Memories of Migration: New Mexico, Part 10

Our statewide project is finally getting underway! After a year of planning and prototyping through our Exhibit Design class, we are ready to roll.

We have an outstanding team! Our project coordinator is Miles Tokunow, who is completing his MA at Highlands where he has pursued his passion for Community Technology through, among other interesting activities, organizing maker workshops at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science for Girl Scouts and the general public. He will also be coordinating the New Mexico Makerstate Initiative, a partnership with the New Mexico State Library (NMSL) now entering its third year.

Miles will be based out of an office in Las Cruces at the Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum. He will be assisted by Allie Burnquist, an AmeriCorps Cultural Technology intern, who worked last year as an intern on the Makerstate Initiative. Allie, who has organized and led maker programs all over the state for the past year, will be based out of the Natural Museum in Albuquerque. She will also be working on the Makerstate Initiative. We are excited that our liaison person with the NMSL is Deanne Dekle, the new Youth Services & Outreach person. Deanne is the former Youth Librarian at the Roswell Public Library, and is a great addition to the team.

We had an exciting brainstorming session with NMSL staff last week on getting started, how to coordinate Memories of Migration with Makerstate, and how to recruit libraries from around the state. That process will be getting underway soon. We actually already have our first partner, the Pueblo de Abiquiu Library and Cultural Center. They have been researching their Genizaro migration history in collaboration with local scholars and the UC Berkeley Community Archaeology Partnership, and have been documenting their history with the help of teen historians. They are eager to share their village's unique Memories of Migration stories on Historypin. We also had a very interesting meeting with New Mexico tribal librarians and will be including one or two tribal libraries in the project. Final selection will follow a survey that Deanne will be sending out soon from NMSL.

Memories of Migration: New Mexico, Part 9

One of the lessons from the Memories of Migration Exhibit Design class was the value of short form video to our project. The videos produced by the class focused on providing historical context for contemporary events.  

At the conclusion of the class, Las Vegas Citizens’Committee for Historic Preservation, our community partner, was very happy with the results of the collaboration but disappointed that several historical stories important to them were not covered. One of those stories was that of Jewish merchants. Another was that of Chinese laborers.

The story of Jewish merchants who came West over the Santa Fe Trail to seek their fortunes is well documented and preserved by descendants, and many of the buildings they built and institutions they founded in Las Vegas still serve as reminders of the contributions they made before they uprooted and continued on their migration journeys. The Chinese laborers, who came to build the railroad and stayed on for a while, however, left barely a trace. Uncovering that story is going to be much more challenging.

To address the CCHP’s interest in documenting these stories, we were able to provide a summer intern from our AmeriCorps Cultural Technology Program, Shane Flores. Shane produced this new video, The Great Emporium: Charles Ilfeld and the Jewish Merchants of Las Vegas, New Mexico. 

This semester Shane will be piecing together the story of the Chinese laborers in a new video for a class he is taking. Shane is also in the process of creating YouTube and Vimeo channels for all of the videos and pinning the four videos we have so far for Las Vegas to Historypin.

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I love the Fiesta Marketplace and found it on the Memories of Migration project on Historypin and want to talk about it here.

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Santa Ana City Webpage

After a tremendous amount of work by Anh Vu, the Librarian in charge of Technology Services for the Santa Ana team, our city webpage for the Memories of Migration grant is now live! Please check out our page and let us know what you think! 

Click here to view our city webpage!

Anh, thank you for all of the hard work, guidance, and patience you put forth as we worked to develop content for the page. You are an invaluable resource for our team, and all you do is greatly appreciated!

Memories of Migration: New Mexico, Part 8

Cultural Traditions

For her section of the exhibit Memories of Migration: Las Vegas, Exhibit Design Class student Gloria Lovato chose to investigate a local cultural tradition that turned out to have a long and fascinating migration story all its own. Combining research with consultation with a local master of the tradition, Beatrice Maestas Sandoval, and the Mora Valley Spinning Mill, Gloria created graphics panels that included photographs, text, and instructions for making the stitch, as well as a hands-on component, and small case small display of tools and supplies.

Colcha is a regional tradition in northern New Mexico that migrated with Spanish colonists in the 17^th century, perhaps by crypto-Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. Even by then the stitch had a long history in Asia and Europe. In Europe the embroiderers used silk cloth and thread, but in New Mexico it was adapted to the more humble materials at hand--cotton and wool. Oriental and European motifs influenced the first designs, but gradually local plants and animals were introduced. This once almost lost tradition is undergoing a revival. It preserves within it an important migration story. 

Memories of Migration: New Mexico, Part 7

Childhood

The Exhibit Design Class students who prototyped the Memories of Migration project spent a lot of time discussing how to make the "memory gathering" experience interesting and relevant to diverse audiences, including children. When the students consulted their parents and grandparents about their childhoods, they often heard descriptions of reality far different from the idealized image of childhood reflected in museum collections and storybooks. 

Natasha Rudolph, who works part-time in the Las Vegas Carnegie Public Library, spearheaded a section of the exhibit that included graphics panels and a play area for children featuring multicultural storybooks about migration from a child's perspective, traditional toys and games of the type brought by settler children who traveled the Old Santa Fe Trail, and traditional schoolhouse supplies, such as a slate board and chalk. She consulted with the City of Las Vegas Museum and Rough Riders Memorial Collection and photographed artifacts from the collection for the graphics panel. 

Childhood: Like children all over the world, children growing up in Las Vegas were prepared for their gender roles and adult responsibilities from a very young age through their play and helping with chores. Boys play centered on sports and outdoor games, while girls play tended to center on homemaking skills and role-playing with dolls.

Education: During the settlement of the West it was the teachers who were the immigrants, sent into the new territories to prepare the populations that were already there for U.S. statehood and citizenship. When New Mexico became a U.S. Territory in 1846, educating children became an essential part of assimilation and the Americanization of the population. Teachers were brought in from outside the Territory because no system of public education or teacher training existed here yet. Prior to that time, children had been mostly educated at home and on the ranch, and the main language spoken was Spanish. Upper class Hispanics sent their sons to Mexico and St. Louis for education. Daughters continued to be educated at home. Among the first teachers to arrive in Las Vegas, in 1869, were the Sisters of Loretto, an order of nuns founded in Kentucky whose mission was to educate poor children on the Western frontier. Strict discipline was a hallmark of their schools. In 1893, New Mexico Normal School (now New Mexico Highlands University) was established to train teachers locally.