Basque History & Flags in Idaho with Gloria Totoricaguena

0:00Yes, I did it. How are you? Great doing very well. Thank you very much. Thank you for making time today. I know you just came from the Capitol because you know, you know, things that people need to know and you go and talk to them about those things. But you also happen to be a recent award winner within the BASC community and you know, culturally because of your body of work and history and representing and studying the BASC culture. Talking about the BASC culture. Okay. Thank you. Yes, I was just named from the BASC country. What's called the Manuel Likwona Award of Elzquikas Kunsa, the Society of BASC studies. And it's a recognition of, yeah, kind of a lifetime achievement. And that lifetime achievement for me is really

1:03important because it has a few thousand people behind it. I interviewed people as you do. I learned from them, their stories of immigration, how, where, when, why, all of the pieces of their life as immigrants. In this case, from the BASC region, which is Northern Spain and Southern France, to Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, all through Central America, Brazil, Australia, then all throughout Europe. So I traveled to those places to meet those immigrants, children of immigrants, and then grandchildren of immigrants to put together the pieces of their identity. What, what I did in my PhD studies was not only like history or sociology, but also the psychology,

2:08the anthropology of migration. Why do people leave one place? How do they choose another? You're a newcomer to Idaho. So a lot of what we talk about today might make sense to you, and you might feel it in a different way than a person who's never left their hometown, or who has never had to make like difficult decisions. In this case of the BASC, you're crossing the planet. Very few of them immigrated within Europe. They completely left the BASC country, departed. When they departed, it was assumed they would never see their family again, right? In these years. So if we look at immigration, there are always these push and pull factors. What's pushing you out and away from the geography where you live? What's pulling you towards something else? My parents had the opportunity to go to Argentina. Lots of BASCs in Argentina,

3:10thousands and thousands. It is the country with the highest, the highest number of BASC immigrants. Okay, they knew people there. They had information networks. They would have been able to speak Spanish there. It would have been much easier. But our grandfather had decided, yeah, but economically, maybe the United States is a place to be now. Argentina, this is in the early 1900s. So you're being pushed out for factors of war, for factors of again, geography. The BASC country is between France and Spain. And so that passage, Napoleonic Wars, French Revolution, Spanish Civil Wars, where will this border be back and forth? They're in the middle of it. They're in the middle of it geographically, not because they were on this side or that side. They were forced into sides. BASCs have also always been mariners. They've been seafaring people

4:15in shipbuilders. So from like the eighth and the ninth century, BASCs have been whalers. And they've gone and traveled all throughout North Atlantic to today's Greenland, Denmark, we know. To Labrador, Newfoundland, to what is North America's coast. Centuries and centuries ago. Then within Spanish colonization of the Americas, the shipbuilding, a lot of it is done in the BASC country. The military, the clerics, the economists, the shipbuilders, the miners are going from the BASC country. So if I'm the equivalent of Joe Schmoe would be like Ignacio Echeberia, if I'm just somebody normal in the BASC country, I know of hundreds of examples of people who have come and gone. It's not unusual in the BASC history or that community to come and go. They've seen it. They've seen people

5:21who left. They never heard of, you know, they never heard from them again. They don't know if they did well. They didn't do well. They've seen money coming home. They've seen a lot of economic remittances coming back to their towns. Or all of a sudden that farmhouse has a new roof. Well, who paid for that? Oh, they have a son and a daughter who have a graded to Argentina or whatever. So we know in migration, we see this in the United States all the time, new immigrants that come in, they're paying for themselves and their own expenses and they're saving everything they can to send that home, whichever country they're from, to either pay for something there or try to be able to bring another family member with them to keep that family together, okay. It really bothers me in the United States when I read the anti-immigrant opinions that often are

6:22not based on any experience. They are not international economic migrants themselves. They don't know what it is, how difficult the decision is to leave everything that you know, your whole identity, your culture, your family, everything that you understand, just the daily, how do I get stuff done here and cross the planet to a place where you have information about through those trusted networks but you still have never lived it. And it is an amazing, amazing experience for people who have done that and who still are doing it now. When I meet new immigrants to Idaho, I think of my parents coming to Idaho. And I think of myself when I'm in the vast country because I live

7:22part time in Idaho, part time in the vast country. I also go back and forth. Who has better food? Easily. Easily the vast country. My gosh. So this idea of migration, this in the news here all the time, for me, because I've studied it and I've lived it and I've traveled it, and my antenna are always up for the immigrant, the migration the immigrant community, the Bosnian Americans, the Jamaican Americans, the Basque Americans, the whomever. I just have a kaleidoscope of understanding of it that is completely different than what the typical person reads or watches in a social media post or hears in a two minute blurb

8:25on the news or something like that. There's a lot to it that is sociological, that is anthropological. Why do I maintain my Basque language in Boise, Idaho? Why do we have a Basque language school for children in a Boise in the desert, right? A Boise Idaho because it is a piece of our identity, because it is a privilege to maintain a language, values, family values, family and friendship networks, our culture, what it means to us to be Basque. Those are trusted networks, the same way that with other immigrants, employment networks are trusted networks. If two people say, God, I'm looking for a job, Gloria, if you hear of anything, let me know.

