Partial Interviews of ANITA ERQUIAGA, HARRIET ALLEN And UNKNOWN Woman

Partial Interviews of

ANITA ERQUIAGA

HARRIET ALLEN

And UNKNOWN Woman

Note: This is a practice tape that was done by people who were interviewers for the Churchill County Museum Oral History project. However, it contains several valuable pieces of information and thus has also been included, although it is a fairly unusual tape.

WOMAN: The first time or the second time?

MAN: Let's make it totally yours.

WOMAN: About… 38 years.

MAN: 38 years. So you weren't born in Churchill County, then?

WOMAN: Right.

MAN: Right, okay. Okay and then… Then you want your parents' names and birth places, I don't know why.

WOMAN: Oh yes, they do that all the time, yeah. Glen Price was born in Brownwood Texas in 1898 and Mary Stanley was born in Herrin, Illinois in 1908.

MAN: I'm going to stop this and see if we were talking loud enough.

WOMAN: Okay. [tape cuts]

ANITA ERQUIAGA: She [Victoria Rubianes] was 17 when she came, and she came with her brother, and she also settled in Winnemucca, that was where a lot of the Basque people went because they're… they were comfortable there, I guess, with so many other people, Basque people. Anyway, she met my father [Victor Rubianes] there and they were married. Anyway, she was 19 when they were married and they lived on a ranch about 100 miles out of Winnemucca for a while.

HARRIET ALLEN: What brought them from Spain here to Nevada?

ERQUIAGA: Well, a lot of people seemed to be coming at that time. It was… the general idea was that there was more opportunity here, and they could get jobs and so there were quite a few people that did come at that time.

ALLEN: Well, what kind of work did they do? I'm not too familiar…

ERQUIAGA: A lot of them were- went out into the hills and herded sheep for people. My dad never did that. He always worked on a farm and he lived in Paradise Valley and worked on a farm, and then he was out in Austin. He and my mother and some of the children lived out in Austin, worked on the Grass Valley ranch and the Kingston Ranch.

ALLEN: What would be your most earliest memory in your childhood? That you remember?

ERQUIAGA: I don't remember a lot of things when I was real young, but I can remember losing a little ring. I had a little ring with a purple stone with it, and I lost it and I remember it was quite traumatic for me because I didn't have a lot of things like that. I guess maybe that's kind of a silly thing to remember, but… So then I do remember that my father had a lot of time to spend with me. I was quite a bit younger than the other children. By the time I was 7 or 8, they were all gone from home and self-supporting and so he didn't have to work so hard, I guess, and he had a lot of time to play games with me. We played cards and…

ALLEN: Tell me, did you ever have a favorite pet when you were a child, or hobby that you did? What did you do to have fun?

ERQUIAGA: I did have a favorite pet. I had a little dog, and the Lincoln Highway ran through our place. We lived – it's now called Berney Road, but it was in the national through highway, and we used to have to cross the highway to go to where our barn was, and cows. And I remember my little dog getting run over on that highway, and the person that hit the dog stopped and, you know, felt very bad and said they would see that I got another dog. Well, I didn't get another dog, but I always remember that.

ALLEN: Oh… What brought you- well, you said you were born here in Fallon? Or your family moved here?

ERQUIAGA: Yes, the family moved here just before I was born from Kingston ranch. One of my brothers had some health problems, asthma or something of that sort and that was why they moved here, and after they'd been here about 4 years my father got a ranch that belonged to a- well it was homesteaded by one of the old-timers around here, and everyone in the family had died off, and so the estate sold that ranch at action on the courthouse steps and he bought that, and that's where he lived until he died.

ALLEN: And you'd lived here all your life?

ERQUIAGA: Well yes, basically. After I finished high school I went to Carson City for about four years, and then I got married and we lived in San Diego for about a year and a half and came back here after that.

ALLEN: Have you ever traveled back to Spain?

ERQUIAGA: No, I would like to, I think. My husband [Tony Erquiaga] isn't interested, but I would like to [laughs].

ALLEN: Oh sure!

ERQUIAGA: We have relatives there that we still correspond with. My sister does, particularly, writes to the cousins, and I would like to meet them. That would be exciting.

ALLEN: Okay, um, well, thank you Anita. It's been a pleasure talking with you. This concludes the interview with Anita Erquiaga for the Churchill County Oral History Project. Thank you.

[tape cuts]

ERQUIAGA: This is Anita Erquiaga interviewing Harriet Allen for a practice session with the oral history project on may 5, 1993. Harriet, I would like you to give me your full name, where you were born, and when you were born.

ALLEN: Oh, my name's Harriet Allen. I was born in Schurz, Nevada on December 7, 1949.

ERQUIAGA: And tell me, how is Allen spelled? There's a lot of different ways to spell that.

ALLEN: It's spelled A-L-L-E-N.

