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“Mus!” With that, the speaker, a weathered cowboy wearing a black beret and cowboy boots, grins as he high-fives his partner and lays down his hand. He and three other men are sitting at a picnic table outside a tiny log cabin at the top of the Bighorn Mountains right outside of Buffalo, Wyo., playing a card game. At a glance, it seems like any other group of American cowboys gathered together for a game of poker. But it’s not.

This game is being played entirely in a foreign language, one that isn’t familiar to most Americans. They’re speaking Euskara, a language with no known ties to any other language around the world.

The cowboys are Basque-Americans and they are part of a thriving community in the western United States. They come from the Basque Country: seven provinces in the Pyrenees of western Europe that make up the northwest corner of Spain and the southwest section of France. In Buffalo, most Basques are of French descent, and their relatives immigrated here in the early 1900s, seeking political freedom and economic advantage. At a time where many immigrant groups are wrestling with questions of nationality and identity, the Basque culture is flourishing.

Jean Escoz, a Basque-American from Buffalo who now lives in Seattle, actively works at keeping his heritage alive. He is fluent in Euskara, and spent two years in Baigorri, a small village in the northern Basque Country, which he first heard about through the study abroad program at the University of Nevada’s Center for Basque Studies. For him, being Basque has been an integral part of his identity throughout his life, and he emphasizes that he didn’t go to the Basque Country to get in touch with his roots.

“My family’s from there and I’ve grown up around Basque people, so I’ve never felt like I needed to find my roots,” Escoz says. “I’ve always had roots–I went to the Basque Country to get to know my family, where it felt familiar. I stopped being a tourist there.”

Even for those Basque-Americans who consciously work to preserve their culture, life in America poses many challenges. In a small town like Buffalo, with a population of 3,900, several hundred of whom are Basques, it is easy for “being Basque” to become a weekend activity, especially because speaking the language is so difficult to maintain. This problem affects all immigrant communities striving to hold onto old customs and traditions while adapting to a new culture. Despite these obstacles, the Basque culture has resisted complete assimilation. Younger generations are showing a renewed interest in their history, hoping to maintain the connection to their past.

Dancing to their music

In Buffalo, the most common way for the youth to actively participate in the culture is through dance. The town has a Basque dance troupe, Zaharrer-Segi, which means ‘to follow the old.’ Teresa Escoz Fieldgrove, the head of the group and Jean’s sister, says she grew up dancing. Their father, also Jean Escoz, came to America when he was 18 to tend sheep, and he passed on his love of dancing to his children. Every Sunday when Teresa was growing up, the Escoz family danced to traditional music on the local Basque radio station.

Basque culture is flourishing throughout the American West, which is also home to many Spanish Basques. Basque customs have even made its mark on some of the area’s larger cities. In the heart of Idaho’s capital, the arid, mountain-encircled city of Boise, you can find a vibrant Basque area in the historical district. Called the ‘Basque Block,’ it houses Boise’s Basque Center, the Basque Market, the Basque Museum, Bar Gernika, a Basque hotel and restaurant and a preserved Basque boarding house. Red and green lauburu symbols decorate the sidewalk, which glints in the midday heat. Lauburu literally means four-heads, and the four-armed Basque symbol is thought to represent the seasons or the four elements: fire, earth, wind and water.

In a nation that has emphasized a melting pot blend of cultural identities, the Boise Basques have managed to preserve parts of their culture almost exactly as it existed in Spain in the 1950s. During the 20th century, many Spanish Basques left their homeland in northern Spain in order to find economic opportunity in the United States, fleeing the brutal dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. Franco had exacted a fiery vengeance on the Basque people for opposing him during the Spanish Civil War , banning Euskara, and allowing Hitler to use their former capital, the symbolic and historic town of Gernika, as a bomb-testing site. As a result of this oppression, by the time of Franco’s death, in 1975, the Basque identity was in crisis in their homeland. But many of the Basque Country’s political and economic refugees began, slowly, to rebuild their culture overseas in cities like Boise.