9:26Once a normal American friend, one is my normal Basque friend, just innately, I'm going to try to help both of them, but I probably really know more about that Basque person because there are just certain things I can assume about her upbringing, about what the values are, what are those values, work your ass off every single day, every day. Laziness is like, oh, it's just not accepted. You know, you might be a liar, but to be lazy, you could lie to me, but you're working 10 hours. You're working 10 hours. Yeah, so different values that are expected within our culture and that are praised within our culture to be frugal. You might have a lot of money, but you better not show it. Not you better not show it. You're not going to be praised for

10:32showing it. You're showing off. Why are you doing that? That's really ugly. You know, you've made more than others, but society has helped you make that. You didn't make it on your own. You work the same as everyone else. Other factors have intervened to maintain family ties. I mean, we show up for all the funerals, all the weddings, all the birthdays, all the everything, right? You need to be there because this is what whoever's the first immigrant in your family created. So it's a piece of your privilege and your responsibility. To me, those are the same thing. I have the privilege of being baske. I have a responsibility of being baske. It's a responsibility to my parents, to other basks who came to Idaho or who went to Argentina or Uruguay or Chile or wherever they went to maintain something that is from a certain geography, but it doesn't

11:36pertain to that geography. And by that, I mean, basks in the best country do not only have those values because of physically where they live. They've carried those values with them to Idaho or California or Nevada, those values of democracy, of civil society. In the best country, we had what we're called for all laws or the freedoms that are laws that are created by your community, usually a river valley or an area, a certain area, a wooded area, etc. Whoever lives there, you create the laws, and I'm talking about since the 8th century, you create the laws, who owns the wood from the forest, who shares the water and how water rights today. Sure. Right. What you can build where, what you will produce, it's decided communally together.

12:42And so, for basks, maybe one of the things that is difficult for basks who came to the United States is the United States focus on me, my, I, I want this, my rights, me, me, me, me, me, whereas bask values are communal, we will attempt to do this together for all of us. Our community, our family, our networks. May, may I ask a question? Sure, please. And I have many, but I didn't, yes, yes, this is the interrupt, please. With that, I understand what you're saying, with the cultural problem the United States find itself in right now, with predominantly self-individuals king mentality. Where do you think that that is across the country completely, meaning like, is that an American

13:48thing or is that a product of commercialism and a, you know, marketing that can infiltrate any, any community, but not inherently American. I asked that specifically because, you know, I had a lot of people like, I have not seen community and understood community like I have after I moved Idaho. I'm like, okay, this means something different, right? People are different here. I went to Riggins last week and I'm like, this is different. Communities mean something different here. I was speaking with somebody who lives, you know, way up in in Lewis County. And gentlemen is a, I think it was Lewis County and he's a volunteer firefighter. And you know, it was criticizing somebody who had moved into the community because this person was being critical of, you know, the farmer's tractor or, you know, just, just all the like, I, I moved, I moved here for my retirement and I want, and in me, and like, that doesn't work with them. And this individual is like, dude, you're crazy because the person you're criticizing right now

14:52for blocking your driveway or going slow on the road. That same farmer, he's the one that pulls everybody out of the ditch in the winter when they all inevitably fall in the ditch. And we all know that and we may have friction with each other, but we have these ties to community out of necessity because it's, we're going to fall in the ditches. And by the way, when he broke his leg, we all showed up to like harvest his crop even though I don't even like him like we don't hang out, but he pulls me out of the ditch and I harvest his crop when he get and got hurt. Like that's the way this goes. And that's an American community, right? And we also have communities within America say in Southern California that are very much centered on, you know, my spray tan and my, you know, plastic, whatever and my car and like super mad at anybody on the highway. So when you're when you're emphasizing the bask culture is more centered around community. And that's probably something that's difficult when you come to America. Is it necessarily coming to America or is it engaging with certain communities within areas?

15:56Great question. And to distinguish a lot of those distinguishing factors depend on a particular experience. Sure. Structurally, like our Constitution, the US Constitution talks about the rights of a person. Yes. Right? A citizen, a person, a person, a person. Whereas other constitutions in other places talk about the rights of a community, the rights of people who speak this language. Interesting. The rights of people in this valley, they're plural. The rights for programs or projects for groups of people. And so just institutionally, structurally, that's different in the United States. Like I said, other countries, constitutions already set up groups and recognition of groups and recognition of group rights because you belong to this group.

17:01Um, we especially with something like water in Idaho. This is a really like you can see people. Um, a friend of mine was a city councilman. Um, that he just lost a race. It's totally fine. No, I don't live in his community. Um, and he was also on his HOA board. And he said, unfortunately, he had a lot of people that weren't from Idaho living in his community. And they were so concerned about their lawns, even the, and they didn't know anything about the water infrastructure. And in this particular case, they had an aquifer that they would tap into with a well, um, and, and a pump. And they would water the common spaces and irrigate people's front lawns with it. And they're like, okay, look, we gotta, you gotta, we gotta rest it for like 12 hours or 24 hours or something. And like, this is just how it works. People would flip out. They thought he was lying. And they were so worried. They were so worried about their lawns that they broke in. They had to replace the locks on the pump house like five times because people kept breaking in and turning on the pump, even though there

