6 10 208 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/2c516f34374336a003467920b9e6a60e.pdf 5a59759182ca0ebad99808f33264f291 PDF Text Text DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 Diania Caudell: Is my lipstick okay? [laughs] Linda Kallas: Today is October 27, 2022. I am Linda Kallas, and I am interviewing Diania Caudell as part of the North County Oral History Initiative. Thank you, Diania, for being here, and allowing me to do this with you today. DC: No $uun Looviq [“My heart is good” in Luiseno. Our way of saying “thank you.”] [chuckles] LK: Miiyu. [“Hello” to one person in Luiseno.] DC: Miiyu [laughs]. LK: Um, we were—I just wanted to ask you when and where you were born. DC: Uh, where was I—April 16, 1948. I was born here in North County, San Diego—Oceanside, California, San Diego County. LK: And was your family an active part of any cultural community, such as religious or ethnic groups? DC: Well [sighs] yeah, we were, uh, part of the first indigenous people here in the Americas or whatever you want to say on that part. Um, we are part of the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians, uh, been in the area as far as, uh, the written is concerned, you know, since they were written at the Missions, I would say the 1700s, because after that it was, um, mostly—before that it was all oral. So, um, we’ve been here over nine generations. That’s on the native side. LK: That’s on the native side. DC: Yeah. LK: Which means— DC: It means that— LK: On the other side is— DC: On the other side, the French side came to us, and he landed here in 1868. He was Hubert Foussat. Here in San Francisco. He was one of the founding fathers of Oceanside. LK: Is that why there’s a street named after him? DC: Yes. But that’s not at a—that’s not named after my great grandfather. That’s named, really, with—after his brother, Ramon Foussat. LK: Okay. DC: And he’s the one that had the ranch in the area up there, by Highland and Oceanside. Faustino Foussat had the land there in the valley, San Luis Rey Valley. LK: And there’s also an elementary school named Louise Foussat. 1 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 DC: Yes. She’s—I’ve always called her as an aunt, but she’s really a cousin. Um, she was—she married a Foussat. Okay. Her maiden name is a Munoa, and her mother was, um, Theresa Gidden, Theresa Giddens, and, um, that’s another one that’s—she was born at Pala, and, uh,that’s another side of our family, my father’s side, that had been here a long time. That’s another whole side that I could talk about when you get to that point, if you want to, and his grandmother— LK: Okay. DC: —was born on the Marron Ranch in 1865, so— LK: So, your family history stretches way back in the North County. DC: Yes. Yes. LK: Um, this seems like a silly question, but how do you like living and working here? DC: [laughs] Okay, it—all I can tell you is that, um, I wouldn’t want to live anyplace else, you know, other than—growing up, I lived all over the state of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada, only because I’m, I’m a construction brat, let’s just put it that way. My father was a heavy construction operator, had his own equipment. So, if you go anywhere here in California for the freeways, he probably helped build those, all the dams here in California, uh, he was probably was working on those, um, also like Parker Dam in New Mexico, you know, even in Arizona, I mean, excuse me, Arizona. You have some of the bigger dams, you know, throughout [breathes in] so, um, my mother kept coming back to North County, because she was born here in San Luis Rey Valley. Her family, her family’s from here. My father’s family is from Pala. So, we kept coming back and, um, I think she put her foot down from travelling when my brother and I were in junior high. So, I graduated from Escondido High School, and stayed in Escondido until I got married, then I moved up to Orange County, San Juan Capistrano. I was up there for 40 some years, before I came back down here to my home. LK: Wow. DC: [laughs, then bell chimes] Oh-oh. Is that me? LK: Well, so you do feel part of the community, and within that, do you feel like you have a support network? DC: Well, if you’re gonna say support network, you’re going to have to look at the whole family, okay. Just with my great-grandfather. He had 11 daughters. LK: Wow. DC: And so, one of them was my grandmother, and he raised my mother because her father died when she, when she was a young child. And so, my great-grandfather, Faustino Foussat, raised her. So, when you have a large—just one branch of the Foussat family that had all these sisters and all these children, um, there’s a support group on the ones that were close [chuckles] let’s just say. My grandmother, um, was born in San Luis Rey Valley, uh, lived there all her life, uh, well not all her—until she retired, and then she went to Hemet. But, she retired from Camp 2 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 Pendleton. She was one of the first workers there, you know, in the pressing. So, network-wise, yes, we have a good network of family. But, they all kind of seem to travel away, you know, on some things. Still, today, you know, because it’s San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians which I’m part of, we have good support network, in that, within relatives. I mean we have—I have a lot of cousins, you know, and related on both sides. If we had to talk about that, I’m double related on some of them, and people just kind of wonder what—how did that happen? When you try to explain the story, uh, it gets confusing. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: So, um, we just want to do a big picture one day [laughs]. LK: That would be nice. Um, you said that you were in Orange County for 40 years. DC: Mm-hmm. LK: So, tell me about the work you did there. DC: [sighs] Ok. Let’s just start that—when I got married, I moved up there and, um, when I was here I was starting in accounting. Okay? I’m an accountant by trade. That wasn’t really what I wanted to do, but that’s how it ended up, you know, going into accounting. Um, so I did a lot of accounting for dealerships. Went back to college to get my degree into Accounting, and then went into accounting, business law, etc. so I stayed—like to work with numbers. I’m just good with numbers. And, so, I worked with dealerships, school districts, medical field in the accounting field. I didn’t become, later on, the weaver or in, with my cultural until I had to have a back injury. So, for 40-some years, up there in San Juan Capistrano, Orange County, I got involved with the Acjachemen people, the Juaneños there, helping them through Indian education, in the 70s, because that’s a story that— I can go into that, and I think I—it’s kind of long but shortly is that I grew up with being native, and the schools not teaching us correctly. Okay? LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You read the books, etcetera, and you hear about how they were dressed, what they were, were they savages? Etcetera. And I would come home from school and saying this is not how we are. And then my mother, my grandmother, and family would say “Don’t argue, Diania, just let it go.” And so when I got married, and my two children, my son and my daughter, when they went to school up there in the Palisades, or in Capistrano Unified School District, they came home one day and said they were entitled to something other. It was like a Spanish program, Title II, at that time. And so, I went to the school to find out how my children got tagged into—in the Spanish community, when my last name is French, and it’s Caudell. And so, talking with the school principal, um, we found out that I followed that person that was in charge of Title II, and what had happened—how my two ended up coming with that notice is that this person went around the school to the classrooms and asked questions. Now, if you had a surname, with Romero, Sanchez, Alvaros, Valenzuela, any of those Spanish names, she automatically put them down on the list as a Spanish or Mexican. Uh, then, the other question when she got that from the roster, she then would ask “how many children here already know that their parents, or grandparents, 3 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 speak Spanish.” Well, my two automatically raised their hand because their father spoke Spanish. And he was taught that from his mother and also because of the community of San Juan Capistrano. You’ve got to think of the missions. That was the language that was taught to the Indian people. And, um, so that’s how my two got on there. And so I challenged that at the school district, at the, you know, with the superintendent, and, uh, they came back at me and saying “well, the last Indian person that was living here in San Juan Capistrano died in 1933, and he was the bell-ringer.” And I go, “no, that can’t be, because I’m here. I’ve got relatives that are married into the Juaneño or Acjachemen people. You still have them here, and so, um, I became an advocate [laughs], an activist, or whatever you want to say, and contacted my relatives there, that are—that married into the Acjachemen people, and, identified them. We went back to the school district, and went through all their rosters, because back in the 70s, when you’re ethnic, when they ask you that question, when you’re enrolling your student, your child, they ask you what ethnic group you are. Well, in those days—I’m saying those days, in the 70s, you only had, like, you had Caucasian, you had Asian—not even Asian, really. Mexican, I think. But you didn’t have the—what you have today is the Native American/Alaskan ethnic group. And so I always put us under “Other” as Native American, because I am a registered through the B.I.A., Bureau of Indian Affairs, and I have my certification, that I am who I am, meaning Native American. And, um, so I always made sure that my children would have that, going through there. So, we went through K-12, went to the registry of the school district and got all their cum files, or whatever they call them, those information files, and took home all the ones that were identified as Native American. A lot of them were not, because they didn’t want to, because it was passed down to us that you didn’t want to register as Native American because it wasn’t the best thing to do. So, they always put Caucasian. So, from K-12 in that school district, Capistrano High School District, we had identified 210 students. LK: Wow. DC: And so that kind of put us into the category of challenging the school. Uh, UCI had Kogee Thomas at that time. She was the Director. She heard about what was happening. She came down to become my mentor. With that, because she’s really high with the Seminoles and Muscogee people at that, then, and we wrote the first grant. We brought in Title IV, Indian Education Act, Public Law 194, in 1975. [laughs] LK: Wow. DC: So, I’ve been through this for a long time. We ended up forming the San Juan Capistrano Council, because they had to reform themselves again. They never left. They just said their leader moved, and they just kind of—in the 60s, or in the 50s, he left, and so they just kind of knew they were there, but they weren’t formally formed yet. So we reformed them. So today I can just tell you that in Capistrano Unified School District, they still have Indian Education. They have a Indian Research Center, kind of, for teachers, instructors, and parents, there on the Clarence Lobo Elementary school grounds. LK: Mm-hmm. 4 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 DC: That if you wanted to study any Indian, not just California, any, any native person across indigenous person across the United States, in Alaska and Hawaii, etc., that you can go to that resource center, and that instructor, teacher, parent can pull the correct information that these tribes have handed in. So, that was one of my things that I did up there, other than just being an accountant. LK: Wow, that’s impressive. DC: Okay, that was in the community. [laughs] LK: Yes, yes. And then you mentioned you hurt your back and that’s what lead you to getting into basketry. Can you talk a little bit about that? DC: [sighs] Yeah, that was, um, a fall I had, okay? I don’t want to describe the fall, because it’s kind of, you know, it’s kind of stupid. I mean, the thing is when you hurt your back, um, I thought I’d go to the chiropractor. I went to work, and was working in Huntington Beach at that time, and I drove my car to Huntington Beach, went to sit down at my desk at the dealership, sat down and I couldn’t move. They had to literally pick me up, take me to my car. I called my chiropractor in Newport and, uh, he went to adjust it, and he says “This isn’t that, you know. This is something else.” And so they took x-rays, and he still tried the adjustment. I—and it got a point where I had to quit. I couldn’t—you know, I was losing to walk, etc. And the pain kept going through that, and then finally when they did an MRI on me, you know, they found out that I had―let me see, I’m trying to figure out how to describe this, because I’m not a medic, medical person— I was diag—rheumatism arthritis runs in our family on my dad’s side, my grandmother’s side. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Not too much on my mother’s side, but on, through my dad’s side. And so, I guess hereditarily, I have that in my system. What are you going to do? So, when I hit the lower back really hard, I accelerated the arthritis rheumatism in my spine. And so when that happened, that’s what they found with the MRI. So, they said “Diania, if you don’t have, do something with it, it’s going to get worse, and you’re going to lose a lot of functions that you normally can take that you can control of. And, anyway, I put it off a whole year. I didn’t want to have my back opened up. And so, I got to a point where I couldn’t deal with this anymore. And so, I had to say yes. They opened up 5, 4, and 6 of your vertebraes <sic>. They opened them up, and all I can describe it was a rotor-rooter job. She went in there, and just tried to scrape out all the rheumatism, or arthritis, away from my spine, inside my spine. And when she did that, she hit one of the sciatic nerves. LK: oh… DC: And uh, ‘cuz it, nothing’s replaced. They just sealed it back up again. And, uh, so when I came out of surgery, I didn’t realize that I couldn’t walk because the nurses tried to—they put those belts [gestures tying a belt around her waist] on you when you’re going to go and make you go to the restroom, etc., you know, when you’re [unintelligible] and when I went to get out the bed, I fell straight to the floor. Thank goodness I had belts on me, because the two nurses and 5 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 all the surgeons come running in, and I lost everything from the waist down. Had to learn how to walk all over again. It took me—they said “Diania, you’re going to have to learn patience.” And I’m not one with patience, let’s put it that way. I do have patience for other people, but not for myself. So, I didn’t know what to do and the Acjachemen people had sent me a newsletter, and my mom brought it up, and on the front cover of that newsletter that was next to the, my bed in the hospital was Lillian Robles. She’s an elder. She’s passed on before, but she had a basket hat on. And I saw the basket hat and I went “Oh, great. I guess to learn patience, I guess I can get into basketry.” LK: Oh… DC: And I never was in it. I was more in the Indian education. I was more into the helping with the activities. My mother was a weaver. My aunts were weavers, their jewelry, they’re always crafting with their hands. I was not. They always pushed me away, and said “Diania, you know, we’re need—we need you in education. We need you speaking for our people.” And so when I called, I looked at that, and I called Teeter Romero who was a top weaver from the Acjachemen people, and she—her and I were really close, worked together for years, with Indian education— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: ―Inter-tribal Council of California, I mean, the different areas, you know, for the people, Indian people. And I called her, and let her know that, um, I need to become a weaver. Well, she started laughing on the phone, when I called from the hospital, because she didn’t know where I was at. LK: She laughed at you? DC: Well, she laughed at me, because she said “you’re not a weaver, you know, you’re just not a weaver.” And then she says “Why?” And I says “Well, I’m in the hospital, and I can’t walk, and I need to learn patience.” So, when she heard that, she says “okay, when you’re able to get home and sit up in a wheelchair, we’ll come to you.” And, they did. I was with my mom here in Escondido, at that time. And they came down. About six months—let’s see, I had the operation in April; they came down in June. And I was being able to sit up in there. I was still trying to learn to walk. I was with a walker. And, they came! And they started, uh—sat down with me, and the first thing they gave me was raffia in one hand and pine needle in the other, and they had me doing the coiling, just to learn to go round and round and round and round, with basketry. From then on, it took me, you know, work—it took me almost two years to learn how to walk again, by myself. I was with a—I couldn’t drive. My mom was driving me all over. I had the walker. I got everything back in my left leg, but on my right leg not everything came through. And so, another six to eight months, I was doing acupuncture at Indian Health Council in Rincon, because I didn’t want to open up my back again, okay, have another surgery. So, I don’t have a lot of feeling in my right foot, from my calf, I think, down. But, I do think it—people don’t realize that, you know, that I don’t, but that’s what put me into retirement, really. LK: How many years ago was that? DC: Okay. When did 9/11, what year was that? 2001? 