Today, the Spanish Basque culture in the American West is experiencing a huge resurgence, finally recovering from decades of intolerance in Spain and language loss in the United States and in the Basque Country, or Euskal Herria. This cultural renaissance is causing many Basque youths to place a high value on identifying with their heritage.

On this hot July weekend, Boise’s ‘Basque block’ is humming with activity. It is the San Inazio festival, a celebration of the feast of the Basque saint, Ignatius. Here too, dancing is an important part of cultural preservation and men and women, boys and girls, spin. The patter of their feet mimics the beat of the music, white and red clothing flashing in the sunlight. Looking out at the hills, it is easy to picture their ancestors, the Basque sheepherders who once tended their flocks on the bush-dotted mountainsides. The close cultural ties today’s Basques maintain with their predecessor’s culture is one reason it is so easy to imagine this past world.

The younger generation’s interest in Basque culture is evident at many of the San Inazio events. The festival begins with a potluck pintxos gathering. Pintxos is the Euskara word for tapas. Knots of young people are clustered throughout the Basque Center’s gymnasium, hovering over plates of tortilla de patatas, manchego cheese, peppers and jamón Serrano or cured ham. P.J. Mansisidor, a young engineer and member of the Basque Oinkari dance troop; his girlfriend, Michelle Moad, a former dancer; P.J.’s sister, who plays in a local Basque band; and another friend, Jon Arrieta, who will give a Basque weightlifting demonstration the next day, make up one such group. In the coming month, Mansisidor will be elected president of the Oinkari dancers. All of these friends are around or under 30.

Diaspora Basques use cultural activities like these as a way to preserve ties to the homeland – and to maintain a Basque social network. Moad describes her inundation into the culture, which began in earnest when she was signed up for dancing lessons at age five. In her early teens, her father, who is of Basque descent, sent her to a two-week Basque camp, where counselors taught Euskara, led them in dance routines and helped them learn Basque musical instruments, such as the txistu, or Basque flute. It is this kind of pride in their heritage, which has helped fuel the resurgence of Euskara among Basques in the United States.

Many members of the older generation are proud to see this revitalization of Basque culture. Simon Achabal has left his lambing days far behind him, as he relaxes at his family’s picnic table at Boise’s Municipal Park, but he still enjoys tongue and other traditional Basque dishes. Wearing a cherry red polo, he has only a faint trace of an accent, a fading sign of the old country. He is now in his seventies, and has been able to watch the revitalization of the Basque culture in Boise first-hand. He came to Idaho from the Basque province of Bizkaia in November of 1952, Achabal says over the strains of an accordion, which is playing a merry jota for the dancing competition. He had decided to join his uncle, who was a foreman in the sheep industry.

“We didn’t have any alternatives [to leaving the Basque Country],” says Achabal, whose father was a prisoner of war under the Franco regime. “They took all the valuables we had at home…My parents didn’t have the financial support to send us to any schools at that time. So, that was the reason I decided to come to the United States.” Achabal says he worked “seven days a week, 24 hours a day” for nine years. While he taught his children some Euskara, he says they no longer know it – a phenomenon that appears to be relatively common among second-generation Basques in Boise.

Lose the language and you lose the culture

But their children and grandchildren, the third and fourth generations, are reversing that trend. Although Moad’s generation participates in many cultural activities, the youngest members of the Basque community are starting to learn Euskara soon after they begin to grasp English. Many of their parents, wishing they had a better grasp of the Basque language, enroll their offspring in Euskara classes.

Today, Boise hosts the first Basque-language preschool in North America. Called the Ikastola, it opened in the fall of 1998. Although at first, the Boise school could only accommodate seven children, more teachers have been hired and part-time schedules created for this year’s class. The Ikastola’s number of students is expected to jump to somewhere in the mid-40s. They currently have enrolled nearly 40 students for their fall session.