18:04was insufficient water in the aquifer, because they were just letting it, you know, all the water pool back into the area where it was being pulled out of all because they're like, you're not going to kill my lawn. It's like, what in the hell is wrong with you? So selfish, so selfish, so short-sighted. So exactly what you're saying, not understanding that community is who came before you and who's coming after you. That's a women by community. Community has a lot of different layers to it, I guess, the kaleidoscope again. It has a chronological aspect to it, again, who came before me. And why did they do this? And do we need to maintain this now? Okay, but it's up to all of us, not me to go in and break into a pump house or, you know, write letters against the ditch writer

19:07or it's a master. No, we don't do that. We don't do that. This is a problem with immigration in the sense that, for example, when Basques migrated to Idaho as a community and most communities, most international communities who have immigrated to Idaho, I'll speak about just for Idaho, have done their very best to Lilo, take care of each other, slowly participate in the HOA. Run for the school board, run for the legislature, but volunteering first, you don't just show up and start telling people, we need to do this and we need to do that because this is how we did it before or you're going to blow it. You don't know what you're doing. You don't really understand. The number of times I've heard people say that, you don't understand. You don't understand. It's like, we have TikTok here, man, like we can see the same things happening over there as here, like we know

20:14what do you mean we don't understand. Yeah, well, and it's a different way of being again, right? New immigrants who are coming new, United States citizens who have already lived here, who have moved into Idaho, so they've immigrated to Idaho, right? Have come with different attitudes and different behaviors, often, they get the microphones, they get the TikTok, whatever. They're loud, they're loud, telling people what to do and we got to do it this way and that's wrong and my yard and my whatever. At the legislature, you know, first ones to sign up for a bill. No, you can't do this because it's, you know, you're going to turn Idaho into California. It's like, I think California is really beautiful. I think California is like the seventh largest economy on the planet. I don't know. A lot of people want to move there. I think they live well, but I've never lived there, but now you're in Idaho. So, time out, learn, learn, learn, learn, volunteer, participate,

21:23before you tell me how to be baske in Idaho, learn something about the basks in Idaho, learn something and that's a guest that you might have in the future who can go to the legislature and talk about basks as terrorists and that our bask flag is a terrorist flag and put this into public testimony in the state of Idaho's legislative committee hearing. There's going to get a response. Yep. When I didn't, again, the things you talk about, the decisions people made to move from the bask country here, when you talk about, like my wife had never been to Idaho, when we moved, site unseen, she moved, because I came here for two days and found a house and flew home and said, you know, we had decided previously. It's not like I declared, but I found a

22:25house we knew we were going to move. My kids had never been here, my wife had never been here, my dogs had never been here. Nobody, like we didn't know anything about Idaho. Why did you choose, Idaho? Why did you choose Boise? Why didn't you fly to Missoula? Why didn't you fly to San Antonio? Why did you choose Boise? You must have had some information. You didn't just draw on a map, bang, we're going here. And it relates back to what you said right out of the blocks, which is a push and a pull, right? You're getting pushed, but you're being drawn. I've been listening to everything like this conversation could be 10 hours. We don't have time. You're going to have to come back. Talk about that. I appreciate what you're talking about. Now, to be clear, we left our whole family. I was born and raised and lived the in the same five-mile radius my entire life. No, I'm not living out on the countryside, you know, and beautiful Spanish countryside or something. But I was born and raised in the same five-mile radius and that is all I knew in my entire life. So difficult to do. And to leave it. To leave it. Oh my gosh.

23:32Oh, both our families, you know, absolutely all of our friends. I had one friend here who had moved here. So like you said, I knew one person who had come up and I had heard stories, you know, and ultimately you, okay, so you're being pushed away from something. Let's start with that. I was, I was in that a lot of the things that people hear about California, like on social media, those were happening in my community. So the things like, oh, you could steal up to $900 worth of stuff out of the drug store and it's just a ticket. That was happening in my community. We had completely uncontrolled crime that was going on of like, this is insane. We had huge problems with the school system. Again, a lot of things you see online. That was happening in our public schools. We had already pulled our kids out of public schools. They were going to Catholic school, this Catholic school system. We had a lot of things pushing us out. And culturally, you know, it's very interesting. There's, there's no grounding culture within California. Okay, what I mean by that is in Idaho, you have an economic or excuse me, agricultural, you know, kind of let's say

24:39ruling class. And I don't mean that to disparage people, but it's like the economy in Idaho for a long time has been made up of people engaging in agricultural exploits. And you have people that have risen to the top and that agricultural direction has driven a lot of state policy and just look at, you know, how much people pay attention to water here. That's because of the agricultural base, right? And timber and mining, natural resources. Resource, yes. You don't have that in California. So like Hollywood didn't exist until what like 1920 or something, right? The aeronautical industry didn't exist until, you know, at the very least the right brothers, right? Silicon Valley didn't come into being until like the 70s and 80s when Stanford acquired a lot of patents around technology that then drew investors and you know, Stanford became like it was a good at university in the 50s, but it's Stanford now. That's totally different, right? You see Berkeley's there. So you have these industries that are now worldwide draws. Just look at Silicon Valley. This is a worldwide draw. Okay. That hasn't existed

25:44for more than let's say 50 years. And you don't, it takes over the economic engine of that area and it's pulling in people from all across the world. And then the question is, wait, who's in charge here? And the answer is no one. So you don't have this grounding class of people that are like, this is the culture of California. Now good, bad, whatever. I have great Mongolian beef when I go home. It's fantastic. Like you get different kinds of foods, but the real trick is if you don't have anybody grounding a culture, you don't have anybody orienting the culture when you turn on the news or social media takes you over and says, you're all racists, you're all this, you're all that. Everybody's like, I guess this is what we are. It's like, hang on one second. I didn't agree to this. And by the way, I'm Mexican and I have black adopted siblings. Like, what do you mean I'm racist? They're like, well, everybody's racist because you're a light skinned. I'm like, I don't think it works that way. Right. So you have a lot of things that were pushing me out pushed. Right. So now you're getting pushed out. Where do you go? Well, you're not going to the same places that are reproducing those policies. So you're not going anywhere west coast. Okay. That's a problem.