6 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 LK: That was ’01. DC: Okay, ’01. LK: 09. DC: Because, yeah, April of ’01, because I remember I was still in bed and my mom got a call from her sister and my mom come running in to my bedroom, trying to insist I turn the TV on, and what she says—my mom was crying and I looked at that and there it was when I saw the airplane hit. They had that going on the towers and it was like looking at a movie. LK: Yeah. DC: Okay. That was just unbelievable. Okay? So, that was April, September, okay. It was— that’s how I can remember. I can never remember the year, but I just think it’s the year of 9/11. So twenty-oh-one, right? LK: Yeah, 21 years ago. DC: Yeah, so it was 21 years ago. I was still on—I have been on social security disability, because I can’t sit that long. So, if I get up on you guys, and take a break, then I’m sorry, you know, but that—My, my job was an accountant, and so that was sitting a lot. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then to get up and sit and get up is one of the things. So, uh, that’s how I got into basketry and I’m still doing that today, you know, on that. But, it’s taken me learning different things, you know, getting—you want me to go into California Indian Basket Weavers Association? LK: Yeah, I― DC: [laughs] okay, okay. LK: I was going to ask that—I—but I wanted to go back, just for a minute— DC: Okay. LK: —to Indian education. DC: Mm-hmm. LK: So, I think you said it’s still going on to this day. You still, they still have that educational program in San Juan Capistrano. DC: Yeah, they still have the Capistrano Unified School District and it’s going still strong, but they have to be the parents that have to want it. LK: Ah, okay. 7 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 DC: It doesn’t just stay with the Acjachemen people. And they do have, I think they have a resource instructor there, someone in their administration, that they do go out for. Because it is a fund. It’s funding, it’s federal funding. All school districts need money― LK: Right. DC: ―and it’s a head count. And so, Capistrano Unified School District still has it, so does Huntington Beach, because they have a large community of the Cherokee Indian― LK: Oh! DC: ―outside natives coming in, because a lot of people don’t realize, that if they do start researching, you can go into 1963. They had the Relocation Act, of Native Americans. And, this isn’t taught in schools. This isn’t taught in—you know, for the general public, sometimes, unless you’re involved with Native Americans and their—and the different things. Well, 1963 they relocated Cherokee, Choctaw, and a lot of different native groups into California. LK: Oh… DC: You know, a lot of the Cherokees went to the Anaheim area, Huntington Beach area, and settled there. You had a lot of the Cherokee, Osage, and some coming down to San Diego. The largest Choctaw Relocation is in Bakersfield. LK: I’ll be darned. DC: So, yeah, it’s a—it was—it’s interesting, uh, how they did move native people around to get them away from their “homeland” and give them incentives at that time that “we can move you to California. You know, you can emerge into there” and stuff. And so a lot of it is kind of detrimental but with them, they brought their, they brought their culture and their tradition with them, which is good. LK: So, if you could see something change in regard to that educational program, what would it be? Would it be to expand it to San Diego County? Would it be… DC: Well, San Diego County had a big—has a big Indian education program. They did—they— you just don’t hear about it― LK: Okay. DC: ―um, in their school district. What it would be good to expand on there is that, um, to get it more to the public, to the other schools, okay. It takes a school district to want it. I’ve notified Oceanside. I’ve notified Vista. In Vista alone, a few years ago, they identified another 200, because now they have that on their information form of the child’s registers, you know, what ethnic group you are. And 210 had registered as Native American. It doesn’t mean they’re, you know, San Luis Rey or California. They can be from anywhere in the United States. And most of them that do register for their ethnic group know that they are, or they’ve been told that they are. LK: Mm-hmm. 8 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 DC: But it gets a parent, it’s gotta be a parent to initiate it, to get a parent group together, and that way they can work with the school district. And then they can apply for grants. And then they can get the head count. Then they can get a resource instructor in there, or someone to work with the Indian education, and then it comes in with tutoring. That was one thing I did. I knew for, just for reading and math, at least. Get the children on the tutoring. They have the tutoring. They were pulled out of class or they brought the equipment in, if they needed equipment. There, Capistrano Unified School District, we’ll go back to that. It was shown as a need. Getting the general books that they need into the libraries. That’s how that resource center started, because the school districts will only go by what the state says, for state books, state history books, they―etc. The Native peoples say “No, that’s not correct. We will want our own books coming in.” So that’s what we did in the 70s. We brought in records. At that time, you didn’t have CDs or you know, what we had, you know, you had— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: LPs. And so we brought in records of the singing of the different groups. They brought in books that the teachers can get through, or parents could check out, you know, and working with that to get the education in there. And you have to have the school district to want to work with you. Um, we—it was a hard thing, with, even with Capistrano Unified School District, to do it. But if I didn’t have the help with Kogee Thomas and some of the top people that come from back east, that were very strong in their native cultural, that I don’t think that Capistrano would have done it either. ‘Cuz we challenged them. We challenged them, so— LK: But, how enriching for the students. DC: It is, but you got to have again, you gotta have a parent― LK: Right. DC: ―who would want that, so their student or their child can get that extra help. LK: There has to be a buy-in for it, with the parent. DC: Yes, and so it’s, it’s—today, in Capistrano Unified School District, the ones that do use it— I know my grandchildren went through it—they provided the computers at home for the tutoring. You know, they didn’t have to go to like a trailer, or be pulled out of class, and be taken, you know, like to a tutorial room like we did in the 70s. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Uh, with the st—with my two children, my daughter used it and they had computers at home. The school district provided these computers, these laptops for the home that they could use and they got tutored every day, since they were in grade school. All the way through high school. LK: Wow. It gave them a really good sense of self. DC: It gave a sense of self, and they—at first it was “why do we have to do this for half an hour every day?” [laughs] I mean, but as they got older in high school, and then went to college, you 9 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 know, especially going through all those tests that you have to take for college, they, they were happy because they knew a lot of the questions and were able to answer them. Because of the tutorial they had, um, above and beyond what they normally get in school, in class. LK: Wow. That’s wonderful. So, you’ve already explained a little bit about your life’s path, how it’s evolved and changed over the years, so I was going to ask you if you wanted to share a little bit more about the basketry and CIBA, and I see that you have a little sample of one. DC: [laughs] Ok. When you said CIBA, I don’t think everybody knows what CIBA is, okay. You’re familiar with it. CIBA is California Indian Basket Weavers Association. Um, that’s another thing that I have been a member of and I’m on the Board for the last umpteen years, I would say—let’s just say the last 12 years. I know it’s been longer. Uh, but how I got involved in that, again, was going back to when I became basket—learning basketry and the plants, finding out that southern California doesn’t have everything that they normally have. If you know the county here, we’ve got 18 reservations here in the San Diego County alone and the people— where they were sent—aren’t on their homelands. I mean— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: It’s not where they would have their medi—their medicinal plants, their foods, or their traditional cultural plants like basketry and other things, and so they had—the people had to go off the reservations, and to public lands, which would be your forestries, um, county parks, state parks, etc., even private land, to get the materials that they need for the basketry. Well, I had a problem with that because I didn’t understand that, you know, and why did they have the restrictions here in southern California when I found out that in central California, they don’t have that. In northern California they don’t have the same restrictions. But it’s because a lot of these central reservations or rancherias in northern California, too, is that they’re on their homelands. They’re rancherias. They weren’t like taken from one area and moved. Okay. They’ve had little rancherias, then. That’s what they called them, instead of reservations, up in northern California, spread out. And so they were on their lands and they had the traditional materials. LK: Oh, I see. DC: For example, you’ve got the Yuroks and the Hoopas up there. They’re in the forest up there. They have the red for—the, the redwoods. They got the forest. They’ve got a lot of their plants. And that’s their economic development. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But, that’s―they don’t call them reservations. They call them rancherias. Okay, so, so I started asking questions about that. You know, I’d say “how come, what for?” And I went to a gathering of CIBA, because they have a large gathering once a year for the basket weavers of the state of California, and I started asking “how come, what for, why is it that in California we don’t have this, when you have it up there?” And then I was told by a board member, “Well, Diania, you keep asking these questions. Why don’t you—we’re having a Board election. Why don’t you throw your hat in, your name, and we can see what we can do?” Well, I got elected. 10 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 You know, I mean, I didn’t expect that at all. And I’ve been on it ever since, since 2003. And, uh, so I became an advocate of, for southern California, to get in, our traditional trading, you know, gathering, etc., our traditional materials, you know, on that. And so, if I didn’t enjoy what I’m doing and have a passion for it, you know, I think learning about my traditional materials that we use for basketry, which is hard to find here in southern California, if you don’t get somebody to help you, you know, with that. And, um, so I think being educating people has helped me. LK: Um, the traditional materials are hard to find because of development? They’ve all been— DC: Yes, uh— LK: —plowed over or— DC: Um, there’s a—[reaching to her left for a brochure with the front cover reading “Indian Rock Project”] okay, let me just see, I’m just going to go through here. This here, this is Indian Rock Project, okay. This is something that we worked with the Cal St—uh, San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians and Cal State San Marcos worked together with Palomar College to do, to put this book out. This was done in 2003, which was a long time ago. But in here, in this book, let me just—[flipping through pages]—the—when you see what they—when you ask me about, uh—[looking at a particular page]—uh, where is it? [flips through more pages] And then you all—she’s probably going to edit this, but that’s okay. Because I was asked that question that you were just asking, and [still flipping through pages] LK: About the natural— DC: I found it. Okay, I had said here, on here “preserving tradition” and this is, you know― [turning the booklet to Linda to show her the specific pages]—I ended up being in the booklet, okay, okay, on this Indian Rock Project [shows front cover] You could probably go online, you know, and download it, because they don’t have any more of these booklets. But, when you asked me that question, I said [she’s reading from the booklet] “a lot of our things are being destroyed. If you look at our environment around us, we have development, development, development. Juncus and all the plants that we use for actually making the baskets are being destroyed. When we are out driving, we stop, we get out there, and we take pictures. I want to find a spot, notify the nearest reservations, notify the Forestry, notify the developers—“Can we go in? Can we pick? Can we transplant? Because if you are going to develop it and destroy it, let us go in.” That was a statement that I had made, you know, for—for, for, like an interview for this booklet. So— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then it went on [flipping through booklet again] into who I am or whatever. But, um, yes, the development. And so more developers now are finding out that if you do have—if you do identify traditional materials and stuff, they are now trying to hopefully preserve ‘em, or to have you come in and take them, or use them. But it is. Southern California is, gets hit with a lot of development because you look around here and you’re looking at it. I’m looking at the Mission San Juan—Mission, excuse me, San Luis Rey Mission. If you ever go by there, and stuff 11 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 like this, you’ll see we had wetlands there right next to it, and through the Lavanderia and right next to the Mission, what’s happening now? The Mission leased it out, or sold it, whatever you want to say—99-some years. You’ve got this big, huge retirement center going in there. It’s like a resort. They are built on the wetlands, and uh, there went something that was natural, native, etc., and it’s being developed. You drive around to different places now, here in San Diego County, and you’re seeing development. So, it’s really hard on— LK: Everywhere you look. DC: Yeah, and I just don’t understand, for me, where they’re getting their water from. Because if we have a resource of, of water—that’s one of the things that we don’t have here in southern California. We have to bring it in from other places. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: How can you develop and, and, and bring in people, more and more people, so how are you going to give them water? Feeding you know—if you’re going to feed, you’ve got the grocery stores yet, or whatever. You still can’t even have farmland any more hardly, but water. Water is essential for all living things. So, where they come, the water? I mean, the lease on the Colorado River is coming up. That was only a 99-year agreement. How are they going to negotiate that, if they want to stop the Colorado River from coming in? You know, I know they’re doing desalting plant, but that’s not even good for the ocean, you know, and not even good for us as people. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: So, um, that’s a big question that I ask. Every time I drive around and see these developments, you know, and it’s money. It’s politics and money. Okay, we can go on. We won’t go into that—[laughs] LK: Well, going back to the baskets— DC: Okay. LK: Can you tell us some of the natural fibers that you use, natural plants you use in the baskets. DC: Okay. LK: The traditional— DC: —Traditional plants. In the state of California, we have over 243 different tribes, 26 different dialects of language, and each one of the—in California, it’s kind of divided up, like in northern, central, and southern, and we all don’t use the same plants. Here in southern California, we basically use about five. And that would be Juncus textilis, which is a green reed that grows near water. It needs water. It’s like a tule, if you’ve seen tule in― LK: Mm-hmm. DC: ―these wetlands, and stuff, or at these lakes, lagoons, but it’s not cornered or— Tule has three—is three-sided. Juncus textilis, is round. It’s a round reed, and it grows up straight. It 12 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 could—If you know how crab grass grows, it has, is that right? How it goes—what do you call that [gestures with her right hand, pointing straight and making curves in a snake-like fashion]— you know, you pull it out of the shoots— LK: Uh-huh. DC: —you know, like crab grass— LK: Yeah. DC: And, anyway, uh, depending on where it’s growing at and the materials that are in the— minerals—excuse me—that are in the soil, the bottom of the root type of thing, where the shaft comes out of there, the reed comes out of that shaft, it’ll have color on it. And it’s either from a deep light brown, mahogany color, to a deep red mahogany color. And, I didn’t bring any of those baskets with me. I was going to, okay, but maybe I should have, but I didn’t. If you ever notice some of the traditional baskets, you’ll see this deep red color or brown color— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: That’s usually coming from the Juncus on the, on the end of the shaft on there, bottom part, which is in the ground. It’s green when you plant—It’s green when you collect it. You have to process it. It takes time. It grows with poison oak. That’s another thing. We call it—it’s our protector. The only time we go and gather the Juncus textilis is when we say the poison oak goes to sleep, and that only means that the leaves are gone. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But it’s still going to be contaminated, probably, with poison oak. And that’s why we don’t teach it as much, because some people don’t want to be dealt with, with poison oak. That’s what, that’s the reed that we use for coiling. Okay? And that takes a process, splitting, etc., and getting it ready. It takes anywhere from six months to a year to even get your material ready to do a basket. The next one that we use for our start would be the center, which is the center of the basket, is yucca. And that, again, is that—what is it, yucca—uh, the Whippi? Or they call it the “Lord’s Candle.” It think you’ve seen it down by the road. You’ll see it growing on the hillsides. There’s different ways to use that. Some people will take the dead leaves, those great big green ones that they have and they grow pretty, even from the agave— LK: Mm-hmm. DC:—and the yucca. When you see those dead ones, or dried out, in the desert, etc., you can take those and you can soak them really, really big in a big tub, and then you take that, and you pound it. And you just keep pounding it, when they’re—you know, when you’re drying them. And they’ll—they’ll turn fibrous, like string— LK: Oh. 13 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 DC:—and that’s how you get your yucca sandals, and things like that, that they use in fiber, or your cordage. The other way you can do is with the yucca is you take the center of the new shoots that are coming out, before it becomes a flower in the stalk. [gestures up with an open hand] You take that, and you twist it, and you get about 30 or 40 small, small [gestures to indicate smallness of an object] little leaves, and then you take those and you shred ‘em with a needle—we do—or pound them, and uh, you don’t need to go out there anymore because you’re not going to make 30 or 40 bags in your lifetime, as far as I know. I’m not going to. But you have enough to where you don’t have to go out there and gather them. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Then, deer grass. People use deer grass as a native plant for decoration or whatever, because it’s drought tolerant. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But it’s not that Pampas grass that you see waving from that Africa—that African one is an invasive plant. I wish people would just take it away, and these nurseries—just take it out, you know get it—because that Pampas grass kills everything on the native plants. It just takes over. And deer grass is similar to it, but it doesn’t have that fan on the top. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And, uh, the deer grass, we gather that and we take the shoots or the stems on them, and we gather, and that’s what we coil around [gestures in a coiling fashion with both hands] So, the traditional, for the Mission baskets they called here that the Luiseño use, Cahuilla use, Kumeyaay use, the Cupeno use here in southern California, even the Chumash further up, and your Tongva and your different people. We do a coiling technique. Okay? So have you ever seen those baskets in museums, etc., you’ll see that one by one, they’re coiling. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: They’re coiling the Juncus textilis. They’re coiling around with sticks that they use, which would be deer grass. And the center star that you see in the middle [creates a circle with her fingers on her left hand] is done with yucca. And sometimes it’s also done with Juncus on Juncus, or Juncus on Deer Grass. It all depends who the weaver is, etc. Since we have to gather that, and we can’t find it all over, you know what we do, we try to really work with the forestries, and private owners, and people. Try and get them to plant. It’s not easy to plant the Juncus textilis because it’s not going to grow everywhere. So, there’s different areas that do have it. If you want to see Juncus textilis, where it’s at, you can see it in the public, it’s in the public discovery center there in Carlsbad. LK: Oh. DC: They have a good—kind of like a little garden, that they have it growing there. And the deer grass and the yucca. And that was done because we worked with the Discovery Center years ago with Cal State San Marcos and the students. And we did all the planting there, when it was there. So, if you want to see that, I would go there and visit it. And you can see what the Juncus textilis 14 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 looks like. See, uh—[sighs]—but doing basketry is that—what I have here is samples. I did bring a basket. I just brought these hair pieces that I’ve made for my two granddaughters [shows beautiful, small round woven hairpieces]. Can you see them okay?— LK: Yes, yes. DC: Out of Juncus. If you see, this one here is a little bit darker, and the black there [now holding only one of the hairpieces, with a woven black ring in the mid-region of the weave, and gesturing to this area] is dyed Juncus, okay? Now, that Juncus, um, was dyed with—[looking at the hairpiece now, more intensely]—I don’t know, this was given to me, [chuckling] the dyed Juncus, so I’m assuming they did it with, um, elderberry leaves, okay, and um, put in the Juncus, and in a can, okay, or, or like a coffee can that’s all rusty. And what you do—you put the rusted can in there. You have your Juncus already split and put into the weaver, and then you put, um, into a coffee can [gesturing to show the size of the can] and it’s all rusty. You put some rusty nails in it at the bottom, and then you start layering it with the Juncus textilis. It’s the process. And on top of that you put elderberry leaves, and you keep going ‘til you fill it. [gestures indicating layers building up] Then you fill it with water. LK: Oh. DC: And then you let the water—and then you put that can somewhere so it can ferment. It’s like I tell you, it’s got to get all yucky and like, rotten, and what it is is that it probably turns black. And it’s—and you’re getting the iron—what do you call that? Iron oxide?— LK: Uh-huh. DC: —from the, from the nails and from the rusty can. Then when you empty it out, your Juncus is black. LK: Wow. DC: Dyed black. And that’s also what’s coming from the elderberry leaves. Another way that our ancestors did it was that during the creeks they knew where there was iron oxide in the soil, in the sand. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: They would get their Juncus, and they would bury it in that sand. They’d come back, weeks later or whatever, and dig it out, and it’ll be black. Another way they do it, up in northern California, and in here too, is using walnuts, because we had, you know—black walnuts is a native plant of California. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And so they would take the shells, crunch ‘em up, you know shells, the outside shell, they’re called, and if you’ve ever picked walnuts, you know that your hands get black? LK: Yeah. 15 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 DC: Okay, because that—on the hull—because you take that, well they’ll take that hull and chop it up, and then put in water, and put your Juncus in there, and with the walnut there, and they’ll turn black, too. LK: Wow. DC: That’s just one other way. It takes time. And they also use the acorn husk, or the shell of the acorn, and the black acorn, or any of the acorns, crush ‘em up again and put them in water, put the Juncus in there, and then you have to leave it. So it is a time consuming deal. So these are two headpieces I did. Now, when we get to the schools—when you get to the school— [holds up a small woven basket] this is a little basket that I’ve had for years. But this is not a native material. This material that we use for teaching is from, okay, rattan. Everybody knows what rattan is. Rattan has a pith in it. Rattan and bamboo look similar but bamboo is hollow. Rattan is got the pith. To get the pith out of the rattan, pull it, press it, and make cane. This is how you get cane. LK: Oh. DC: And so what we use here, is that you can buy cane in different rounds, or different sizes or gauges. You can get it flat. You can get it round. Uh, we get the round, and this is called Cherokee Single Wall twine. I call it, uh—we have our own twine, excuse me, but it’s not like this one, the Luiseño. And why I use Cherokee is because one of the easiest ones that the kids can use at school. It’s the closest thing that I can get to the river cane, from the Cherokee and Choctaw and the people there, in Oklahoma and that area, will use, because they go and pick their river cane. We don’t have river cane here in California. If we do have it, I wouldn’t want to go down there because it’s probably contaminated. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: It’s got all those other things, and they probably sprayed it a lot with pesticides. And so this is what we teach in school, and I call it “Cherokee Single Walled Twine.” We make the starts. The kids can make one of these [holding up a skein of yarn] within an hour, even the adults, over two hours. And maybe not this size, maybe a little bit bigger. But this way, they don’t have any allergies or con― such so far, uh, getting sick from it. Because, I can’t guarantee our native traditional plants that we do use aren’t—it doesn’t have some type of pesticides on it, or some poisons on it that we’re not aware of. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And we use our mouth [wipes her right hand across her mouth] a lot for our third hand when we’re weaving with our traditional materials. LK: Because you have to keep them— DC: We have to keep them very moist. LK: Moist. 16 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 DC: Everything has to moist. It has to be pliable. It has to be moist. If you’re going to be weaving with almost anything, even with cloth, even with weeds, even with flowers or stems or, you know, branches. We do use willow, though, okay? Aurora willow, or the willow tree. We make baskets out of that too. If you ever notice the big acorn granaries, they call ‘em, have you ever seen them on pictures— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: —that the tribes had next to their kiichas or their ewaks for here in southern California, even northern California. They have great big acorn granaries. Those are made out of willow. They’re woven green, and when they’re woven green, uh, then they let―they dry. But do they use willow? Willow is a natural insecticide. It keeps the insects away from the acorns. And that’s why they have them high up on a stilt like, or platform, to keep their small animal away from them, or whatever. But if they do―these small animals try to get to the acorn, then they can also plug it up, or whatever. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But those acorn granaries can last for hundreds of years, you know. They’ve found, when they’ve done research, you know, in the mountains or at their villages, you’ll see a granary that is still up. But, it’s a natural insecticide. People don’t realize that the willow is a natural insecticide— LK: That’s interesting. DC: —to weave with it. LK: So, in traditional weaving, was it always the women, the tribal women, that did the baskets or did men— DC: I would say— LK: —create baskets as well? DC: Uh, yeah. Traditionally, mostly it was the women and the girls, okay? Because you’ve got to think about—before contact, especially here in California, we’re the last native people that were contacted as they came west— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: ―our baskets were used for cooking, for storage, for gifting, for birthing, for death. And that was our—they were utilized for everything. And that’s why they can say that “Mission baskets were woven so tight that they can hold water.” LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Well, yes and no. The only reason why they can hold water is that the deer grass in what they’ve coiled around swells. [laughs] LK: Oh. 17 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 DC: So, but they also had the—and when they cooked in them, they used another plant that we do. It’s more fire resistant. And that’s your Trius lobata, or your sumac. And that’s kind of―it’s white. Have you ever seen baskets that have more of a white bottom to it? LK: Mm-hmm. DC: That’s because it’s usually with sumac, and that one has a resistance to fire. But, only be— resistance, how can I say this—fire tolerant but not to a point. When they cooked in baskets, the cooking baskets, they were done with a stick that they’d keep moving [circles her right arm as if stirring], and they were used with river rocks, hot rocks in there. Central northern California used lava rocks a lot, but that had been tumbled in the rivers. But the ones that are here, we would probably get the smooth river rocks, and then you heat them up and then you put them into the basket, and you have to keep stirring them [makes a stirring motion with her right hand] into that food. Men probably did the baskets that were, um, that were for fishing, like the fish traps, or your great big, huge granaries,― LK: Oh, yeah. DC: Okay, on that? And they’re made out of the willow. Um, they didn’t make them—northern California, they made ‘em a lot of out of the different plants up there, the branches there. But, almost all of them are made out of willow, you know, because it was pliable to work with. But, that’s your bigger gathering baskets or fish traps, etc., you know. But mainly, it’s mostly the women. But men did do that. We do have men today that are top weavers, um, so, we even have one in our tribe that’s a fantastic weaver [chuckles]. LK: So, it’s a form of functional art. I mean, ‘cuz it is a form of art. That’s what— DC: Well, it didn’t become a form of art until it—until I would say, after contact— LK: Right. DC: —because it was a utility that we had to use, you know. It was something. LK: Right. It was functional. DC: Yeah, and I say, you know, when pots and pans came out, I, I would have been one that threw the baskets away. [laughs] Let’s use a pot, too, you know. LK: [laughs] DC: It’s just like when you gather your foods, you know. I gather the acorn and I make that wiiwish, we call it, the acorn mush. I use a processor to crack all my—you know, to mix it up, you know, and get the nuts, ground it down. You know, if you ever see these, um,—how can I say these—we call them gathering, gathering spots or metates are these big rocks that have the holes in them—the grinding area, they call ‘em grinding stones, grinding— Can you imagine the woman that’s sitting there, or a child, or whatever, pounding acorn to get a meal out of it, you know, to get it real fine like a flour. And, and how long they pound it up there to get those holes in there. How old! You can just tell the age of the—by looking at these grinding areas, or 18 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 grinding rocks that you see, how, how hard they must have done it, so it just—it didn’t happen overnight, to make those holes, you know, in those rocks. It had to be― LK: Right. DC: [gesturing in a pounding motion] ―years and years of processing. And, uh, I’ve tried it. We have two in our backyard, and I didn’t last five minutes. Raising that rock, that pestle, over my head and pounding the acorn, okay? I mean, I couldn’t, after that, I couldn’t raise my hand after five minutes, or even three minutes. My mom was laughing at me out there― LK: [chuckles] DC: ―you know, and I said “Our women must have had—the women must have had shoulders and— LK: Strong arms. DC: —biceps, strong arms, to do that, daily, every day, to get the acorn to get it ready for the mush because that was a staple for the people, you know, because the acorn—wiiwish, we call it—or the, um, what do they call it, with the Kumeyaay, um—we call it wiiwish, they call it, um, okay, I’ve got to think about it. I know it starts with an ‘s.’ But anyway, um, everyday. Because, see, that’s 100% protein. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: The acorn is 100% protein. So, it was a staple and it was also a replacement for when they didn’t have any meat, you know, so it was always used. So, when these processors came through, they said “Diania, how come you don’t do it the traditional way?” I said “Uh-uh” [shaking her head] I said “my ancestors would have popped in that, those electrical things to plug in, they would have used it too.” I said “There’s no way I’m going to go out there and you know, [she and Linda start laughing] and pound.” I mean it’s kind of like a joke but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s—you know, you know, when progress comes, I’m sure they, they would have—they wouldn’t have stayed with their old ways. That’s how I look at it. [chuckles] LK: Circling back, you mentioned a few institutions like Cal State San Marcos, The Discovery Center in Carlsbad, CIBA, and you’re part of the Pesticide― DC: Oh, Tribal― LK: ―with the National Parks? DC: Well, I belong also to the Tribal Pesticide Program Council through EPA. And that’s because of the pesticides and insecticides and stuff that effect our, our plants. A lot of people don’t realize that, when they see our traditional plants, they think they’re weeds. LK: Oh. DC: And they’ll spray them. Or also, that, um―there’s drifts that happen and if you have native plants that are growing near there, and you’re not aware of the native plants that are there, and if 19 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 how they’re spraying, and if the wind comes up [she makes a “whoosh” sound, and waves her hand in a broad sweep to indicate wind over field], the drift will go over there. There’s no signs that tell you that “Hey, we’re going to be spraying today!” LK: Mm-hmm. DC: County doesn’t even tell you that, I mean, unless they come around, you know. The mosquitoes, like in Central California, Sacramento, they post it, because with all those rice fields that they have up there, they have to. They have to do that, spraying for the mosquitoes. And they do it by helicopter. And I’ve been up there when they’ve done that, and they’ve got notices all over―“Shut Your Windows”, “Shut Your House”, “Stay in Your House Between This Hour and This Hour”― because they’re coming in and just sprayin’ and it goes all over your cars, etc., out there. In the University of Davis, Woodland, in that area. So, but they don’t do that too much down here, okay. So, when you don’t know about it, and then you see the plants and you’re going to go through it, you don’t know if it’s been sprayed or anything, or drifted on. And then you pick it, and then you get it, and you put it in your mouth, or whatever, you smell it to see if it is, you get hit. And I’ve had, that’s how I got into pesticides. I went to pick a plant that I thought that the only way you can identify it is to smell it, so I popped it [gestures breaking a stem open] like you know you see you pop it, and I stuffed it up one nostril and within five minutes my whole side of my face went red [gestures a swipe across right side of her face]. Rushed in to Rincon Indian Health Center. They said “Diania, what did you do?” I says “okay, this is where I was at.” And, I had a chemical reaction, that it was sprayed, that it somehow got sprayed. And so I was on―the first time I got steroids, and shot with steroids and it’s five-four-three-two-one [gestures counting on fingers], you know, you’re taking all those pills, five days. Found out that the golf courses are the worst [chuckles] people, or development, or whatever, that use herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, any type of your “cides” they said, because they want to keep their grass green and they want to keep their flowers beautiful and colorful. They don’t want any rodents. They don’t want anything upsetting that golf course out there. And if you have any native plants that are near there, uh, they’re probably going to get hit with that type of thing. And the golf course is another one that doesn’t tell you that they’re spraying. I don’t, I’ve never gone by a golf course that said “Hey, we’re spraying today. There’s a sign.” And I worry about the people that are out there golfing, okay. