Basque ethnography at a glance

Grandmother and grandchildren. Urduliz (Bizkaia), 2011. Akaitze Kamiruaga. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

I was born and bred in a rural environment, as a fully integrated member of an agricultural community, and within a typical three-generational family structure of grandparents, parents and children. Our parents would spend their days farming and tending to livestock around the farmstead, so we were often in the care of our grandparents. They would teach us how to look after the smaller animals on the farm, to carry out simple chores out in the cultivated fields, to create our own toys, to pray, to sing, to play cards, and even more, they would delight us with their stories and wonderful tales, which we listened to in awe.

Several decades have elapsed since my childhood days, traditional rural society being diluted like sugar in the coffee of modern times. An urban conception of reality extends further, its tentacles reaching across remotest areas of a once rural world. Lifestyles have changed, parents today are even busier than before, houses are smaller, households are not as large, and although they continue to play an important role, grandparents do not fulfil the same functions as in the old days.

Now I work for an institution engaged, among other issues, in the development of cultural resources for school children to familiarize with aspects of our cultural tradition, including distinctive ethnographic and linguistic features. Equipped with video cameras, my colleagues visit ‘old-time’ farmhouses, thoroughly remodelled to date, and record the stories of their eldest dwellers. Back at the office, the recorded materials are developed and adapted to be used as teaching resources, which combined with the latest audiovisual and information technologies, present a valuable tool for the generation of our informants’ grandchildren, and subsequent generations, to learn about our culture. Workshops are likewise designed for indirect intergenerational transmission of knowledge to young children.

Audiovisual Department of Labayru Fundazioa.

It is an important task so traditional knowledge is not lost forever, swallowed up by the wild waters of progress, and a means to connect generations, within the current parameters, otherwise growing increasingly apart, for technology can bring geographical spaces together but can also stretch time, opening deep generational divides.

And yet the majority of children in the world do not live in societies as modern as ours and still listen attentively to the stories told by their grandparents. Instead of keeping a distance or even condescension towards those cultures, we must reflect on ourselves as well as on the social and technological backlash which is sweeping as along, because even if the message our children receive is the same now and before, the means for transmitting it is radically different, as are the consequences.

Luis Manuel Peña – Ethnography Department – Labayru Fundazioa

Translated by Jaione Bilbao – Ethnography Department – Labayru Fundazioa