26:47All right. So fine. Oregon, Washington, out, go to Arizona, you like scorpions? Not so much. Don't really want that new Mexico. I saw breaking bad, not big fan of math, not going there. Okay. Nevada. Nope. It's like a couple of my students went to you and are here. It's great. Great buffet. It's not going there. Right. Montana. I don't know anyone in Montana and like, what's there? Right. Wyoming, they have blizzards in July. Like, I don't want to die in a blizzard on 4th of July. That's bad. Once you're that far Colorado, they're pretty much west coast. Like, so you have all these problems. You're like, okay. So you're pushing farther east. What are you going to go to Texas? You want to hit the Dakotas? Would you go into Illinois? Right? I don't know. So bottom line is I knew one person who had moved here. I had heard stories of people moving here from high school. And my one friend who moved here in 2020, his kids were absolutely losing their minds in the community. And he instantly started reporting back. He's like, this is a place is different. And it's really good for kids. And so in the end of 21, when I was like, I can't do this

27:51anymore. I got a hold of him. I was like, it's good for kids. He was like, yeah, I'm like, your kids still like you there. They had had plans to move back. And he was like, they don't want to go back. Like, I'm coming up next week. I'm finding a house. So that's the perfect example of information networks. You did know where you were coming to. You had an idea of it. Yes. Some of it you might have created an aggrandized made over the years. You knew it wasn't Arizona, Scorpia, and it wasn't blizzards. It wasn't this. It wasn't that. So you created your little T chart. Yes. Positive negative in your mind, even if you and your wife didn't this. And she didn't come to see it physically because it was the idea of what she wanted. Because physically in California, you have the best weather ever. You have the oceans. You have beautiful agriculture. You have beautiful flora and fauna, et cetera. So you weren't changing

28:54geography for geography. You weren't saying, I'm getting out of the blizzards. I'm getting out of a desert. You know, we're going to dry up here. You were changing. I don't know how much time you've spent in California. But let me paint a different picture for you. Okay. The beaches are not these. First off, I live in Northern California. These are not warm beaches. No, they're not. And you also have rampant homeless populations and pollution and stuff. Like we couldn't even go swimming in the beaches, like when I was in college a lot of times. So like, let's, let's shed that idea that like the beaches are this incredible draw. Okay. The weather every summer, weather, good weather, good for what in particular, because it was so dry and we had such mismanagement of over force resources that for the three years preceding our move, there were like six to eight week periods of time where we couldn't leave our house because it was like a red sun rose and everything was dark. And by the way, you're living an old circa 1950 like military housing with two or four inch thick studs. The houses leaked like a sieve. Now,

29:58you can't open your windows at night to cool off. So you're pumping your AC, by the way, the power is ungodly expensive. So you have also, okay, what about other things? You have beautiful hillsides and stuff. You can go hiking well summer problem for obvious reasons. The other, the other issue is the culture of work there is different than the culture of work here. So although you had things like you could go hiking on a mountain and it would be beautiful, wonderful. You know what that takes? Time. And the culture of work in California and the expense associated with it prohibits you from doing things that may be free, but take your time because you're working like a madman. So the things with you're saying, Hey, you're not, you're not leaving like the landscape and the life that people actually engage in is a far cry from what people think you could potentially do because it's just not the same. I, I have never read, you know, I don't,

30:59I have no stats. I've never thought I'd be in northern California. I have recommended against it. I don't know if there's a big bass community, but yeah, exactly. Don't start it. But that is a piece of immigration. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. We had information. Yes. Yeah. And so that's the same with a bass community way before social media. You know, there was information in our town. Somebody had gone to Argentina. Somebody had gone to Venezuela. Somebody had gone to Idaho or California, Nevada, whatever. So then the person has to make the choice. What am I leaving? Where am I going to? Yes. So in the vast country, until a few decades ago, inheritance was to one child in the family. So you can expand the, the amount of land, right? So the amount of land is finite. And yet only one child here is going to inherit the house and the land if it's agriculture or a business, et cetera. So that just pushed people out, you know,

32:06easily, if I'm the seventh child and, you know, I'm not going to get a piece of this economic opportunity or vitality, I've got to find something else. So the push factors, then you have the Franco dictatorship. So you have political repression on top of all this, political repression that is, you cannot speak your language. You do not have these rights. You cannot teach children in BASC. You can't even name your children BASC names. You will go to Catholic churches and you will have Spanish masses. If you're caught speaking BASC, you're going to get whacked on top of your hand with a paddle at school. So repression of identity is huge, right? You're telling me I can't be me because I'm a different me when I'm in, when I'm in my BASC world, then when I'm in my American world, you're telling me I can't do that, I can't express that.

