Tyler K. Lee and Professor David Shuler, Anthropology
Summer was rapidly approaching and I was busy making plans to visit Oaxaca, Mexico in search of answers. Several cases of labor abuse involving Mixtec Indians from that region working in Californian fields had emerged and I wanted to find out if Mixtec communal living patterns were being altered here in America as opposed to their traditional way of living in the villages of Oaxaca. I was set to leave in April when a friend of mine invited me to her Indian reservation in northeastern California for the weekend. I became so intrigued with the community of Independence, California that I decided a change in plans would be necessary. A once in a lifetime opportunity was staring me in the eye, and I could not pass it up. One of the biggest challenges an anthropologist faces is the time factor in which s/he was become acquainted with the local population and gain their trust, the latter being the most difficult to achieve. I had visited Independence once and, riding on the coat tail of my friend, gained the confidence of the people in a relatively short time. Oaxaca, Mexico would have to wait, and soon I was packing my bags to go back to Independence.
For the past three years, I had been bombarded with department courses related to theory, and quite frankly I was sick of theories. Theories, in my mind, are preconceived judgments on a person, or group of people, and I was not going to Independence pretending to know anything about the people there. In fact, I was going because I wanted them to teach me about who they were, and in turn I hoped to learn a little more about who I was in relation to them.
Since I only had the summer to conduct my studies there, I first decided to study the Owens Valley Pauite Indian tribe located at Fort Independence (just 40 miles south of the town of Bishop). As a student of anthropology, I thought the most logical group to study would be the native people, because after all “they’re the ones with all the culture.” I found that I was quite wrong! Although the Pauite Indians of Independence contribute a great part of the cultural element to the community, they are only one half of what makes up their culture.
The Fort Independence Indian Reservation is located about three miles north of the town of Independence, which boasts only six or seven-hundred year-round inhabitants. The Indians see themselves as a separate community from the “whites” in town, and vice-versa. As an outsider, however, I saw things differently.
There is a great debate in the field of anthropology which poses the question: Does society influence humankind, or does humankind influence society? I will submit that the only way to answer this question is to have a clear definition of society and humankind. There are many observable patterns of behavior in Independence, many of which are simple modes of speech, daily routines, and subjects of conversation. This sort of everyday behavior is what we can define as society, and we can accurately call both the natives and the immigrants humankind. So, which influences the other?
Science, if anthropology can be defined as such a thing, can be so simple sometimes. I had set out to find the answers to a relatively complex question, and the answer was with my all the time. Her name was Alisa Dahlberg. She was a first-year law student at Brigham Young University. I had met her a year earlier while I was making a documentary film on student Pow Wows. Alisa is part native and part Caucasian. Her mother had grown up on the Fort Independence reservation until she met her husband and moved to southern California. Each year, Alisa and her family would come back to Independence to spend their summers. Alisa became my most valuable participant in this study because she had been enculturated in the ways of the native as well as in the ways of the “whiteman.” She was my key to understanding culture on both sides of the fence in Independence. Consequently, the focus of my study sharpened as I observed Alisa’s life through her eyes. When matched against interviews of participants both in town and on the reservation, it appeared to me that Alisa was, in a way, a product of her society. While at the same time she was also influencing her society by making the decision to go to law school. Alisa’s perceptions of self-identity sprung from traditional values she was taught throughout her life, both from a native perspective, as well as from a middle-class Caucasian family’s perspective. Her Uncle Vernon Miller, who in my opinion most accurately represents the traditional Pauite way of life, constantly reminds her “that’s why you’re in school, to get the skills you need to help you people [the Pauite Indians].” In contrast, I’ve heard many of her friends encourage her to get her Juris Doctorate degree in order to “make big money.” These are two examples of how two completely different value systems can work together to initiate an action or a decision.
At the end of August, I returned home to graduate from Brigham Young University’s Department of Anthropology. It had been a long summer, and although I had driven countless hours back and forth between the university and the reservation, I was not happy to see it end. I had gained many friends in Independence, and most importantly, I began to reflect on my own life, being Mexican- American. I came to the conclusion that we must be conscious of how society affects us, but we must constantly strive to affect society. And, as is sometimes the case with anthropologists, I fell in love with the subject at hand, and consequently, Alisa and I will be married in October of 1998.