “I’m very excited to being back here; I wrote the PhD project at the CBS in UNR, so coming back to present my thesis is like closing a cycle,” she said, in conversation with EuskalKultura.com.
Reno, NV. ‘Joan Etorri: Going Forth and Going Back,’ is the name of the symposium to be held today and tomorrow at the Micron Business and Economics Building in the capital city of Idaho. As organizers stated, “2015 marks two 40th anniversary events: the inaugural Boise State Basque Studies Abroad program in Oñati (Basque Country) and the publication of the seminal book ‘Amerikanuak’ in 1975,” and that is the main reason why almost two dozens scholars –coming from both sides of the Atlantic− will bring their research closer to the general public.
Goirigolzarri Garaizar’s research focuses on the language policies and language ideologies of the political parties of the Basque Autonomous Community of Euskadi. “I studied both, the ideology shown in their official programs regarding not just Basque, but also Spanish, French, and foreign languages, and also their attitude towards them,” says the Deusto University scholar.
Iñaki and Gina Asueta
Our protagonist’s first PhD steps in the US were taken in the summer of 2010, when she spent over a month at the Center for Basque Studies. And the Asueta family was a big part of her life, since she stayed at their house and they treated her as a daughter.
Iñaki Asueta was born in Durango, Bizkaia and moved to Florida in 1974, to make a living as a pilotari. When times started changing for the Basques involved with frontons he started his own particular exodus: Rhode Island, Reno, Las Vegas… When the fronton in Vegas shut down in 1983 he decided to retire from his beloved sport.
By that time he was already married to Gina Goñi−a Philippine of Basque descent that had also moved to the US, first in 1978 and, then, definitively, in 1980. So both of them decided to spend four months in the Philippines, with her family and Iñaki get to know each other.
Gina’s grandfather was from Navarre –she thinks he was from the town of Goñi− and made his trip to the Asian country at the beginning of the past Century. Since she moved to the US, she’s been working at different hotel´s –among others, at John Ascuaga’s Nugget Hotel, when it was still owned by the Basque family− and Iñaki has worked as both a miner and a construction worker. He is retired now, but she’s still employed as a Convention Services Manager.
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