33:07So those push factors and then the pull factors in Idaho, actually, California first, because BASCs were already in South America from colonization. So BASCs from Argentina and Uruguay and Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, make their way up for the gold rush in what was Mexico and then California. But there were BASCs already in Mexico when it was Mexico. Okay, they had already gone as part of Spanish colonization. Oh, now it's the United States. Okay, whatever. Doesn't matter. Keep coming. You know, so calling for each other, you know, cousins coming, brothers and sisters coming, helping them find employment, then there's gold and silver strikes in Nevada, then there's gold and silver strikes in Idaho. So BASCs are coming to Idaho first with the gold rush with a silver mining. And then, well, maybe you're going to find gold, maybe you're going to find silver, but everyone has to eat. So let's get into farming and ranching.

34:11So BASCs went into ranching, cattle ranching and sheep ranching. You don't have to speak English. It's hard work. Nobody else wants to do it. Whatever. Like all immigrants, they think we'll go. We're going to make money. We're going to send money home. We're going to save and then we'll go home again. Rich. Well, here we are. We're still here. Not everybody makes it. And then people who do make it had to choose again. Should I stay in the United States? I'm in Idaho where I can speak BASC, where I can go to my BASC cultural center, where I can go to the BASC museum, where we can have our community events and speak our language and fly our flags and have our symbols and maintain our identity. Why would we go back to Spain where there's a dictatorship and Franco is still alive? No. So they're staying. I was an SAT tutor before I moved here. I had classes. I remember this

35:17Gallagher graduate, or excuse me, went to my class in the spring of 21. We moved January of 22. Two Idaho? Yes. It was a nine-class program. It was our last class. I would always get an out and pizza. I'm like, we're doing reviews and stuff. And the scale, who was always very quiet, started chatting and saying stuff. I'm like, listen, man, what the hell? I've been working for two months to get you talking. And now you're finally talking. And you know what she said? I've never forgot this. She was like, yeah, but I didn't know if it was safe to talk. And parents aren't here. I'm not like a real teacher to be clear. I'm not like her English teacher and her the anxiety that this person had about expressing the wrong opinion even to somebody I had a student, different student. I had a student who was saying something to a friend at a soccer practice. And somebody heard her talking. She wasn't even talking to the other person. The person listened

36:18to that, then went to the coach, tattled on her. And then this person got in trouble. She was like, okay, first off, I was talking to someone else. I was not talking to you. And second, like, that actually is my opinion. I wasn't like using racial slurs. That is my opinion. Like, why can't I have the opinion? You're like, you can't have that opinion. Who said she could have that? Like the coaches, like she got in trouble. So the, the, the oppression and the like, you can't be who you really are. Like these are things that deeply drove out a lot of people from that community. And the students knew it. You know, it was like, you can lie to a 17 year old, but they know what reality is. Like they know they're like, okay, I'll go along with this because I don't have any power in this exchange. Yes. But I don't believe you. You can make me say noises with my face, but I don't believe it. Right. And so many of them have moved out of the area. And the other, one of the other problems that one of the major considerations for us was like, look, okay, even if we keep pushing through in this community, we live in one of I grew up in an area that was very lower in middle class.

37:22And we had very successfully make tiny little house, but like made it into the spot. Right. It was like, yes, we got there. It was awesome. But we're like, there's no way our kids are ever going to be able to make it back here. The starter homes are like $1.3 million. Like there's no way. And I'm not saying like a big starter home. I mean, you know, like a two bedroom townhouse could be a million dollars. Like there's not or unless they went into a very, very specific type of employment, largely centered around the tech sector that would allow you to upscale your earnings. Like crazy. So we had this problem with like our kids can't come back. We're not splitting the farm. We're not splitting the ranch. But like there's not going to be space for them here. Because the only people buying the houses, even in our little starter home community are in their 40s. These are like wild parallels. Economic pushes. Yes. Immigration. Parallels everywhere, everywhere. Part of it is choice for some people because they're already

38:28middle class. They already have choices. And then they want to make better choices. Sure. People who can already afford to go away to college are saying, I want to have a different experience. Okay. I want to have a home in the vast country because I want to have a European experience. Okay. But I'm already privileged enough to be able to do that. Right. I already have the money. I already have the language skills. I already have the knowledge of what I want to do. I have those information networks. And I have the people networks, a friend, an aunt, a cousin, somebody that's going to help open doors for you. That's what basketball communities have done in every country they've gone to. But other communities do similar things. They do similar things. If you are on the same side in the homeland, then you're in the same side in the new place, even more so because I need help. We have a system of boarding houses, hundreds of boarding

39:31houses over the decades in the United States, networks of basketball boarding houses. So a basket lands in New York, but they're coming out to Idaho. Okay. They landed that basketball boarding house in New York. They stay for a few days, get ready again because now they're going to cross the entire United States on a train. But that basketball boarding house would give them the picnic basket of food to make it across. They had a tag that just got torn off every stop. You know, first stop, Philadelphia, second stop, Chicago, next stop, Ogden, next stop. So there you go. So they know, okay, last one. I think I'm here. I think I made it. So a whole system of how it will go for you. What will happen when you get there? You'll land in another boarding house in Boise. And that boarding house is going to help you with employment. They're going to help you when you need to go to the doctor and you need an interpreter. There will be a beautiful woman working there. And hopefully you are the one who is going to be able