ERQUIAGA: And then when did you move to Fallon? You were born in Schurz…

ALLEN: Born in Schurz because that was where our Indian Health Hospital was at, so I've lived here in Fallon all my life, but our Indian people had to travel to Schurz for our medical care.

ERQUIAGA: And did your father… was he a farmer here in Fallon?

ALLEN: Yes. Yes, he's a farmer.

ERQUIAGA: On Reservation Road you live now, right?

ALLEN: Right [unintelligible, due to over talk]

ERQUIAGA: Is that where he has always farmed?

ALLEN: Yes, he has.

ERQUIAGA: Did you attend Fallon Schools?

ALLEN: Yes, I've been at the schools- Most of the schools I've went to was like West End, and then I went to E.C. Best when it was first built. We were the first class that went through there for the full three years, and then the high school.

ERQUIAGA: As you were growing up, did your parents tell you stories about your ancestors and your heritage?

ALLEN: No, they didn't mention too much about it, but we had a grandmother living with us, and she was, you know, into the history things and she'd tell us different things.

ERQUIAGA: And is that how you became interested in the work you're doing now, preserving this information about the culture of your people?

ALLEN: Yes, I've always been in interested in that, especially I'd like the language to be revived because there's not that many people my age who speak the languages anymore, which is Paiute and Shoshone, the history because there's not that many of our elder people left, you know, and we're losing our culture. I'd like to get what we have persevered.

ERQUIAGA: How long have you been interested in doing that?

ALLEN: I've been with the- I've worked for the education program for the past five years, and it's probably been maybe 10 years since I've been interested because we've tried to hold language classes and tried to do that back, so it's been a while, about 10 years.

ERQUIAGA: Tell me more about your work with the education program.

ALLEN: I work for the Johnson-O'Malley Program. That program works with all children in the schools from Kindergarten up through the twelfth grade, and we monitor grades and attendance at school. We craft programs that try to enforce kids staying in school and graduating, and we have an afterschool program where we tutor kids who need help. Mostly that's with grades kindergarten through sixth.

ERQUIAGA: Do you have quite a lot of children that are in this program?

ALLEN: We have probably about 12 who come regularly, but then there are those who are more sporadic and just come when they need the help or just to see who's hanging around.

ERQUIAGA: I believe you mention that you work with the sage dancers is that the correct name for that?

ALLEN: Sage Spirit Dancers.

ERQUIAGA: Sage Spirit Dancers. Would you like to tell me more about that group?

ALLEN: Sure. This is a group of young children who are probably up to age 16. The youngest one we have are the head start, and there's about 27 of these kids who do performances for civic organizations or schools, and they do the different kinds of dance. We have traditional dancers and fancy dancers who just go around and do performances to show or share their culture with other people. They've been to Reno. They've gone to Reno, Washoe County High School. They've been here to our schools, and they travel to little powwows that are close, you know, like Reno or Carson. They've been down to Bishop, into California, you know, just not really that far away because there's so many kids and it's hard to move them. We only have one van, so we just go do that. The kids love it. They like to do things like that. The one, the real exciting one that they've been to, was at the Pioneer Theater a few months ago. They do sign language to Go My Son, which is the Reno UN university program does this where they travel around to their shows, so the Washoe County Choir was doing the song Go My Son, and they saw these kids performing their little sign language at one of the schools they were at in Reno, and they asked those kids to go and perform with their choir. So they were all excited, they'd never performed in front of a large audience like that before. They really enjoyed it.

ERQUIAGA: Well, that's wonderful. I'm sure they're proud, then, of themselves that they're able to do that, have these opportunities. Do you have anything to do with the head start program? Does that overlap with your job or…?

ALLEN: No, the head start is through the Inter-Tribal Council, which is located in Reno. So it's not really a Tribal program, but I do work with the Head Start education programs where we help give them supplies or I give them programs for them, because after they come out of Head Start they go into kindergarten and then we start the transportation to the schools, you know, from that. From then on, you know, then we start working with the kids.

ERQUIAGA: I see. Well that's wonderful. Do you have any plans for the future that would change what kind of work you're doing or…?

ALLEN: Yes.

ERQUIAGA: Have you thought about that.

ALLEN: [laughs] I'm really interested in the alcohol and drug prevention programs, and I've been working towards getting certified as a counselor, so that's my goal, is something I'd like to do. It's still working with youth which, you know, I like to do. I like working with kids of all ages, but I've always been interested in that program.

ERQUIAGA: Are you taking classes or something like that that would help you to get this certification?

ALLEN: Yes, I've been attending trainings through the bureau of alcohol and drug abuse, you know, out of Carson and I really, really am interested in that. It's pretty good.

ERQUIAGA: Yes, I read about it in the papers, and it's a wonderful thing, I believe. Well, I think that concludes our interview for today, and thank you very much.

ALLEN: Well, you're welcome.