Chris Bieter is one of the parents who started the school, and he’s still standing near its information booth as he watches the red swirling skirts and white pants of the Basque dancers. He is as involved with his children’s lessons in Basque culture as other parents are with their kids’ soccer games.

“The Basque language is the key to the culture,” says Bieter, whose three children all went to the Ikastola. “The more generations we are away from the Basque country, the more the language is lost. We figured that kids learn language without effort, that parents need to take their children somewhere.” Bieter gestures to his youngest daughter, a brunette imp who has just finished at the Ikastola, which only takes children up through the age of six. She is avidly watching the traditional dancing; over a dozen children arrayed in crisp, blue peasant costumes and headscarves tap out a beat in time to the sounds of the accordion and the tambourine on the sunny Basque block.

“The parents can have their kids in a safe, new place, and they can learn the language at a time when it’s easy for them to learn,” Bieters says enthusiastically. He didn’t learn Euskara until he had finished high school, when he spent a year studying in the Basque country. Bieter says he doesn’t think his mother, who was Basque, realized how important it was going to be to preserve the culture, because under Franco it appeared as though Euskara was becoming obsolete.

Pat Telleria, who is hovering near his friend Ramon’s display sheep wagon, says his father also chose not to teach him Basque. He was born in Jordan Valley, which he describes as a “little, tiny cow town about 85 miles from [Boise].” Framed by his indigo plaid shirt and graying brush handle mustache, his weathered, tanned face still has a look of the west about it, the creases in his forehead and cheeks mimicking the crevices of the mountains.

“Part of the problem, just like me, is when I was growing up it was taboo to learn Basque,” he says. “You were taught English and that was it…You were assimilated and you wanted to be assimilated.”

Growing up in a family of nine children, seven of whom slept in one room, Tellaria said there was never time to learn Euskara. His father worked all day, and his mother was Scottish and didn’t know the language. Now, however, Tellaria, who is self-employed in the retail garden business, sees the tide turning.

“They’re trying to revive [the Basque culture],” he says as he leans against the wagon’s rough canvas cover. “If you lose the language, you’ve lost the culture. And that’s what makes the Basques unique. They’re working very hard here in Boise, Idaho, to maintain the language which in turn maintains the culture.”

The high importance placed on Euskara and Basque heritage in Diaspora communities has not only led to a cultural revival. It has also placed pressure on Basques who feel as though they are losing their heritage, whether through fading bloodlines or lack of participation in traditional Basque activities.

“It was hard for me, especially in this relationship [with Mansisidor],” Moad says, as she sits at a picnic bench near the jota dancing competitions. “I’m a quarter Basque and P.J.’s full Basque. There is a little bit of a stigma. It’s almost like ancient nobility,” says Moad. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re not as Basque as this person who’s full Basque.’ I’ve heard some of the Basque dancers who are girls say, ‘I’m only a quarter Basque; if I don’t marry a Basque man, my kids aren’t that Basque anymore.’”

Moad says she thinks there is even more pressure to maintain Basque culture now than there was for her generation’s parents and grandparents. “They came from the country; they didn’t really have to worry about having to preserve the culture….It’s something I think about sometimes, and other women and probably men too. If you don’t marry someone who’s Basque, what does that mean for the future?”

Additionally, spouses who have no Basque lineage are more or less expected to join in Basque cultural traditions. “Definitely my mom assimilated into the Basque culture,” says Moad, whose mother is of Irish descent. “I honestly didn’t even know she was Irish until my adult years.” Michelle recalls asking her father, “I know that you and I are Basque, but what’s mom?” He told her, “Mom’s Basque.” When Moad responded, “Not really,” her father remained firm. “She is Basque,” he said. Later, she describes finding out she was mostly Irish as “kind of startling…because I’ve been Basque at heart forever.”

Mansisidor and Moad, like many other Basques of their generation, know very little Euskara. Yet because the Basque culture has and continues to play such a central role in their lives, both plan to study it, and hope to improve their conversational ability over the next few years.