40:35to absolutely marriage males, relationships, families. That home away from home. And basks are again, because a lot of our values are so communal. Us, we are. You know, if there's more than 10 or 15 basks, they've probably formed some kind of an association. They have formed some kind of a club. And even now, a web page, you know, their own web page, you know, basks in mountain home, basks in Jordan Valley, basks in Idaho. And so that is diaspora. It's a, it's a word that some people don't, they don't like. They don't because they're not looking at it from kind of an academic definitional view. diaspora is to disperse. And you've got, you know, your community has left an area, maybe, maybe retired law enforcement

41:37from California and North Island. For example, they set up clubs too. Absolutely. Yeah. They certainly have websites and lobbyists. Okay, back to basks, back to basks. And so those, it's so funny. By the way, I love it. Keep going. Okay. Those cultural entities then help the maintenance of that identity. But they also give information about the homeland. Right? So you're getting your letters from your family that is one perspective. But then you go to the basks center and at that dinner, you talk to people from other towns. And those people give you different information from their families, excuse me, in their towns. So even without internet, without the websites in those years, you still had good information about the homeland and what's happening. So then that leads to, okay, now the next generation of

42:41basks speak English. We learned English at school. We didn't speak English when we went to school. We learned English at school. And then at home, you speak Basque or Spanish, or if you're from the northern side of the Basque country from the French side, then you would speak French and or Basque. And you learned English at school. So outside this door, you play basketball, you play field hockey, you take piano lessons, you're in gymnastics, you're in the debate club. Inside this house is a different language, maybe a different expectation. Dinner is at this time. Guess what? Guess where you will be sitting at this time. You will be there because then the discussion changes to what's happening in this family. That's very, very typical still. Second generation, third generation. That value, slow down, come. You will be maybe

43:46with three generations because maybe there's a grandmother living in the house, maybe there's a grandfather, maybe there's an aunt, maybe there's a whatever. And that next generation then has the opportunity to do even more. Like in my case, become an academic or they start practicing diplomacy. I'm not just going to teach people in Idaho what it is to be Basque. When I hear that in the legislature, they're calling us terrorists, I'm going to show up and I'm going to sign up and I'm going to give a testimony of correction of record. And then I might go further and then I might say I need to write a letter to the editor now and make sure that we're really making people understand and educating people. I might create a network of academics and say, okay, Boise State, we should have some kind of an agreement with the public university in the Basque country so that we can send students and professors back and forth. Okay, academic diplomacy.

44:53I might create a commercial trade mission and say, okay, we need businesses for Idaho, any businesses for Idaho that are interested in the European Union. Okay, use the Basque country as your door to the European Union. Here are the tax policies, here's the welcoming policies, there are special advantages, etc. Right? So that's commercial diplomacy. It's using soft power. I'm not a country. I'm a non-state entity. I'm not even organization. I'm a hey, I'm a party of one too. Exactly. Appreciate that. Party of one. I'm a party of one. But I can create diplomacy. I can implement diplomacy because I have all these networks and they are international networks. I can also do it in other directions. Idaho Basques to Argentina Basques. Or because I know Idaho Basques who have businesses and I say, oh, okay, you're in the

45:56ag industry. You work for Simplock? Yeah. Well, what Simplock got in Argentina? Oh, they've got these plants. Well, I know these Basque people in those plants in Argentina. So use these Basque networks to create trust. Businesses about trust. Migration is about trust. The body foundation of a lot of decision making is trusting information and the people that are giving it. So that soft power, that diaspora diplomacy, being outside of the homeland, but still being able to influence United States policy towards Spain, for example, or towards the Basque country, or inviting Governor Little to create a trade mission to the Basque country. Or going to the Boise State president and saying, you know, we have this huge Basque population here. We would like to create a Basque studies program at Boise State University. And here's how

47:00we'll do it with what money, with these teachers, et cetera, set it all up. They just have to say, yes, all right. So that becomes a part of immigration and maintaining, maintaining identity too is what can I do for my culture? What can I do for my values? How can I highlight my values? How can I promote other Basque people? How can I educate non-Basques about those Basque values? And hey, by the way, come join us. Come and join us. It's not a, you know, it's not like the moonies. It's not like we're trying to, you know, we're not brainwashing anybody. We're just saying that, well, we have festivals. They're always open to the public. Everything we do is open to the public. We want people to come. Could I ask a question specifically about history? What? I don't know anything about the Basque flag that was in question. I do know that there was some commentary where it's like this represents something really bad, like terrorism and other people

48:04like that's absurd. I don't know anything about it. Could you, could you help me understand what the flag is and why people would have that idea? Sure. So the Basque flag, the Basque flag was created in the 1890s. Okay, 1890s. At that time in Spain and Spain, Spain, France, France, but there was a preparation of Spain dissolving into different, it had been different kingdoms. It was going to dissolve into different republics, different autonomous areas. Sure. Here's the Basque flag. Okay. It's used all over the diaspora. That Basque flag in the 1890s is all over Argentina. You're going Peru and Basques who come to the United States come with that Basque flag. And they accept that it is a flag that represented there soon to be autonomous republic. Yeah. Understood. Okay. And then you have the Franco dictatorship for decades 1939 to, he finally

