URAZANDI: Oral History Projects
The Urazandi ("from overseas") project in a nutshell is an attempt to collect the stories of immigrant Basque communities--before many of those who can tell these early stories leave us! The time is now for your community to get started on collecting these stories.
Basques have never been very good about noting their own history. Since the time of the Romans, most all of the commentary was by outsiders until fairly recently. While Basques are good about keeping traditions alive, this is one that we can set aside and instead get to work compiling our own community histories. If we don't do this, no one else will do if for us.
The Autonomous Basque Government of Euskadi began work on this years ago with their Urazandi ("from overseas") project. The San Francisco Basque community has recently completed their successful oral history project and the results were published in Pedro J. Oiarzabal's Gardeners of Identity: Basques in the San Francisco Bay Area (to order)
Link to an overview of the Urazandi project sponsored by the Autonomous Basque Government.