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You know, and I love to watch golf. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, I enjoy, I’m not a golfer but I love watching the Masters and stuff. And it goes through my head, when these guys are out there, and the women, you know, and they’re walking in it, but you don’t know if they’ve been told about the spraying, or you know, if they have an asthma thing, or, or something like that. So what happened was that I got into pesticide with CIBA. [chuckles, and reaches to her left for a brochure] So then I was working, we worked with a brochure [laughs, and shows for the camera a brochure, then reads the front of it] they call, it’s called “Pesticides: What Basket Weavers Should Know.” But, this doesn’t just tell you for basket weavers. It’s for everybody― LK: Mm-hmm. 20 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 DC: ―okay? And the contact people [flips the brochure over, and points to the back side of the brochure] like for here in Southern California, you’ve got the contact if you’ve had this. It just tells you what to look for on native plants, if they look dead, if they’re doing anything. [opens brochure and looks inside] I’m trying to get EPA right now to try to start making us some more of these, but if I have some more, [turns the inside of the brochure to face the camera] like if I gave you, you know, some handouts that you could make your own, you know. They don’t have to be in color. [closes brochure, but still holds it up] But, it’s just an awareness about pesticides when you’re out there. And it, you don’t have to be gathering. You can just be taking a trail ride out there, or hiking. Your animals could come back with pesticides or insecticides on them, and then you have your kids rubbing them [gestures petting an animal], and playing with them, and hugging them, and then you wonder also why your child is coming out with a rash. Why are they coughing? Why are they sneezing? And so, most of the time, it’s some type of spraying and it’s out there. So I sit on that, that, across the United States, we’ve got all the tribes. But the bigger tribes like the, your Black Feet and your Crow, etc. you know, they, they lease their land, because they’ve got millions of acres on their reservations. So they lease their lands to Montanyo [sounds unsure]. One of that does soy beans, and corn, and all these big guys. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But they need to have the pesticides, but they’re trying to regulate it more so especially on native ground or Indian country, because, um, they don’t want to be digesting it. They don’t want this corn and everything that is going out to the public to be digested, because if you go on to a lot of your other farms and stuff like this, they’re not telling you what the pest―what is being used. But the, in the Indian country, they want to make sure it’s safe. They don’t want to get sick. They don’t want their own families to get sick. So, it’s a big political thing. But what had happened in northern California, how this—how CIBA became involved in the 90s, about ’93, is that the weavers in northern California get their―they use a lot of roots. LK: Mmm— DC: And they use a lot of willow roots. So, during the―on the rivers of northern California, they go high. But when they recede down, that’s when the roots stick out from the, from the banks where all the willow trees are growing. And so they go into the water, and they’re picking from the banks of the river, all the roots coming out [gesturing pulling something towards her]. LK: Uh-huh. DC: Okay? When you kind of think of, when the water is high [gestures raising up as in water level], this is where the roots are going. They’re going to get water for the, for the trees. Well, industry up nor―up, up river, where they call, where they, where it is coming down into the river, they were dumping chemicals into the water— LK: Hmmm— DC: —as a dump. You’re talking about the lumber mills, some of the uh, other industrial things are doing it. That’s what was stuck in the salmon, also. And so the weavers were doing it. Then 21 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 all of a sudden they were finding their elders the weavers were getting cancer around their mouth [gesturing around her mouth] LK: Oh, no. DC: And they were getting cancer inside. They were losing their teeth [pointing at her teeth]. And they couldn’t figure out why. Because it wasn’t just happening to just one tribe. It was happening to all the ones that, that were gathering, you know. You’re talking the Pomo, the Uroquois, the Hupas, the Kuroks. All the ones that use this type of material. And so in ’93, they found out that, they had EPA come out. They had this whole thing. They wrote a paper on it, a risk assessment, and found out that it was chemicals in the water when they tested the waters on these big ones. And so that started, for CIBA anyway, with the pesticides— LK: Huh. DC: —to get on there, to be more sort of a―― how can I― a public, you know, awareness. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You can only educate. You can’t stop it. You can only, you know. That’s why you have all these, um, lawsuits right now, happening in northern California and their waters. Look at the salmon. What’s happening, not just in California, but in Oregon and Washington with― because of the chemicals. Uh, you can’t, sometimes you can’t even eat, you know, some of that salmon because they can’t even go upstream, because when they come upstream, they come back sick. And the worst one is in Alaska. LK: Right. DC: See, people don’t want to hear about Alaska. But everything that we use down here in, in, in the “mainland” they call it, the chemicals, anything, okay, it all goes into our atmosphere, right? [points upward with both hands]. I mean, you spray, and it’s going to go up. LK: Yep. DC: Okay, when it goes up, where does it go? It goes to the Poles. [gestures as if touching top and bottom of a globe] North Pole, north pole is getting it mostly. South Pole is not as much, because they don’t get that drift like they did. But what it did, it collects up here [circles her hand in a rotating motion] in the atmosphere, and what it is, over Alaska in the Arctic area. That’s why it’s cleaning out too. Because it’s just going around, all these chemicals. It, it forms a warmth and a heat. And that why, that’s what’s, and now when it rains up there, it drops down [laughs, and gestures as if something is falling] into their land and into their trees, and into their plants, and they’re contaminated. And it’s all because of us down here, meaning, I’m saying “us”, mainland and you know, uh, North, Central, South America, all of us, you know, Europe, that using all these different chemicals and things like this, and drifts up [raises her hands up], collects in that atmosphere up there [circles in the air with her left hand], goes to the North Pole. It’s going around and around. It rains, or whatever, and it comes down, [indicates rain coming down, with both hands] and that’s why Alaska is having all those problems right now with their 22 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 food [gestures as if counting on her left hand], climate change, the heating, etc. And, uh, a lot of it is the use of chemicals and pesticides. LK: Well, what started out as a― DC: [chuckles] LK: ―lessons in patience for you― DC: [bursts out laughing] LK: You’ve expanded your knowledge to all aspects of basketry and, and working with other organizations. So, I know those aren’t the only ones you work with, though, and I can list a couple just to jog your memory. I know you work with Camp Pendleton. DC: Oh, well yeah, well, Camp Pendleton is― LK: And Daly Ranch. DC: Daly Ranch. Well, Daly Ranch was because [sighs] I went to, I went to be a docent. Okay? Because I had to find something to do after, you know, I, and that I, before I had my surgery, I became a docent, and I wanted to do the trails. Okay? The native trails. But when I had, after my surgery, I couldn’t do the walking anymore. And so they did have a small “Indian program” you know, on there. And one of the rangers I, you know, I, I love him dearly, he’s still there, we worked together, he was the one that was doing the Native American aspect of the Daly Ranch, what they would give to the public and school district. Fifteen minutes [gestures making air quotes] is all he would have. So I went through his training, on the docents, and he brought in a native person from souther―from Kumeyaay territory, I think, a weaver. I can’t think who the weaver is now. She did a display and stuff. And so Ranger Robert, I think I mentioned him, he did a lot, because of his sons were in Boy Scouts, you know, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Eagle Scouts, and they had to do a lot of the native areas of, on there. So he made a lot of the artifacts that the Daly Ranch uses and I use right now for exhibit. And he learned about the plants, and the foods, etc. Well, he went to serve wiiwish, acorn. And when he served it, it was great. And I just went “What?”, you know. And it, it was [gesturing as if saying ‘no’ with her fingers] I don’t know. And I’m going asking “How did you do this?” Well, he used the acorn, but he didn’t use the acorns that we normally would use. He used a different type of acorn. And how he fixed it, or whatever. And so, when we had our barbeque when we graduated from the docent class, I went home [laughs] and I made the ______________. This is supposed to look like, okay, you know, our wiiwish does that. And he says “well, teach me!” So we started working together. Then they asked me if I would come in and do the native American part, you know, with the Daly Ranch. Daly Ranch through the 7th graders and the whole school district, in Escondido School District, they run the 7th graders through there for 6 weeks, in the Daly Ranch, twice a week, like a Tuesday and a Wednesday, from 8 o’clock until 2. And we do about two hundred some a day. LK: Wow! DC: I’m the native American part of it, and they do plants, and then they do insects, and then they do the large predators, you know, and then they, the tricks. But, I’m the native American 23 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 portion of it. It started out as 15 minutes, and now all of a sudden, now I’m doing about 35 minutes, and just expanding it— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: —to get them knowing that this was our first―you know, Daly Ranch is on the, one the land of native peoples. There’s, there’s areas out there on Daly Ranch that the public can’t see, that know that they’re―they live there. They have artifacts, etc., on that. So, um, and I got asked to, to do that. It’s all voluntarily. If I get paid from anything for doing that―I’ve been doing that going on 16 years now―it’s a surprise for me, because they do it through grants. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: I started out, like I said, volunteering, and it had expanded it to bigger working with Fred Wood, who’s a retired school teacher, you know, from a junior high, 8th grade. And I started with my cousin, Kathy Wallace, who’s our story teller now, and her son Brandon―he was about 9 or 10 years old―we would do it together. Well, it got to a point to where she expanded out [gestures expansion thrusting her right hand out away from her], you know, he got older. And so, I had Teeter Romero used to come down for me and help me, from San Juan Capistrano. And then, also now, I got it for myself and it’s hard to get people to want to take it over. Because the first question they ask “Well, how much do you get?” And I says “Nope.” I says “I can’t guarantee you anything on that. If I get paid, it’s a surprise for me at the end of the six weeks, depending on how much the grant through—It’s through a grant, that they get― LK: Right. DC: ―that. That’s to the Friends of the Daly Ranch. Even though the Daly Ranch is owned by the city of Escondido, this Friends of the Daly Ranch and the docents do it because of they want to. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: The only ones that really get paid on there is the rangers, because they’re employees of the city of Escondido. LK: Right. DC: And uh― LK: But that’s not the only institution that you do work. You, you go to elementary schools and― DC: Well, yeah, I have. I did elementary schools. I think, you know, we do―like San Elijo. We’ve been doing that for seven years, and that’s during that one basket that I just showed you, with the Cherokee style. We do third graders there. [sighs] Before they built that new elementary school, we were doing anywhere from 2 to 300 hundred a day, in well, one day. We had it for 35 minutes, at 70, at the time. And then, because they had a program going. Kathy would be the story teller. They had adobe making. They had―and so these children are going [gestures in a 24 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 round circle with her right hand] all day, every half hour they’re going to another, another thing. I would have four weavers come in to help me. And then we would give a quick 10-minutes, 5minute thing with parent volunteers, to come in and help to, to and I think you’ve even done it before, [chuckles] to just help these students. And so you’d have all these third graders in one room, sittin’ on the floor, on these things, ten, ten to a circle so I know it’s seventy, because we had seventy cir―seven circles in there. We’d done seventy at the time, forty-five at the time, and then within thirty-five minutes, you know, they’re done. If they didn’t finish this basket [holds up small basket which can fit in the palm of her hand] in their time, then they would take them with them and complete it in their ar—in their art department students. So we’ve been doing that for quite a while. I’ve done the thing with Cal State San Marcos with their students up there, giving the demonstrations, etc., given a talk. And then even teaching the students, you know, the basketry. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Same thing with the senior center, in El Corazon [gestures to Linda]. LK: El Corazon. DC: We just did that for three days, and they really enjoyed it. LK: We cannot leave out one other entity, which was the Mission— DC: —Oh! LK: —San Luis Rey. How could we forget that. DC: [laughs] You know, she’s sees, she’s getting me into the basketry thing, here. Um, San Luis Rey—people don’t understand. San Luis Rey is one of the missions here that is not part of the diocese, or owned by the Catholic Church, per se. They’re owned by the Franciscan order of the Catholic Church. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Or, errr, I’m not—I’m a Catholic, but I’m not that kind. I’m not a practicing Catholic. Let’s put it that way. But, um, so they’re owned by the Franciscans. San Luis Rey, Santa Barbara, and there’s one more, and I’m going to better learn that one too because there’s three missions in the state of California that are not part of the “Catholic.” San Juan Capistrano is part of the Orange County diocese. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And they bring in the most money for the missions in the state of California. San Juan Capistrano does, because you’ve got to pay to get in, you know, and everything else. But anyway. The friars—well, they’re not—they’re friars—the Franciscan order, um, are there, at the San Luis Rey Mission. You don’t know that they’re there, because they’re not really public other than when you see ‘em walking around in their brown robes. They have a retreat there. They live there. They study there. They go through their schooling, sometimes, there at the San Luis Rey Mission. And I was notified by Gwen, the director, and Helena, whose at the museum, that they 25 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 were having a retreat there. And they wanted a activity, and so Gwen says “Contact Diania, and see if they want to do a basketry.” Well, Father David, or Brother David—he’s up at Santa Barbara now—he used to be here at San Luis Rey, and my brother used to work with him. And he knew I did baskets. That’s why he probably agreed. But these Franciscans were coming from all over the world. They weren’t just coming from the United States. They were coming as novices; ones that are almost going to graduate into their order; some that were graduated already into the order; some that were retiring from the order. Some they didn’t speak English. And, um, there was forty, almost fifty of them. LK: Forty-six. DC: Forty-six of them, and they were there for a week [chuckles] And they asked “Diania, would you mind doing, you know, a demonstration and talking about the basketry, or people, etc.?” My brother videoed it, you know, and I haven’t really even seen it yet. I think he gave you a copy, right? LK: It’s great. DC: Okay. I have to give Roberta—not Roberta, but Reinette and Ella Sue, I think, also. But, um, I says “Okay, I need four weavers, and uh, to do this.” And we did that in the back of the mission, and here I was expecting—when we were setting up, all of us were expecting—there’s Linda Kallas, Ella Sue Snyder (she’s a Acjachemen), Reinette (I can’t pronounce her last name. My cousin—Reinette Omah, Olvera, but I can’t pro—) LK: Olvera. DC: Yeah, but she goes by that Italian married— LK: Contreras. DC: No, no. It starts with an “A” [indicates a letter “A” as if writing in the air]. Anyway. LK: Okay. DC: And you, and me, okay. Linda was—Linda, who was going to interview me, she goes “Me?” and I says “Oh yeah. You know how to do these! You’ve been sittin’ with us for a while. You can come in here.” And we’re going to do the Cherokee style basket. I just gave a talk about our traditional materials, etc. So, we get all set up and here come these men, you know, coming through. You know, I, I was expecting them to come into—with their robes on. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You know, their brown robes. That’s what I was expecting. Here these men come in. They’re in shorts. They got T-shirts on that say “Surf’s Up!” you know. All these different things coming home with these hats, sandals, barefoot, you know. I mean, they’re coming from the retreat area, you know, tennis shoes on, and all different ages. And it was interesting because I’m going “Whoa, okay.” You would have, you would have put them on the street. You would not have known that they were friars, okay. And, uh, like I said, all ages. They had a—we had a 26 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 good time, laughing, etc. Like I said, we do have that, um, if you knew my brother did with that. They were all anxious. They made beautiful baskets. [laughs] LK: They were so impressed with you, and um— DC: You know. LK: They were so grateful and so full of gratitude for learning that skill— DC: Yeah. Well, we took a lot— LK: They really enjoyed it. DC: Well, we took a picture, a group picture, at the end and then we had all their baskets on top of that one rocker area. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And you can see that these baskets—[turning to her left, and reaching for something] I showed you this [holds up the little basket that she showed previously in the interview] and this is mine. But that doesn’t mean that you’re going to make the same thing like this. Your basket is, is going to be completely different. Even though they start out the same, your basket will be with what you create with your hands. [puts down basket] And so that’s what they were really impressed with, because we had some beautiful baskets. You had some real nice round ones [gestures a round object]. You had flat ones [gestures flat object]. You had long ones [gestures a tall object] and they just had a good time. LK: They cherished them, right? DC: Oh, it was a—it was—it was—it was rewarding, you know, on that. But that’s what happens when we do that. We did it with the seniors— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: —out there, and they all thought that they were going to be making their own little ba— baskets that we showed them. And then when they finally was looking at it, even the men there, you know, everything was different. And so, that’s what I enjoyed about the baskets. Even with the kids, you know, they don’t— No two baskets are alike. LK: Exactly. And, expanding on that, we have the elementary school named Pablo Tac after a Luiseño native that was educated in the Mission. But also, you’re—you have an opportunity to demonstrate there coming up, correct? DC: Yes, coming up on November 4th, 2022. I’ll be demonstrating and so will Roberta— hopefully Reinette will be there—traditional weaving. We’re not going to be teaching. That’s probably, hopefully coming up next year. LK: Yes. DC: You know, on that. We just had the demonstration also at Camp Pendleton. 27 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Uh, there. I’m a docent for the Santa Margarita Ranch and Lost Forest Ranch, docent there at Camp Pendleton. But I’ve been working with the Archaeology department since, uh, ugh, ‘90s with Stan Berryman and then Danielle [Page], and now Kelly Bracken is in charge of it so—. Because we have a lot of sites there on ran—on Camp Pendleton. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: People don’t realize it, that we’ve got over 600 some building sites there, and sites, and sacred sites, etc., on Camp Pendleton, so we’re kept close with the—they’re kept close with the different tribes. And since I’m the weaver in the native plants, I have a different aspect of it. I try to make that, if the plants are out there, please, you know, don’t do this with them, and stuff. So, they notify us that if we have native plants there, do you want us to move them. Do you want to collect them, etc. They do have a native garden there that we do collect the deer grass from, which is up there by the pavilion, behind the new hospital. Um, that way I know they’re not being sprayed, when we go there. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: We just did elderberry tree, um, [chuckles] gathering from the berries, and I made some for your, for you for your husband. I thought I was making jelly, and it ended up being syrup. But he likes, he loves it, you know, ‘cuz we gathered there at Camp Pendleton, because [chuckles again], because then I know that, um, also those aren’t being sprayed. And, so there’s different areas by Camp Pendleton. Plus, with the cultural, okay. And why I started with the, the new General, the Commander-in-Chief, there, at –I can’t think of it. I just—I worked with her, and um, was—a— how?—docent there for the Santa Margarita Ranch. They were going to be the ones dealing with the party. She had her fiesta there, a couple weeks ago. And, um, I didn’t want to just be the docent dressed in the—how can I say this?— We dressed in this Spanish shawl. I don’t know if you’ve seen the docents from center. [gestures to someone other than Linda Kallas, seated to her left] You’ve been there, right? And, uh—Tanis. And, uh, we have that costume [still looking to the other person] or the regalia that they use. I’m comin’ in, because I put these on [hold up her necklace] and I’m, you know, trying to keep the Native American thing going there. And you heard me [points to person off camera, and continues to talk to him/her] this last meeting, you know, and Larry was over here [points to opposite direction, and laughs]. Uh, it’s that, uh, react? That we’ve forgotten, you know, on that. And they do think—they kind of forget us. But anyway, and so I says [still talking to the person off camera] “I’m not going to be a docent. I just—can I come in and do traditional weaving, you know, with our people,” with her. And she just said [shaking her head]—she says “heck yes, please, let’s come in” and stuff. So, um, I had the drapes on there. I wasn’t going to go San Luis Rey Band because we were all San Luis Rey Band members that were going to do this traditional weaving demonstration. But we’re all CIBA members also. So, I used this California Basket weavers —uh, weaving drape on our table. They put us up there, you know, with the rest of them, and, um, I had Mark, who is our weaver, one of our top weavers for our tribe. He had—he was demonstrating his baskets. We were all doing a demonstration, and, and appreciating that, you know, on there. That’s the last 28 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 thing we did on the traditional, you know, weaving thing with Camp Pendleton. Then we’re going to do this one November 4. LK: And then the Jubilation of the Valley Festival? DC: Oh yeah, we’re going to have, coming up in November— LK: —the Luiseño Day. Mm-hmm— DC: —Spirit of the Valley— LK: —Spirit of the Valley. DC: —with Studio Ace. And we’re going to be doing baskets there. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And I’m going to be doing teaching the Cherokee style— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: —okay? It’s not gonna—it’s not Luiseño style. And so we’re going to be doing, uh, [sighs] all day [laughs]— LK: And you’ve been invited— DC: —from 11 to 3. LK: —to do basket weaving at a senior dance at the— DC: Aw, come on now, [gestures pushing away from herself with her right hand] I know. LK: [laughs] DC: It’s just a—thank you, Linda. Um, that’s December 15th. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And that’s coming in because of the senior center over there. That’s just an activity they wanted us to do. Plus, we do basket traditional weaving in front of the Mission, hopefully, every 4th Sunday of the month. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But sometimes we don’t, because we have other things to do. So it’s almost a contact— they—a website, or contact one of us to do that. We do it at Rancho Guajome, but we’ll kind of travel with our weaving person. Um, one of the things I want to say is that I do get feedback sometimes from our own Indian people—“why are you in front of the Mission, Diania?” okay, you know. Because they see a pictures of the background where we’re weaving, and, um—“why are you doing it on the, on the Mission grounds?” I mean, you have this animosity with some of our people that have gone through the Mission system and their ancestors were really treated bad, etc. I’m not going to say the missions were the best things that happened to the indigenous 29 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 people in the state of California, or even in the other missionaries throughout the, throughout the different tribal people— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: —in Indian country. But, I’m trying to tell them “I’ll let you know. I’m not there to, to praise the Mission. Don’t get me wrong, okay? I have my aspects with them, too, but I’m there— we’re there, really, to respect and honor our ancestors that are buried there.” I’ve got a lot of family that’s buried there in that old cemetery. I know our ancestors had built that mission and helped it. We’ve got a lot of ancestors that are buried in those grounds that aren’t in the cemeteries. When you had your epidemics, the pox, the small pox epidemic— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: —there’s a lot of burials in, on those grounds at the Mission that had to do multiple burials real fast. So, we’re there honoring our people. I’m not there to honor the Mission. And, I have to let them know that. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I was raised with the Catholic there. My mom went to school there. My great-grandfather, he was part, you know. Every Sunday it seemed like the Father was always there in his house at the ranch there in the valley, having dinner. But I don’t really have that, um, hatred, or whatever you want to call it— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: —to the Mission system. Yes, they know that they’ve done wrong. My brother and I sit on the committee for the 225 anniversary that’s coming up, honoring San Luis Rey Mission. I’m there on it, and so is he, to make sure the indigenous people aren’t forgotten. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: They’ve got to have something that’s, that’s still representing, you know, them with the ethnic group. We have our powwow there that’s been there for 23 years, you know. We just haven’t had it since Covid. And that’s another thing that’s on the Mission grounds. You have some of the indigenous people who will not come to our powwow because it’s on Indi—on mission grounds. But, to me, that’s personal for them. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: The Mission has not been at a controversy for us. Yes, we know some of our ancestors were treated wrong, you know. You can walk in that Mission, and, um, you can see different things that, um, and the stories you hear, you know, and the longondria <sic> that’s going down there, where they had to do the washing and stuff. You’ve got Pablo Tac. You know, he came from that Mission, and was taught, who can, you know, going back to Barcelona, you know, and Rome also, and is buried over there, and died. But, um, you—we—how can I say this? San Luis Rey Mission, they, the Luiseños around the Mission San Luis Rey weren’t as— LK: It was a— DC: —progressive as 30 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 LK: —Luiseño village, correct? DC: Yes, it was a Luiseño village there, but they didn’t attempt to burn it down like the Kumeyaay did, at the old—in San Diego. They burned that mission down three times [holds up three fingers]. But it comes with people, and how they took it, um, as a, as a rewards system, or whatever. Okay? They were fed! Can you imagine? I mean, ee were nomads and gatherers and movers. Meaning nomadic, it’s not like we moved all over [gestures in a sweeping motion]. It was like we went from ocean to the mountains [points from right to left, indicating movement from west to east] to gather and to the desert [points forward]. You see what I’m saying. As being nomadic. We didn’t have “a permanent” village. We knew what village we came from, but if we had to go, you had people that probably stayed there, the elders, and then the rest went out to gather. But we weren’t a warring people. Sure, we probably fought with the Kumeyaay and any others that came through. But with the Kumeyaay people, they were warring people. Now, they came from the, from the Colorado area. I mean, you’re looking at warriors, you know, came across, and when they were doing that with the missions and stuff, you know, you—they—it was on their land. They, they didn’t like it. They, you know, they, and they, to me, with San Diego Mission, um, and you read the history on that, it, it was, it was harsh. Where here, Father Peri — 'cuz remember, San Luis Rey was the 19th mission. It was the one that—it was at almost the end that it was built. Okay? And San Luis Capistrano really was the 2nd one. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then they come around there [circles her arm] and they built San Luis Rey, 19-what, a number 19, in 1798. Okay? So, you’re looking at all these other missions that were built way before that. Father Peri, he—his system was more with the native people. Yes, you could come, but he let ‘em build around him, also. But it was not the Fathers that were chased in the mission, the Indians. It was the soldiers at the—that’s who were supposedly protecting the Fathers. They were the ones that went out and chased the Indians down. They were the ones that did the punishments, when they had their, their, their soldiers—the ones that were in charge—they took it to their head, you know, I mean, to do the punishment, because as far as native indigenous people were below the Mexican people. You had the Indians [gestures making layers, indicating layers of hierarchy], then you had the Mexicans, the Spaniards, you understand, that, that— LK: Were higher, you know. DC: —hierarchy. So, um, I don’t have that too much on there, you know, with that. Everybody has their own. I have it because the missions only because they kept ‘em down [gestures downward with her right hand], and they did use ‘em—I wouldn’t—I don’t use the word slave, but they—I guess, slave labor. They were the laborers, where else they really didn’t—they didn’t get paid. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You know, on there. And then when the missions were done, and the secularization, when they did that, they were lost. They cried, you know. I mean, they were starving, because of that—and then what had happened, the ranchers got us here, Picos, the Marrons, the Couts, all of 31 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 the rest of them—they went and destroyed the mission. They were, they were tearing it apart. They were taking the beams. They were taking all the statues. They were taking the different things, and using them to build. You know, you get some of these ranchers, they have some of the beams on that are from—that are from the Mission. The artifacts. LK: Wild. DC: You know. But you don’t hear that side of the story. That’s why at Camp Pendleton and Rancho Santa Margarita and them, when it, they hid the stories and that—“Come on, you guys, you know. Pico wasn’t the best guy.” LK: Mm-hmm. DC: He, he was really one of those really against the Indians. LK: So, in addition to your passion and your education with the basketry, you are like a historian of your people, and the area, and I see that you brought some other materials. Is there anything you want share? DC: [again reaching to the left] Well, one of the things is that, uh, okay, and I know that for you, you’re trying to do this. I did study the language [holds up some leaves of paper], but since I didn’t—wasn’t able to have—speak to somebody, I went through the Pechanga — LK: Mm-hmm. DC: —and they sent me to Cal State—I mean, to Riverside, also to the international classes that was there. But since I didn’t have anybody to communicate with [gestures as if transmitting words to another person], it was hard for me. I can read it, and I can probably understand it when they’re—when they start talking to me, you know— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: —get the words right. But I’m fortunate that I did have that. But this is one [looks at paper] of the things that I’m going to share—I’m going to be sharing this at the, uh, Spirit of the Valley, once they get over there. But it’s like this one here, okay? [turns paper toward Linda. The paper is laminated, and has a colored drawing of a deer, with the word ‘şúukat’] You hear that one What’s that? LK: Soosh-kah? Soo-kah— DC: Soos-kwaht, okay? LK: Soos-kwaht. DC: Deer. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Okay. I’m just going to be doing that. This is for the children. Ishwoot? [holds up a laminated drawing of a wolf with word ‘ˈíswut’] What’s that? Ishwoot. 32 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 LK: That is a wolf. DC: Yeah, wolf. Okay? And then this is something that I use with kids [holds up a laminated drawing of a grasshopper with word ‘wiˈét’]. Whee-uht. LK: Grasshopper. DC: Or cricket. LK: Or cricket. DC: Yeah. Whee-uht. And so, you see in these names—why I use these, because you see in these names, being with the native kids now, that they’re being named this. [holds up a laminated drawing of a bear with word ‘húnwut’] LK: Hunwhat. DC: Hunwhat. LK: It’s a bear. DC: It’s a bear. Children are being named that now, with these, especially with these names here, with their—for the children. They’re proud of being called ‘hun-what.’ They’re proud of being called ‘soos-kwaht,’ called—proud of being called ‘whee-uht,’ you know, instead of just being called “cricket,” you know, on there. And so that was one of the things that I found I have been proud to do, you know, on that. And then, also, you have “Tuk-woot” [holds up a laminated drawing of a cougar with word ‘túˈkwet’]. Who is this? LK: A cougar or mountain lion. DC: It’s a cougar, okay? LK: Cougar? DC: You have ‘tuk-woot’ village, ‘tuk-woot’ village, ‘tuk-woot’ court, at Cal State San Marcos! LK: Yes, that’s right! DC: Okay? “Aush-woot?” [holds up a laminated drawing of a hawk with word ‘áşwut’] I know that’s not a [unintelligible] of an eagle, but that’s an ‘aush-woot.’ The eagle. LK: The eagle. DC: Yeah. And these are words that, um, are the alphabet, pretty long, you know, and considered more than 26 letters, that are important to the kids because they can identify with them. You know. I also have a coloring book, and you know, 1-2-3 and stuff like that I’m sharing. But one of these [reaches to the left for something else] that I want to end with, if you don’t mind, is that if, um, [sighs] in 2004, this is the Heritage Keepers [holds up a magazine entitled “Heritage Keepers”]. This is a magazine coming from the Ramon Learning Center [reads back of magazine] 33 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 LK: Hmmm. DC: Okay. And, um, it’s still going on from Banning, California. And I wrote a poem [opening magazine, and finding page where poem is printed], um, and I wanted to read it and share it with you. Is that okay? LK: Yes! I would love that. DC: Okay. It’s that, um, I wrote this poem when I was doing the—learning the Luiseño language, and I had to write this poem because I was, um, trying to pull the words out [gestures as if churning things over in her head] of my head that I knew. And where I was at—it was Teeter Romero and I were up in Rainbow, up there by north of us here. And we were going to go out there to gather Juncus in Gomez Creek area, which is behind Riamb—Rainbow. You gotta go up the mountain. And when we were up there at the top of the hill—it was early in the morning, and we stopped because we looked out towards the valley towards the ocean [points to the left] and that morning it was clear. You can—you could—you could see the, see the ocean shining clear at the, at the other end, which is really not— [shakes her head]. But then you saw El Moro Kukutuk, okay? That’s another story. One day you might have to say it, but Kutukutuk too, is part of our creation story. And you can see that mound really clearly, with the ocean in the background, shimmering, and that mound there in the valley near Camp Pendleton, and Bonsall and Fallbrook area. In this part of our creation story, I got these things in my head as I’m looking at it, and I thought of our people. Because of the creation story, of trying to be saved. They were, they—we had the flood, also, in our creation story. And all I could think of, and was watching it, seeing the ocean shimmering, seeing that mound and thinking of “Oh my God, that’s what came up. The ocean came up.” And the people were running, because the water was coming in and coming in, and they had nothing to save ‘em. And the people from Pechanga were up there on their high point [points up with left hand], which is up there by Rainbow. If you ever go by Pechanga on the back way you’ll see the big hill that’s up there. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: That’s one of their lookouts, and I don’t know that there—the name of it, but it’s a point. And they were looking at the people, you know, the Luiseño people in the valley, running. And all they could do was keep singing. Now I don’t—I have the words to that song, that they had— that they started there. But, I don’t have that with me right now. But they were singing up there to hopefully save their people. They’re crying for them, and trying to save, save their people. Well, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this mound comes up. And so they were watching their people swimming towards it, and running towards it. And this mound kept coming up, and that’s more—El Moro Hill, or Kuktuk. That is a volcano cone. People don’t realize that, you know, we do have volcanic areas— [laughs] LK: Mm-hmm. DC: —in this area. And that’s a volcano cone that came up and our people in that valley, meaning my ancestors, okay—were saved. They were able to go on to Tuktuk, El Moro Hill, and 34 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 come up, and go up there. You can visit that here—uh, that mound or that little knoll or dell, if you want to call it. It’s on Indian Rock Road. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: It’s Sleeping Indian Rock. It’s Sleeping Indian Road [scratches head] right there. Part of it’s on Camp Pendleton. Part of it’s in Fallbrook. And, part of it is owned by the County of San Diego. You can’t build on it. You can build on—near it, but you can’t build on the Camp Pendleton side, because that’s a blind—ammunition dump. And the Navy owns it. Fallbrook owns a third of it, and San Diego County owns a third. There’s a trail that you can go up on there, if you want to visit it and go, and there’s a hearth on the top that they do celebrations, ceremonies up there. My great-grandmother was born there, at the base of that El Moro Hill. So, yeah, we’ve got history in there, and, you know, our aunt used to tell—my aunt, my great aunt, used to tell stories, you know, about that— LK: Mm-hmm. DC: —and they used to go, go there. But what I did was wrote a poem as I was doing, uh, looking at it, and I was thinking, my language is going in my head, but I could only pick out some words that I knew at that time. So it’s called "Naqmayam” and I was saying it—first saying it in Luiseño, then I’ll read it again in English, what it meant. LK: Okay. DC: Okay. It says “Naqmayam. Toonquay qawiinga/noo toowq ‘ataxmi/naqmayam/noo toowq ‘ataxmi heelaqal/‘ataaxum naqmawun! Popuu’uk ponakilvoy/yu’pan heth’aan/no$uun toonavan ‘ataaxum poomoto/naqmayam! Heelaxam!” Now, I usually sing this, I know. It’s just—it’s— it’s—I usually—it sticks after a while, I’m singing it, because I do sing it, at the Mission on All Soul’s Day. [chuckles] So, if you come on All Soul’s Day, on November 2nd, around 6 o’clock, between 6 and 6:30, I’ll be doing it and lighting the candles there, and I’ll be—I can sing it. And why I like to sing it, it’s sometimes I can hear my voice [gestures to her right ear], it bounces off the mission wall. It scared me the first time that it happened— LK: [chuckles] DC: —because I never had an echo come back like that. And, anyway, “naqmayam” means “listen.” “Toonquay qawiinga” means “from the rock on the mountain.” Naqmayam. I see the people. I see the people singing. People listen. The door was closed. Again it will open. My heart will weave among the people. Listen and sing. I wasn’t looking at them crying, you know. I was thinking about them singing, and being happy. And the door was closed at one time for us, but it was now opening. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then my heart, at that time, with the weaving, there, my heart will weave among the people. And, um, so it was kind of, you know—and they published it, in that—in that—in there— 35 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 LK: It’s beautiful. DC: —It kind of gives the story of me. This has happened in 2003 [laughs]. And that’s how long ago, with the language. And I’m still trying to bring the language back, you know, I mean, we did it with—for a while when we were together with the Rotary Club. But then again I’m doing it, trying to get it back with people, and with our people, on that. It’s still going on at the Pechanga, with this fantastic Pechanga . I started back with them, way back when, and they started at the preschool. And then, now, they’ve taken it all the way up through their 6th grade there on their reservation at Pechanga. They don’t speak any English in the classes. All their instructors or the teachers have to learn the language. It’s taught in Luiseño. They’ve got an agreement with the school district of Temecula, that they follow them all the way through school, all the way through high school, that they have to release them at least, I don’t know how many times a week, to be brought in and taught their language, to keep it up. LK: That’s wonderful. DC: They take it all the way through high school. But, Pechanga has done really good. Pauma is also―has a class there, you know. Pauma does. Rincon does. Pala, uh, I don’t know if Pala does. But, each one has a different, like a dialect, you know. The only sad thing is when you get politics coming in. I’m just going to let you guys know. Politics is really deep within the tribes, on there, and um, I’m right, you’re wrong, etc. And it’s sad, because we’re all the one people, but that’s the way it goes. You’re born into being an indigenous people, not just for us here in California, but across the United States. You’re born into politics, whether you like it or not. So, um― LK: Well, I just want to close with saying that it’s been an honor and absolute pleasure to interview you and listen to you. I want to acknowledge that you went from accounting to weaving to becoming an educator of your pe―of your tribal background, and also a historian, and I think a big part of your legacy is to keep this out there. And you’re doing it pretty much on your own. It’s not like you have all this, um, Federal money behind you, like the federally recognized tribes, so― DC: We don’t have that [shaking her head] LK: ―you do not have that. You’re not federally recognized. But I just wanted to honor that in you, and thank you so much for allowing me to do this. DC: Okay. LK: No $uun. DC: Noh [bowing her head, and chuckling] I was going to say No $uun Looviq. 36 Transcribed by Melissa Martin �DIANIA CAUDELL TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-10-27 NAQMAYAM TOONQA Y QAWIINGA From the rock on the mountain NOO TOOWQ 'ATAXMI I see the people NAQMAYAM Listen NOO TOOWQ 'ATAXMI HEELAQAL I see the people singing 'ATAAXUM NAQMA WUN! People listen! POPUU'UK PONAKILVOY The door was closed YU'PAN HETH'AAN Again it will open NO$UUN TOONAVAN 'AT AAXUM POOMOTO My heart will weave among the people NAQMAYAM! HEELAXAM! Listen! Sing! Written by Diania L Caudell @2003 37 Transcribed by Melissa Martin � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcripts Description An account of the resource Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Caudell, Diania. Interview transcript. October 27, 2022. Description An account of the resource Interview with Diania Caudell focused on her Native American ancestry as well as her past occupation as an accountant. Also included is her implementation of Native American education in the San Juan Capistrano School District and how her back injury led her to become a basket weaver. This interview was recorded as part of the North County Oral History Initiative, a partnership between California State University San Marcos and San Marcos Historical Society & Heritage Park. This initiative was generously funded by the Center for Engaged Scholarship at CSU San Marcos. The end of the transcript contains a glossary and a poem written by Caudell in 2003 in the Luiseño language, with English translation. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Diania Caudell Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Linda Kallas Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-10-27 Subject The topic of the resource Basket making Education -- Native Americans Luiseño Indians Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Arizona Escondido (Calif.) Oceanside (Calif.) San Juan Capistrano (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Luiseño Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Diania Caudell License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives@csusm.edu if you need reproductions made. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. 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Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Linda Kallas Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Diania Caudell OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=CaudellDiania_KallasLinda_2022-10-17_access.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 5.4 Caudell, Diania. Interview October 27, 2022 SC027-22 1:35:35 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library Special Collections Oral History Collection CSUSM This interview was recorded as part of the North County Oral History Initiative, a partnership between California State University San Marcos and San Marcos Historical Society &amp ; Heritage Park. This initiative was generously funded by the Center for Engaged Scholarship at CSU San Marcos. Basket making Education -- Native Americans Luiseño Indians Oceanside (Calif.) Diania Caudell Linda Kallas mp4 CaudellDiania_KallasLinda_2022-10-17_access_redacted.mp4 1:|23(17)|51(14)|74(5)|91(9)|108(14)|129(9)|139(14)|156(6)|168(11)|179(10)|196(9)|215(13)|233(8)|248(2)|265(9)|282(2)|300(17)|312(13)|340(16)|373(13)|399(13)|418(11)|435(5)|458(2)|482(12)|497(4)|513(2)|533(6)|552(8)|567(7)|584(9)|601(8)|626(4)|645(12)|668(10)|684(13)|710(7)|729(7)|751(5)|765(7)|792(7)|816(12)|830(5)|857(12)|875(11)|904(17)|924(12)|947(6)|967(7)|989(14)|1008(8)|1030(2)|1044(10)|1061(14)|1082(9)|1100(1)|1123(13)|1148(8)|1170(9)|1192(9)|1209(1)|1220(1)|1235(15)|1255(1)|1280(9)|1294(14)|1320(7)|1340(14)|1356(3)|1382(10)|1402(4)|1432(12)|1452(9)|1472(6)|1487(8)|1503(5)|1546(12)|1562(15)|1580(16)|1603(4)|1622(9)|1638(6)|1659(2)|1682(6)|1722(3)|1761(12)|1780(1)|1791(6)|1806(11)|1820(8)|1840(16)|1854(2)|1876(3)|1895(7)|1907(7) 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/214f3df10b105188751e6d028fef0176.mp4 Other video English 0 Introduction/ Family background Diania Caudell discusses her family’s background. Diania explains that one side of her family is part of the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians and that goes back nine generations. The other side of her family is French, and her great-grandfather, Hubert Foussat, was one of the founding fathers of Oceanside, CA. She also discusses other family details, such as the fact that she and her parents moved around the West Coast during her childhood due to her father’s career in construction, as well as information about her grandmother who worked at Camp Pendleton. family history ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous people ; Luiseño people ; North County San Diego (Calif.) ; Oceanside (Calif.) ; San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians 339 Activism in Indian education reform Diania Caudell discusses her activism in advocating for the Acjachemen and Juaneño people for education reform in San Jan Capistrano, CA. She recalls fighting against Indigenous erasure in her children’s classrooms. She describes the complicated history of school registration files in terms of ethnicity, and how many Indigenous families were taught to select either “Other” or “Caucasian” on school and other legal forms. She explains how this causes erasure in the school system. She recalls surveying the K-12 registration files in the San Juan Capistrano Unified School District and identified 210 Indigenous students. This led to the formation of the San Juan Capistrano Council, which established an Indian Research Center. Acjachemen people ; activism ; education reform ; Indian education ; Indigenous activism ; Indigenous students ; Juaneño people ; San Jan Capistrano (Calif.) ; San Juan Capistrano Unified School District ; students 727 Back injury/ Career in basketry Diania Caudell describes a back injury she suffered. She recounts deciding to undergo back surgery and learning how to walk again. While recovering from the surgery, the Acjachemen people sent her a newsletter about basketry. She describes making the decision to learn basket-weaving in order to learn patience for her recovery, and also to expand her knowledge on Indian education. Acjachemen people ; Back injury ; Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Indigenous education 1167 Indigenous educational programs Diania Caudell discusses the current state of the San Juan Capistrano Unified School District. The Indian Research Center is open to the student population, but she explains that it requires federal funding to remain open. She also explains that the Research Center is also open in Huntington Beach because they have a large Cherokee community in the area. She explains how Indigenous history is not properly taught in K-12 schools. activism ; Cherokee people ; education reform ; Huntington Beach (Calif.) ; Indian education ; Indigenous activism ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous students ; San Jan Capistrano (Calif.) ; San Juan Capistrano Unified School District ; students 1511 The California Indian Basketry Weavers Association Diania Caudell discusses her involvement with the California Indian Basketry Weavers Association (CIBA). She explains that she has been a CIBA board member for at least twelve years. Before joining the board, the CIBA discovered that the traditional materials that are used in basket weaving were being destroyed due to development projects. Since becoming a board member, Diania has advocated towards protecting Southern California native lands. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; California Indian Basketry Weavers Association (CIBA) ; Environmentalism ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Native lands ; Native plants 1968 The foundations of basket-weaving Diania Caudell describes the various types of traditional plants that are used in basket-weaving. She explains that California is home to over 243 tribes, and that each tribe uses different plants. In Southern California, about five different plants are used in basket-weaving, such as the Juncus textilis and yucca. Diania also describes the many different weaving and dyeing techniques that are used in basketry. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Native lands ; Native plants 3030 Pesticide and insecticide effects on native plants and basket-weaving Diania Caudell describes the dangers pesticides and insecticides have on native plants and on the health of the community. This is an important topic that she has brought awareness to as a CIBA board member. Cities and counties often will not provide notice to their citizens when they begin spraying to protect against insects and rodents, and this causes major health concerns to basket-weavers or others who regularly pick native plants and crops. She describes an incident in which she smelled a plant and experienced a chemical reaction. She expresses concern for places like golf courses and hiking trails, where athletes, families, children, and animals frequent regularly. Diania also explains how the chemicals are affecting food and water supplies in Indigenous communities. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; California Indian Basketry Weavers Association (CIBA) ; Environmentalism ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Insecticides ; Native lands ; Native plants ; Pesticides 3584 Local volunteer work Diania Caudell discusses her volunteer work in North County. She has volunteered her time at Camp Pendelton, at Daly Ranch, and at local elementary schools. Diania discusses in great detail her time as a docent at Daly Ranch, where she aided in the “Indian program” and presented on the history of local Indigenous communities. She recalls bonding with one of the rangers and how they made a wiiwish dish together. She also recalls how her role expanded while volunteering at the Daly Ranch, other volunteers with whom she worked, and the school group programs she helped develop. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; California State University San Marcos ; Camp Pendleton (Calif.) ; Daly Ranch ; Escondido (Calif.) ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Indigenous education ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous people ; North County San Diego (Calif.) ; students 3994 Basket-weaving at Mission San Luis Rey Diania Caudell discusses her volunteer work at Mission San Luis Rey. She provided a basket-weaving demonstration to forty-six Franciscans. She describes expecting to see the Franciscan friars dressed in traditional robes, but was surprised to find them dressed in modern street clothes. She recalls the demonstration being a rewarding experience for all involved. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; Catholic Church ; Franciscan friars ; friars ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous people ; Luiseño people ; Mission San Luis Rey ; Oceanside (Calif.) 4328 Upcoming presentations Diania Caudell discusses the upcoming presentations she has scheduled in North County. She talks about planning to do basket-weaving demonstrations at Pablo Tac elementary school. She also talks about performing at the upcoming Jubilation of the Valley Festival and doing another basket-weaving demonstration at a senior center. She also recounts her recent demonstration at Camp Pendleton, where she discussed the native plants near the area with the audience. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; Camp Pendleton (Calif.) ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; North County San Diego (Calif.) ; Schools ; Students 4606 Controversy over working with the Mission Diania Caudell reflects on the criticism she has received from the Indigenous community about her volunteer work at the Mission San Luis Rey. She states that she is not condoning the racist history of the Mission towards their Indigenous community, but she also wants to pay her respects to her ancestors who are buried on the Mission grounds. She explains the complicated history the Luiseño people have with the Mission, especially those whose ancestors helped built the Mission, or who were educated and lived on the Mission’s grounds. family history ; genocide ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous people ; Luiseño people ; Mission San Luis Rey ; Oceanside (Calif.) ; racism 5016 Becoming a historian/ The Luiseño language Diania Caudell discusses how she became a historian of Indigenous history. She explains how she attended California State University Riverside to learn the Luiseño language. She then performs a demo language presentation with the interviewer. She uses laminated cards containing illustrations with associating Luiseño words for the demo presentation. Diania also reads a poem that she wrote about the Luiseño people and their creation story that was inspired by a hike up a mountain near Rainbow, CA. California State University Riverside ; historian ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous people ; Indigenous poetry ; Luiseño language ; Luiseño people ; poetry ; Rainbow (Calif.) Oral history Interview with Diania Caudell focused on her Native American ancestry as well as her past occupation as an accountant. Also included is her implementation of Native American education in the San Juan Capistrano School District and how her back injury led her to become a basket weaver. The written transcription of this interview also contains a glossary and poem in Luiseño with English translation, written by Caudell in 2003. DC: Is my lipstick okay? [laughs] Today is October 27, 2022. I am Linda Kallas, and I am interviewing Diania Caudell as part of the North County Oral History Initiative. Thank you, Diania, for being here, and allowing me to do this with you today. Diania Caudell: No $uun Looviq [&quot ; My heart is good&quot ; in Luiseno. Our way of saying &quot ; thank you.&quot ; ] [chuckles] Linda: Miiyu. [&quot ; Hello&quot ; to one person in Luiseno.] DC: Miiyu [laughs]. LK: Um, we were--I just wanted to ask you when and where you were born. DC: Uh, where was I-- [redacted] 1948. I was born here in North County, San Diego--Oceanside, California, San Diego County. LK: And was your family an active part of any cultural community, such as religious or ethnic groups? DC: Well [sighs] yeah, we were, uh, part of the first indigenous people here in the Americas or whatever you want to say on that part. Um, we are part of the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians, uh, been in the area as far as, uh, the written is concerned, you know, since they were written at the Missions, I would say the 1700s, because after that it was, um, mostly--before that it was all oral. So, um, we&#039 ; ve been here over nine generations. That&#039 ; s on the native side. LK: That&#039 ; s on the native side. DC: Yeah. LK: Which means-- DC: It means that-- LK: On the other side is-- DC: On the other side, the French side came to us, and he landed here in 1868. He was Hubert Foussat. Here in San Francisco. He was one of the founding fathers of Oceanside. LK: Is that why there&#039 ; s a street named after him? DC: Yes. But that&#039 ; s not at a--that&#039 ; s not named after my great grandfather. That&#039 ; s named, really, with--after his brother, Ramon Foussat. LK: Okay. DC: And he&#039 ; s the one that had the ranch in the area up there, by Highland and Oceanside. Faustino Foussat had the land there in the valley, San Luis Rey Valley. LK: And there&#039 ; s also an elementary school named Louise Foussat. DC: Yes. She&#039 ; s--I&#039 ; ve always called her as an aunt, but she&#039 ; s really a cousin. Um, she was--she married a Foussat. Okay. Her maiden name is a Munoa, and her mother was, um, Theresa Gidden, Theresa Giddens, and, um, that&#039 ; s another one that&#039 ; s--she was born at Pala, and, uh,that&#039 ; s another side of our family, my father&#039 ; s side, that had been here a long time. That&#039 ; s another whole side that I could talk about when you get to that point, if you want to, and his grandmother-- LK: Okay. DC: --was born on the Marron Ranch in 1865, so-- LK: So, your family history stretches way back in the North County. DC: Yes. Yes. LK: Um, this seems like a silly question, but how do you like living and working here? DC: [laughs] Okay, it--all I can tell you is that, um, I wouldn&#039 ; t want to live anyplace else, you know, other than--growing up, I lived all over the state of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada, only because I&#039 ; m, I&#039 ; m a construction brat, let&#039 ; s just put it that way. My father was a heavy construction operator, had his own equipment. So, if you go anywhere here in California for the freeways, he probably helped build those, all the dams here in California, uh, he was probably was working on those, um, also like Parker Dam in New Mexico, you know, even in Arizona, I mean, excuse me, Arizona. You have some of the bigger dams, you know, throughout [breathes in] so, um, my mother kept coming back to North County, because she was born here in San Luis Rey Valley. Her family, her family&#039 ; s from here. My father&#039 ; s family is from Pala. So, we kept coming back and, um, I think she put her foot down from travelling when my brother and I were in junior high. So, I graduated from Escondido High School, and stayed in Escondido until I got married, then I moved up to Orange County, San Juan Capistrano. I was up there for 40 some years, before I came back down here to my home. LK: Wow. DC: [laughs, then bell chimes] Oh-oh. Is that me? LK: Well, so you do feel part of the community, and within that, do you feel like you have a support network? DC: Well, if you&#039 ; re gonna say support network, you&#039 ; re going to have to look at the whole family, okay. Just with my great-grandfather. He had 11 daughters. LK: Wow. DC: And so, one of them was my grandmother, and he raised my mother because her father died when she, when she was a young child. And so, my great-grandfather, Faustino Foussat, raised her. So, when you have a large--just one branch of the Foussat family that had all these sisters and all these children, um, there&#039 ; s a support group on the ones that were close [chuckles] let&#039 ; s just say. My grandmother, um, was born in San Luis Rey Valley, uh, lived there all her life, uh, well not all her--until she retired, and then she went to Hemet. But, she retired from Camp Pendleton. She was one of the first workers there, you know, in the pressing. So, network-wise, yes, we have a good network of family. But, they all kind of seem to travel away, you know, on some things. Still, today, you know, because it&#039 ; s San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians which I&#039 ; m part of, we have good support network, in that, within relatives. I mean we have--I have a lot of cousins, you know, and related on both sides. If we had to talk about that, I&#039 ; m double related on some of them, and people just kind of wonder what--how did that happen? When you try to explain the story, uh, it gets confusing. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: So, um, we just want to do a big picture one day [laughs]. LK: That would be nice. Um, you said that you were in Orange County for 40 years. DC: Mm-hmm. LK: So, tell me about the work you did there. DC: [sighs] Ok. Let&#039 ; s just start that--when I got married, I moved up there and, um, when I was here I was starting in accounting. Okay? I&#039 ; m an accountant by trade. That wasn&#039 ; t really what I wanted to do, but that&#039 ; s how it ended up, you know, going into accounting. Um, so I did a lot of accounting for dealerships. Went back to college to get my degree into Accounting, and then went into accounting, business law, etc. so I stayed--like to work with numbers. I&#039 ; m just good with numbers. And, so, I worked with dealerships, school districts, medical field in the accounting field. I didn&#039 ; t become, later on, the weaver or in, with my cultural until I had to have a back injury. So, for 40-some years, up there in San Juan Capistrano, Orange County, I got involved with the Acjachemen people, the Juaneños there, helping them through Indian education, in the 70s, because that&#039 ; s a story that-- I can go into that, and I think I--it&#039 ; s kind of long but shortly is that I grew up with being native, and the schools not teaching us correctly. Okay? LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You read the books, etcetera, and you hear about how they were dressed, what they were, were they savages? Etcetera. And I would come home from school and saying this is not how we are. And then my mother, my grandmother, and family would say &quot ; Don&#039 ; t argue, Diania, just let it go.&quot ; And so when I got married, and my two children, my son and my daughter, when they went to school up there in the Palisades, or in Capistrano Unified School District, they came home one day and said they were entitled to something other. It was like a Spanish program, Title II, at that time. And so, I went to the school to find out how my children got tagged into--in the Spanish community, when my last name is French, and it&#039 ; s Caudell. And so, talking with the school principal, um, we found out that I followed that person that was in charge of Title II, and what had happened--how my two ended up coming with that notice is that this person went around the school to the classrooms and asked questions. Now, if you had a surname, with Romero, Sanchez, Alvaros, Valenzuela, any of those Spanish names, she automatically put them down on the list as a Spanish or Mexican. Uh, then, the other question when she got that from the roster, she then would ask &quot ; how many children here already know that their parents, or grandparents, speak Spanish.&quot ; Well, my two automatically raised their hand because their father spoke Spanish. And he was taught that from his mother and also because of the community of San Juan Capistrano. You&#039 ; ve got to think of the missions. That was the language that was taught to the Indian people. And, um, so that&#039 ; s how my two got on there. And so I challenged that at the school district, at the, you know, with the superintendent, and, uh, they came back at me and saying &quot ; well, the last Indian person that was living here in San Juan Capistrano died in 1933, and he was the bell-ringer.&quot ; And I go, &quot ; no, that can&#039 ; t be, because I&#039 ; m here. I&#039 ; ve got relatives that are married into the Juaneño or Acjachemen people. You still have them here, and so, um, I became an advocate [laughs], an activist, or whatever you want to say, and contacted my relatives there, that are--that married into the Acjachemen people, and, identified them. We went back to the school district, and went through all their rosters, because back in the 70s, when you&#039 ; re ethnic, when they ask you that question, when you&#039 ; re enrolling your student, your child, they ask you what ethnic group you are. Well, in those days--I&#039 ; m saying those days, in the 70s, you only had, like, you had Caucasian, you had Asian--not even Asian, really. Mexican, I think. But you didn&#039 ; t have the--what you have today is the Native American/Alaskan ethnic group. And so I always put us under &quot ; Other&quot ; as Native American, because I am a registered through the B.I.A., Bureau of Indian Affairs, and I have my certification, that I am who I am, meaning Native American. And, um, so I always made sure that my children would have that, going through there. So, we went through K-12, went to the registry of the school district and got all their cum files, or whatever they call them, those information files, and took home all the ones that were identified as Native American. A lot of them were not, because they didn&#039 ; t want to, because it was passed down to us that you didn&#039 ; t want to register as Native American because it wasn&#039 ; t the best thing to do. So, they always put Caucasian. So, from K-12 in that school district, Capistrano High School District, we had identified 210 students. LK: Wow. DC: And so that kind of put us into the category of challenging the school. Uh, UCI had Kogee Thomas at that time. She was the Director. She heard about what was happening. She came down to become my mentor. With that, because she&#039 ; s really high with the Seminoles and Muscogee people at that, then, and we wrote the first grant. We brought in Title IV, Indian Education Act, Public Law 194, in 1975. [laughs] LK: Wow. DC: So, I&#039 ; ve been through this for a long time. We ended up forming the San Juan Capistrano Council, because they had to reform themselves again. They never left. They just said their leader moved, and they just kind of--in the 60s, or in the 50s, he left, and so they just kind of knew they were there, but they weren&#039 ; t formally formed yet. So we reformed them. So today I can just tell you that in Capistrano Unified School District, they still have Indian Education. They have a Indian Research Center, kind of, for teachers, instructors, and parents, there on the Clarence Lobo Elementary school grounds. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: That if you wanted to study any Indian, not just California, any, any native person across indigenous person across the United States, in Alaska and Hawaii, etc., that you can go to that resource center, and that instructor, teacher, parent can pull the correct information that these tribes have handed in. So, that was one of my things that I did up there, other than just being an accountant. LK: Wow, that&#039 ; s impressive. DC: Okay, that was in the community. [laughs] LK: Yes, yes. And then you mentioned you hurt your back and that&#039 ; s what lead you to getting into basketry. Can you talk a little bit about that? DC: [sighs] Yeah, that was, um, a fall I had, okay? I don&#039 ; t want to describe the fall, because it&#039 ; s kind of, you know, it&#039 ; s kind of stupid. I mean, the thing is when you hurt your back, um, I thought I&#039 ; d go to the chiropractor. I went to work, and was working in Huntington Beach at that time, and I drove my car to Huntington Beach, went to sit down at my desk at the dealership, sat down and I couldn&#039 ; t move. They had to literally pick me up, take me to my car. I called my chiropractor in Newport and, uh, he went to adjust it, and he says &quot ; This isn&#039 ; t that, you know. This is something else.