49:07dies in 1975. It is prohibited. Basque languages prohibited. Basque identity. Basque names are prohibited. Basque schools are prohibited. No Basque University allowed. Nothing. And not that flag, for sure. So at one time, that flag was prohibited in a dictatorship, which sounds a little bit like the legislation that is pending. We're going to ban flags. Hmm. True. The Basque flag was prohibited during a dictatorship in Spain. And now this is kind of the same language as coming again in Idaho. The bill that's in Idaho, it's actually on the amending order. But what happened after the dictator died? So you had, so pre-predictator for about the 40 or 50 years preceding that dictator. You had a flag that represented the Basque region, which was soon to be its own autonomous republic.

50:08That dissolving of the country of Spain never happened. And when the dictator took over in the mid-1930s, he said, I'm stamping out the distinction within these regions, within the how many different regions are there? Now there are 17. Okay. I'm stamping out all 17 of these. We are essentially like one Spain. We're one Spain. And don't you dare say anything about that stuff you were doing over there. Like you're done. So crushes the ethnic distinctions, the cultural distinctions just say, we are a United Spain. All of us are Spanish. This is our flag. So people still attempting to fly that flag or engage in that flag. We're going counter to what that dictator had declared. And therefore people in that time would have been like, well, you're technically like a terrorist or like a counter country person or it was just bad. It was just like, it was illegal. Spanish military would take that flag away from you or the Spanish military would try to arrest you. Okay. Because the military police understood. So then in the mid-70s, the dictator dies. And what

51:14happens in Spain? Okay. So then there's a constitutional convention, just like we had to create a constitution. There's a constitutional convention. All of the regions, sandy elected representatives, Spain writes a new constitution. And in that constitution, the 17 autonomous regions are recognized as are their symbols. Their symbols are the official symbols in Spain. The Basque create their government separately because they're one of these 17 autonomous regions. So they have their Basque autonomous community constitution, just like I don't know how to pronounce it. California has got it. Exactly. So we've got these regional governments. They also have their own legislative branch, a parliament. They elect their own president, similar to our governor. But they have their own taxing powers, their own education powers, their judicial powers. They have, they have powers that they have negotiated with Spain in the vast country. And Spain still engages in things

52:20like country-wide military defense and things of that nature. Just like we have a state national guard and we also have the Marines, like the U.S. Air Force. Yes. Got it. So we have powers that belong to the federal government. Separately, we have the 10th amendment that says reserved powers for the states. So we have some powers for the 50 states. We have some powers that are only the United States government. Spain has some powers that are only for the Spanish federal government and other powers that are reserved for those 17 autonomous communities. One of those is that they create their own symbols and those are the official symbols and they are official in that autonomy, in that autonomous community. And they're also official in Spain. So that Basque flag is used. It's at the King's Palace. Okay. It's it's used with the Prime Minister of Spain. It's used with the president of the

53:23Basque country. It's all over the Basque country. It's in every municipality. It's on every flagpole, every provincial flagpole, every official, everything. There's a Basque flag there. And as are the other 16 autonomous regions, I presume at the palace, you have those other 16 represented. And at this has been the case since the the constitutional convention that happened after the dictator fell. So for the last 50 years, it has been recognized as this is both recognized by the federal federal government in Spain and the individual Spanish autonomous regions. And then de facto across the world and last people are like, well, I'm not going to pay attention to what the Spanish federal government does. I'm going to think about it my own. Yeah, I'll just make yeah, I'll just say, Oh, no. So this representative comes to the legislature and says that this Basque flag is a flag of terrorists that it's prohibited in Spain. It's not allowed to be flown

54:24in Spain. This is two weeks ago in the Idaho legislature. This isn't somebody who gave this testimony 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, you know, this is two weeks ago. If you don't know, just say, I don't know, I'll find out and I'll bring that back to you, chair and members of the committee. But this person does the opposite. And this person goes full on scorched earth policy and says this flag is prohibited. The Basque flag is a terrorist flag. It's a flag of ETA who was a revolutionary group who disbanded. The ETA doesn't exist anymore. So this is a person who's giving their view of information from 50 years ago with one experience. So that caused an international misunderstanding because then the Basque country puts this on their media.

55:31Then it's all over social media. It's in the Basque country newspapers on their television news, the nightly news, the, you know, the midday news, all over there that Idaho is prohibiting the Basque flag, which is unique, specifically because outside of Argentina, Idaho has like one of the largest ethnic Basque communities. California, California's largest. And then yeah, in the United, inside the United States, California's the largest Nevada and Idaho were there. But it's the relationships and how hard we have worked to maintain this Basque identity. All these communities that we have established, you know, since the 1890s being in this state, having flown flags for, I don't know how many festivals in our parks in different celebrations, the welcoming of the Basque presidents who have come to visit Idaho. I think we've had four different Basque

56:37presidents come to visit Idaho over the decades. We have received parliamentarians. We have received mayors. Boise is sister city with the Basque town of Guernica. There are official agreements. The Boise Chamber of Commerce has an official agreement with the Chamber of Commerce of Bilbao in the Basque country. The Idaho Department of Commerce has agreements with the government of a smaller section of the Basque country, Biscayah, for international trade. This is diaspora policy. This is parodiplomacy. We've done it between Idaho and the Basque country for decades. And then somebody comes and just drops a big one all over decades and decades of relationships, trust networks, work, media, and then we have to clean that up.