Achabal says he is both surprised and impressed by the younger generations’ enthusiasm for Euskara and the Basque culture. “They’re proud to be Basque,” he says, smiling. “They continue to keep their heritage going.”

This value for their culture helps keep the Basque heritage strong in the American West. Although Basques have assimilated, they have managed to resist becoming part of the United States’ melting pot of cultures, says Nikki Gorrell, who has been working at the Basque Museum and Cultural Center for two and a half years. She believes the recent increase in Euskara speakers is evidence that Basque customs are not only surviving but growing stronger.

“Not every Basque speaks Basque,” says Gorrell, “and that’s technically the definition of a Basque person.” Euskaldun, or Basque person, means ‘possessor of the Basque language.’

The North American Basque Organization, or NABO, is another way Basques living in the United States have sought to keep their culture alive. NABO consists of 36 member clubs around the country and was first created in 1973 to create a Basque network within the United States. NABO meets several times a year in different cities around the country. There are also other Basque festivals, like the Buffalo celebration and San Inazio, that provide times for Basque-Americans to get together and celebrate their culture.

Although not many Basque-Americans speak Euskara in their daily lives, there is a movement to revive the language. The University of Nevada at Reno has a Center for Basque Studies, whose main goal is to promote the Basque culture abroad. Several of the member clubs also offer language classes for people of all ages.

Back in Basque

The problem of keeping the language alive faces not only Basques living abroad; it is a challenge for Basques living in the Basque Country as well, especially those who reside in the northern, French area. Today only 25 percent of the Basque population is fluent in Euskara: about 600,000 of these speakers live in the three southern provinces, located in Spain, and only 15,000 inhabit the three French provinces.

While the southern, Spanish side has been actively engaged in fighting for the freedom to speak Euskara largely because of Franco’s oppression, the northern area historically has been more integrated into French society. Here, more people identify with being French first rather than Basque. While there is a movement to increase fluency in Euskara, the French government, which doesn’t recognize Euskara as a language, presents a major obstacle. Under the French constitution, the French language is the only official language for all French territory, whereas in recent years, the southern part of the Basque Country has moved toward a bilingual solution and a significant number of residents speak Spanish and Euskara

For Nora Arbelbide, a journalist for the Basque daily newspaper, Berria, in Bayonne, France, the survival of the language is the key to the continuation of the culture. “The Basque culture is so tied to the language,” Arbelbide says. “Without the language everything will disappear, because without it, it’s difficult to define Basque culture, where it starts and ends. Dancing and everything else changes, but if you have the language, it keeps it together.”

There are a number of northern Basques who are acutely aware of the importance of continuing to fight for their language right now. In the same way that Escoz believes the Basque culture can become just an activity in the United States, Arbelbide thinks there can be superficiality in just “finding roots” for European Basques as well. While it has become fashionable to learn about a heritage, some people do it without fully embracing it. Arbelbide says this isn’t enough.

“I made the choice to write for the Basque paper,” Arbelbide says. “You make the choice to put yourself completely into the culture–you choose to be Basque. Right now there are a lot of people who choose to be Basque and to speak it; with globalization, people find themselves needing to learn where they came from.”

For this reason, Berria, which is the only daily newspaper that circulates throughout the Basque Country, is printed only in Euskara. When the paper first started 15 years ago, there was a debate about which language (or languages) to use. Arbelbide says those involved in the decision made the choice to have the paper be exclusively printed in Euskara for several reasons. She says Euskara is the language that unifies the seven provinces, and having a paper printed in the language allows for its normalization. Thanks to Berria, Basques have the chance to use the language at least once a day.

In the last several years, there has also been a push for the acceptance of the Basque language on the political level in France. The push led to the creation of the Public Office of the Basque Language in Bayonne.