57:44We have to clean that up in Idaho and everywhere that that media went because that went to all of our Basque networks. I started receiving. I can't imagine. Your phone must have blown up. It's terrible. From Uruguay. What can we do? This is the national federation of Basques clubs of Uruguay. What can we do from here? And it's like, wow, I don't know. I need a beer. And so you have good beer in the Basque country. Yes, more wine, but yes. And so this is serious. A flag for some people is a piece of cloth probably made in China. And we're just going to get rid of this and we're going to get rid of that. Hmm. These the level of of hubris and the level of ignorance for those of us in the

58:47Basque community was absolutely astounding. The president of the Basque government wrote a letter and sent it to the chair of the committee saying, this is absolutely false. This is absolutely inaccurate. Here's the Spanish Constitution where it says the Basque flag is an official flag. Here is the Basque statute that says this is our official flag. Do you want me to send you 10,000 pictures of Basque flags in all of our city halls and all of our official building? It's like saying the United States flag is a flag of people who try to take over the Capitol building on January 6th. It's a flag of terrorists. It's a flag of people who are trying to overthrow our government and therefore we're never going to fly the American flag. May I make a smaller revision to that? I think it would be more accurate to represent the

59:49original American flag before the Revolutionary War was won because the concept that you're talking about, which is there were people under a dictatorship that were flying this flag but then they came out victorious and a government was established that recognized the flag. If there was a flag being flown representing the 13 colonies in America as we won the Revolutionary War and gained our freedom from the British. If there was that flag then somebody referencing that portion of history could say that was a flag of terrorists because they were trying to overthrow the government that was holding them down. Now mind you, we may be flying that flag again, whatever the flag was or the symbol was, I mean obviously Sarsmango banner, right? That's American independence. But we have groups that are using our current U.S. flag. We have groups that are using our current flag, spray painting it, setting it on fire, etc. Yes, you've got all the freedom

1:00:52speech you want. But you are not going to go to a legislature and give official testimony as an elected public servant and say that that's a flag of terrorism. So again, the idea for many basks, I'll just speak for myself, is after all of these things that we've talked about, after all of the, you know, how many generations of bask people doing this and doing that and then being, you know, caught in wars, having to leave, never starting a war. There's never been a war in France or Spain that the basks started. They're just like, oh jeez, you know, we're just trying to do our thing here. They've had to leave their homeland. They've gone to other places. They have collaborated. They've inserted themselves. They've been invited to this that and the other. They've been, for the most part, you know, good citizens wherever they are. We're going to,

1:01:56we're going to follow our values and give our values to the best or our ability to help wherever we can. And that's still in 2026, in Idaho of all places, not in some state that, you know, not in Mississippi. We're going to ban the bask flag because they don't know any better. In Idaho to say that this represents terrorists is, you know, their soft power, there's parodipalmacy, there's a lot of talking, etc. And then there comes time of like, oh my, just disgust and frustration of we still have to educate people constantly. Who are the basks? What are we? Flying this flag means a lot. It's centuries of democracy. It's centuries of law following law creating

1:03:00peoples. It is centuries of maintaining values, language, family networks, friendship networks, economic networks, trust networks. Never having declared war on anyone. It's a society, it's a community that is just as proud to be American as we are bask. I used to teach American government in high school before I did my PhD. I loved every single day of class. There were days that I would cry in class, you know, like when I was reading the Declaration of Independence and, you know, these men declare, you know, themselves, they're sacred honors to each other. And I'd look at my students, they're declaring they're sacred honor to each other. I mean, can you, you know, you're sacred, who do you have that you would declare your honor to, your name? Who would, who do you know? Look around you. Do you know

1:04:02anybody? And they're like, well, she's going to have a meltdown right here. Do you understand? Do you understand? But again, I see things in a kaleidoscope of, of all these different factors and characteristics. And I see it, I feel it, I hear it, all the senses of what it means to be that bask American. And it's not separate. One informs the other in my behavior, in my values, in the things that I choose to do, in the things I choose not to do. And so this instance that, again, we're going through in the Idaho legislature is a massive disappointment. Gloria. Matt. I, I have not learned anything about bask people until today, when I had Roy on earlier and you. And I have lived here for, I just passed my, I'm going on my

1:05:0750th month, next month. You're counting by months. I love it. It's my month anniversary coming up. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you. I want to learn more. Okay. I really, really appreciate what you've shared with me today. Will you please come back? Absolutely. Doing this because I, again, it's, it's ignorance and it's the time and everybody, I have every excuse you possibly imagine for me to not know anything about the bask community. But now I know you. Yes. And you know Roy. You know, and you know where the table is. And I would love it if you came back and concerned. Yes. And when there's a resolution, for example, when there's a resolution to this symbols and flags issue, it might be interesting to come back and see how it's resolved. I'd be, I'd be very happy to do that. Okay. Thank you for coming on today. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you. I'm so delighted that I met you. Thank you. Likewise. Likewise. It's a deal. Thanks.