Yet despite all of these efforts, the movement has a long way to go, mainly because of the strength of the French cultural influence. Kevin Bruneau works at a Basque tourist shop in Bayonne and is from Anglet, a small town just outside the city. He maintains that the language is in decline; personally, he can recognize a couple of words but cannot express any ideas in Euskara. He believes this is a trend in the northern provinces.

“There are only two Basque schools in the region, and learning Basque is like learning Latin–it’s an option,” he says. At the same time, he recognizes the importance of preserving the culture. He feels connected to his past when he participates in cultural sporting events, like jai alai, the Basque version of the handball game pelota. And while he can’t speak Euskara, he says he thinks it would be terrible to lose a language that has survived for so many centuries.

What some Basques living abroad and in their home country recognize is that for their culture to survive in the centuries to come, they need to act now. Currently, one of the biggest political challenges for Basques in the northern provinces is the acceptance of Euskara as an official language by the French government. If and when this change takes place, the Basque culture may be able to thrive again in the northern provinces.

For Arbelbide, the survival of the language rests with the younger generations, just as it does in the United States. “I have hope that the young people will become aware,” Arbelbide says. “There are more and more of them who are learning Basque and who want to live it as much as possible. Time will tell whether or not this change will be profound or more superficial. Now at the 21st century, the fundamental question is: What am I?”

If the authorization of the Basque language takes place, chances are the French Basques could begin to re-embrace its culture, as has occurred in Spain. Crossing the border between the two countries puts into stark relief the difference between the two Basque regions. In the north, it is rare to hear Euskara spoken outside of the small, rural towns in the Basque Country. Once in Spain however, the pervasiveness of the language is clear.

On a train from the French town of Hendaye, along the Spanish border, a family travels to San Sebastian. As the children excitedly run up and down the aisle of the train, Spanish and Euskara weave seamlessly together in their conversations, without even a pause between the two languages. “Bai,” one child responds breathlessly to his mother, answering yes to her question in Euskara. In the next breath he exclaims: “Mira! Un perro,” his nose pressed up against the train window, watching a dog pass by.

In an era where 49 percent of the world’s peoples speak one of ten major languages, Euskara’s resurgence in Spain is nothing short of miraculous. In a large part, this revitalization is thanks to the concerted efforts of the semiautonomous Basque government. Much of the increase in Euskara speakers can be attributed to the integration of Euskara into the school curriculum. The classes have helped to counter the loss of language that occurred during the Franco years, which Jose Ramon Legarreta, 62, describes over a beer in the basement of the Boise’s Leku Ona restaurant.

Legarretta has thinning gray hair, an oval face with soft wrinkles that border bright, wise eyes. He also has a serious look about him, and when you hear about his childhood, you can understand why. Born in Bizkaia, he grew up when the Basque language was banned. “Outside you could speak Euskara with older friends,” Legarreta says, “but when you go to school the teachers, for speaking Euskara, would just come on and hit you.”

His longtime friend, white-haired and rosy-cheeked Jose Luis Lejarcegui, 64, nods, his habitual smile fading. “I was beaten with a nylon rope, you know?” he says earnestly, the cheer gone out of his voice. “They would catch you by the side.” In the dim light shining through the small basement windows, both men look away.

Legarreta glances at his hands, which are knotted from his many years of work on the farm and in the sawmill. “You have no chance,” he says. “Only Spanish.” During the Franco regime, speaking Basque in school could also make trouble for your family, causing members to be arrested or ‘disappear.’ It was a perilous time to grow up. But the language endured in the more rural areas, where there was less enforcement of the ban. It consequently gained a reputation as a backwater dialect, because most city children were speaking Spanish.

Now, however, all schoolteachers in the Basque Country must have a certificate showing that they are able to teach in Euskara. Most Basque children are taught every subject in the language. The Basque government has aided diaspora schools by providing them with the curriculum for its already-established early childhood education program. The government also helps the schools find and pay for a teacher. Legarreta, for one, is encouraged by the turn of events.

“I think the Basque people, yes, are trying to learn Euskara,” he says. He pauses, his eyes on the crimson, green and white of the Basque flag. “Those teachers come up from the Basque Country, and they’re teaching Euskara, and I think a lot of kids are starting to learn it. So that’s going to be good.”

The loosening of Franco-era strictures contributed to the rise of Euskara in the Basque Country, and this resurgence has concurrently helped the diaspora Basques, like the young friends and relatives of Legarreta and Lejarcegui. Now, parents of children in the Basque Country are able to decide whether they would like their children to be educated primarily in Spanish, primarily in Basque or with a mixture of the two languages. Even students who choose to learn in Spanish must take a Basque language class.

And many Basques have seized upon this opportunity. According to the Basque government’s Web site, over three quarters of pre-university pupils are carrying out their studies in Euskara. Whereas in France, French is the language to be valued, the oppression of the Franco years has made Spanish Basques prize Euskara all the more. In Gernika, the site of the historical seat of the Basque government in Spain, 47-year-old Julia Soruria walks her son, Aser, to school on a bright September day. There, she says, he will learn Euskara.

A quizzical Aser waits patiently at her side, unsure why there is such a fuss about Euskara. For him, the language is a way of life; he has never had to fight for the right to use it. Soruria learned Euskara from her parents, but her son will have the opportunity to practice the language both at home and in the classroom. Because of institutions like her son’s Ikastola, she believes the Basque language in Spain will continue to flourish. Currently, nearly a third of the population in the Basque country is fluent in Euskara. However, with the popularity of the Basque language in the school system, that number is expected to increase.

In part, the strength of the Basque culture in Spain is drawn from the Basque separatist movement. Although it enjoys less support now than in the past, particularly under Franco, there are still many Basques who believe the three Spanish provinces, at least, should separate from Spain. The increased autonomy the region has acquired has somewhat ameliorated this sentiment. However, those still advocating complete independence cite not only the strong Basque culture in the region, but claim the Basque Country’s rich industrial sector makes the area an asset to Spain rather than the other way around. And, indeed, the Basque GDP is approximately 25 percent higher than that in all of Spain.

Ana Seijoo, a 39-year-old from Gernika, represents the majority of the population’s view when she says she doesn’t necessarily want complete autonomy – but she would like even more independence for the Basque Country’s government. And, she adds, she hopes the Basque culture will continue to grow stronger. “I believe it will,” she says.

Although the separatist movement still has many supporters, the popularity of Euskadi Ta Atkasuna, or ETA, a Basque separatist terrorist group, has decreased markedly over the years. Many Basques point to the region’s increased autonomy as a reason for the lack of support. ETA has been given almost everything it asked for, they note, aside from complete independence. Also, as Professor Pello Salaburu, of the University of the Basque Country, explains, “Terrorism affects everyone.” Salaburu goes on to note that violence was not something for which Basques wanted to be known, particularly in a post 9/11 era.

Yet even in Spain, where Basque culture is strongest, the influence of globalization is evident. The wish for independence and the Basque culture have survived best in smaller towns like Gernika. The great influx of immigrants, from other areas of Spain, Africa and South America, have diluted the Basque culture in places such as Bilbao. Seijoo describes Bilbao as “too cosmopolitan” to be conducive to preserving Basque traditions.

Salaburu, a former president of the university, is himself a product of competing global influences. Although he is from the Basque region, he spent time in the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship. As he sits in his office at the university, the screensaver on the desktop computer in front of him features a rag doll George W. Bush slipping from bubble to bubble in an endless downward spiral. Salaburu also believes Basque culture is on the upswing despite America’s rapid enfranchisement of the world. But, as new generations come, he worries that children like Aser will not value the culture as much because they have never had to fight for it.

Will the Basque culture in Spain be as cherished once it is no longer threatened? Or will it go the way of France, and be commonly viewed as a secondary nationality? Thus far, Salaburu recognizes that the Basque culture is thriving in the face of immigration and globalization. But its ultimate fate will rest with the Basques themselves.

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