&quot ; And so they took x-rays, and he still tried the adjustment. I--and it got a point where I had to quit. I couldn&#039 ; t--you know, I was losing to walk, etc. And the pain kept going through that, and then finally when they did an MRI on me, you know, they found out that I had―let me see, I&#039 ; m trying to figure out how to describe this, because I&#039 ; m not a medic, medical person-- I was diag--rheumatism arthritis runs in our family on my dad&#039 ; s side, my grandmother&#039 ; s side. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Not too much on my mother&#039 ; s side, but on, through my dad&#039 ; s side. And so, I guess hereditarily, I have that in my system. What are you going to do? So, when I hit the lower back really hard, I accelerated the arthritis rheumatism in my spine. And so when that happened, that&#039 ; s what they found with the MRI. So, they said &quot ; Diania, if you don&#039 ; t have, do something with it, it&#039 ; s going to get worse, and you&#039 ; re going to lose a lot of functions that you normally can take that you can control of. And, anyway, I put it off a whole year. I didn&#039 ; t want to have my back opened up. And so, I got to a point where I couldn&#039 ; t deal with this anymore. And so, I had to say yes. They opened up 5, 4, and 6 of your vertebraes &lt ; sic&gt ; . They opened them up, and all I can describe it was a rotor-rooter job. She went in there, and just tried to scrape out all the rheumatism, or arthritis, away from my spine, inside my spine. And when she did that, she hit one of the sciatic nerves. LK: oh-- DC: And uh, &#039 ; cuz it, nothing&#039 ; s replaced. They just sealed it back up again. And, uh, so when I came out of surgery, I didn&#039 ; t realize that I couldn&#039 ; t walk because the nurses tried to--they put those belts [gestures tying a belt around her waist] on you when you&#039 ; re going to go and make you go to the restroom, etc., you know, when you&#039 ; re [unintelligible] and when I went to get out the bed, I fell straight to the floor. Thank goodness I had belts on me, because the two nurses and all the surgeons come running in, and I lost everything from the waist down. Had to learn how to walk all over again. It took me--they said &quot ; Diania, you&#039 ; re going to have to learn patience.&quot ; And I&#039 ; m not one with patience, let&#039 ; s put it that way. I do have patience for other people, but not for myself. So, I didn&#039 ; t know what to do and the Acjachemen people had sent me a newsletter, and my mom brought it up, and on the front cover of that newsletter that was next to the, my bed in the hospital was Lillian Robles. She&#039 ; s an elder. She&#039 ; s passed on before, but she had a basket hat on. And I saw the basket hat and I went &quot ; Oh, great. I guess to learn patience, I guess I can get into basketry.&quot ; LK: Oh-- DC: And I never was in it. I was more in the Indian education. I was more into the helping with the activities. My mother was a weaver. My aunts were weavers, their jewelry, they&#039 ; re always crafting with their hands. I was not. They always pushed me away, and said &quot ; Diania, you know, we&#039 ; re need--we need you in education. We need you speaking for our people.&quot ; And so when I called, I looked at that, and I called Teeter Romero who was a top weaver from the Acjachemen people, and she--her and I were really close, worked together for years, with Indian education-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: ―Inter-tribal Council of California, I mean, the different areas, you know, for the people, Indian people. And I called her, and let her know that, um, I need to become a weaver. Well, she started laughing on the phone, when I called from the hospital, because she didn&#039 ; t know where I was at. LK: She laughed at you? DC: Well, she laughed at me, because she said &quot ; you&#039 ; re not a weaver, you know, you&#039 ; re just not a weaver.&quot ; And then she says &quot ; Why?&quot ; And I says &quot ; Well, I&#039 ; m in the hospital, and I can&#039 ; t walk, and I need to learn patience.&quot ; So, when she heard that, she says &quot ; okay, when you&#039 ; re able to get home and sit up in a wheelchair, we&#039 ; ll come to you.&quot ; And, they did. I was with my mom here in Escondido, at that time. And they came down. About six months--let&#039 ; s see, I had the operation in April ; they came down in June. And I was being able to sit up in there. I was still trying to learn to walk. I was with a walker. And, they came! And they started, uh--sat down with me, and the first thing they gave me was raffia in one hand and pine needle in the other, and they had me doing the coiling, just to learn to go round and round and round and round, with basketry. From then on, it took me, you know, work--it took me almost two years to learn how to walk again, by myself. I was with a--I couldn&#039 ; t drive. My mom was driving me all over. I had the walker. I got everything back in my left leg, but on my right leg not everything came through. And so, another six to eight months, I was doing acupuncture at Indian Health Council in Rincon, because I didn&#039 ; t want to open up my back again, okay, have another surgery. So, I don&#039 ; t have a lot of feeling in my right foot, from my calf, I think, down. But, I do think it--people don&#039 ; t realize that, you know, that I don&#039 ; t, but that&#039 ; s what put me into retirement, really. LK: How many years ago was that? DC: Okay. When did 9/11, what year was that? 2001? LK: That was &#039 ; 01. DC: Okay, &#039 ; 01. LK: 09. DC: Because, yeah, April of &#039 ; 01, because I remember I was still in bed and my mom got a call from her sister and my mom come running in to my bedroom, trying to insist I turn the TV on, and what she says--my mom was crying and I looked at that and there it was when I saw the airplane hit. They had that going on the towers and it was like looking at a movie. LK: Yeah. DC: Okay. That was just unbelievable. Okay? So, that was April, September, okay. It was--that&#039 ; s how I can remember. I can never remember the year, but I just think it&#039 ; s the year of 9/11. So twenty-oh-one, right? LK: Yeah, 21 years ago. DC: Yeah, so it was 21 years ago. I was still on--I have been on social security disability, because I can&#039 ; t sit that long. So, if I get up on you guys, and take a break, then I&#039 ; m sorry, you know, but that--My, my job was an accountant, and so that was sitting a lot. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then to get up and sit and get up is one of the things. So, uh, that&#039 ; s how I got into basketry and I&#039 ; m still doing that today, you know, on that. But, it&#039 ; s taken me learning different things, you know, getting--you want me to go into California Indian Basket Weavers Association? LK: Yeah, I― DC: [laughs] okay, okay. LK: I was going to ask that--I--but I wanted to go back, just for a minute-- DC: Okay. LK: --to Indian education. DC: Mm-hmm. LK: So, I think you said it&#039 ; s still going on to this day. You still, they still have that educational program in San Juan Capistrano. DC: Yeah, they still have the Capistrano Unified School District and it&#039 ; s going still strong, but they have to be the parents that have to want it. LK: Ah, okay. DC: It doesn&#039 ; t just stay with the Acjachemen people. And they do have, I think they have a resource instructor there, someone in their administration, that they do go out for. Because it is a fund. It&#039 ; s funding, it&#039 ; s federal funding. All school districts need money― LK: Right. DC: ―and it&#039 ; s a head count. And so, Capistrano Unified School District still has it, so does Huntington Beach, because they have a large community of the Cherokee Indian― LK: Oh! DC: ―outside natives coming in, because a lot of people don&#039 ; t realize, that if they do start researching, you can go into 1963. They had the Relocation Act, of Native Americans. And, this isn&#039 ; t taught in schools. This isn&#039 ; t taught in--you know, for the general public, sometimes, unless you&#039 ; re involved with Native Americans and their--and the different things. Well, 1963 they relocated Cherokee, Choctaw, and a lot of different native groups into California. LK: Oh-- DC: You know, a lot of the Cherokees went to the Anaheim area, Huntington Beach area, and settled there. You had a lot of the Cherokee, Osage, and some coming down to San Diego. The largest Choctaw Relocation is in Bakersfield. LK: I&#039 ; ll be darned. DC: So, yeah, it&#039 ; s a--it was--it&#039 ; s interesting, uh, how they did move native people around to get them away from their &quot ; homeland&quot ; and give them incentives at that time that &quot ; we can move you to California. You know, you can emerge into there&quot ; and stuff. And so a lot of it is kind of detrimental but with them, they brought their, they brought their culture and their tradition with them, which is good. LK: So, if you could see something change in regard to that educational program, what would it be? Would it be to expand it to San Diego County? Would it be-- DC: Well, San Diego County had a big--has a big Indian education program. They did--they--you just don&#039 ; t hear about it― LK: Okay. DC: ―um, in their school district. What it would be good to expand on there is that, um, to get it more to the public, to the other schools, okay. It takes a school district to want it. I&#039 ; ve notified Oceanside. I&#039 ; ve notified Vista. In Vista alone, a few years ago, they identified another 200, because now they have that on their information form of the child&#039 ; s registers, you know, what ethnic group you are. And 210 had registered as Native American. It doesn&#039 ; t mean they&#039 ; re, you know, San Luis Rey or California. They can be from anywhere in the United States. And most of them that do register for their ethnic group know that they are, or they&#039 ; ve been told that they are. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But it gets a parent, it&#039 ; s gotta be a parent to initiate it, to get a parent group together, and that way they can work with the school district. And then they can apply for grants. And then they can get the head count. Then they can get a resource instructor in there, or someone to work with the Indian education, and then it comes in with tutoring. That was one thing I did. I knew for, just for reading and math, at least. Get the children on the tutoring. They have the tutoring. They were pulled out of class or they brought the equipment in, if they needed equipment. There, Capistrano Unified School District, we&#039 ; ll go back to that. It was shown as a need. Getting the general books that they need into the libraries. That&#039 ; s how that resource center started, because the school districts will only go by what the state says, for state books, state history books, they―etc. The Native peoples say &quot ; No, that&#039 ; s not correct. We will want our own books coming in.&quot ; So that&#039 ; s what we did in the 70s. We brought in records. At that time, you didn&#039 ; t have CDs or you know, what we had, you know, you had-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: LPs. And so we brought in records of the singing of the different groups. They brought in books that the teachers can get through, or parents could check out, you know, and working with that to get the education in there. And you have to have the school district to want to work with you. Um, we--it was a hard thing, with, even with Capistrano Unified School District, to do it. But if I didn&#039 ; t have the help with Kogee Thomas and some of the top people that come from back east, that were very strong in their native cultural, that I don&#039 ; t think that Capistrano would have done it either. &#039 ; Cuz we challenged them. We challenged them, so-- LK: But, how enriching for the students. DC: It is, but you got to have again, you gotta have a parent― LK: Right. DC: ―who would want that, so their student or their child can get that extra help. LK: There has to be a buy-in for it, with the parent. DC: Yes, and so it&#039 ; s, it&#039 ; s--today, in Capistrano Unified School District, the ones that do use it--I know my grandchildren went through it--they provided the computers at home for the tutoring. You know, they didn&#039 ; t have to go to like a trailer, or be pulled out of class, and be taken, you know, like to a tutorial room like we did in the 70s. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Uh, with the st--with my two children, my daughter used it and they had computers at home. The school district provided these computers, these laptops for the home that they could use and they got tutored every day, since they were in grade school. All the way through high school. LK: Wow. It gave them a really good sense of self. DC: It gave a sense of self, and they--at first it was &quot ; why do we have to do this for half an hour every day?&quot ; [laughs] I mean, but as they got older in high school, and then went to college, you know, especially going through all those tests that you have to take for college, they, they were happy because they knew a lot of the questions and were able to answer them. Because of the tutorial they had, um, above and beyond what they normally get in school, in class. LK: Wow. That&#039 ; s wonderful. So, you&#039 ; ve already explained a little bit about your life&#039 ; s path, how it&#039 ; s evolved and changed over the years, so I was going to ask you if you wanted to share a little bit more about the basketry and CIBA, and I see that you have a little sample of one. DC: [laughs] Ok. When you said CIBA, I don&#039 ; t think everybody knows what CIBA is, okay. You&#039 ; re familiar with it. CIBA is California Indian Basket Weavers Association. Um, that&#039 ; s another thing that I have been a member of and I&#039 ; m on the Board for the last umpteen years, I would say--let&#039 ; s just say the last 12 years. I know it&#039 ; s been longer. Uh, but how I got involved in that, again, was going back to when I became basket--learning basketry and the plants, finding out that southern California doesn&#039 ; t have everything that they normally have. If you know the county here, we&#039 ; ve got 18 reservations here in the San Diego County alone and the people--where they were sent--aren&#039 ; t on their homelands. I mean-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: It&#039 ; s not where they would have their medi--their medicinal plants, their foods, or their traditional cultural plants like basketry and other things, and so they had--the people had to go off the reservations, and to public lands, which would be your forestries, um, county parks, state parks, etc., even private land, to get the materials that they need for the basketry. Well, I had a problem with that because I didn&#039 ; t understand that, you know, and why did they have the restrictions here in southern California when I found out that in central California, they don&#039 ; t have that. In northern California they don&#039 ; t have the same restrictions. But it&#039 ; s because a lot of these central reservations or rancherias in northern California, too, is that they&#039 ; re on their homelands. They&#039 ; re rancherias. They weren&#039 ; t like taken from one area and moved. Okay. They&#039 ; ve had little rancherias, then. That&#039 ; s what they called them, instead of reservations, up in northern California, spread out. And so they were on their lands and they had the traditional materials. LK: Oh, I see. DC: For example, you&#039 ; ve got the Yuroks and the Hoopas up there. They&#039 ; re in the forest up there. They have the red for--the, the redwoods. They got the forest. They&#039 ; ve got a lot of their plants. And that&#039 ; s their economic development. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But, that&#039 ; s―they don&#039 ; t call them reservations. They call them rancherias. Okay, so, so I started asking questions about that. You know, I&#039 ; d say &quot ; how come, what for?&quot ; And I went to a gathering of CIBA, because they have a large gathering once a year for the basket weavers of the state of California, and I started asking &quot ; how come, what for, why is it that in California we don&#039 ; t have this, when you have it up there?&quot ; And then I was told by a board member, &quot ; Well, Diania, you keep asking these questions. Why don&#039 ; t you--we&#039 ; re having a Board election. Why don&#039 ; t you throw your hat in, your name, and we can see what we can do?&quot ; Well, I got elected. You know, I mean, I didn&#039 ; t expect that at all. And I&#039 ; ve been on it ever since, since 2003. And, uh, so I became an advocate of, for southern California, to get in, our traditional trading, you know, gathering, etc., our traditional materials, you know, on that. And so, if I didn&#039 ; t enjoy what I&#039 ; m doing and have a passion for it, you know, I think learning about my traditional materials that we use for basketry, which is hard to find here in southern California, if you don&#039 ; t get somebody to help you, you know, with that. And, um, so I think being educating people has helped me. LK: Um, the traditional materials are hard to find because of development? They&#039 ; ve all been-- DC: Yes, uh-- LK: --plowed over or-- DC: Um, there&#039 ; s a--[reaching to her left for a brochure with the front cover reading &quot ; Indian Rock Project&quot ; ] okay, let me just see, I&#039 ; m just going to go through here. This here, this is Indian Rock Project, okay. This is something that we worked with the Cal St--uh, San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians and Cal State San Marcos worked together with Palomar College to do, to put this book out. This was done in 2003, which was a long time ago. But in here, in this book, let me just--[flipping through pages]--the--when you see what they--when you ask me about, uh--[looking at a particular page]--uh, where is it? [flips through more pages] And then you all--she&#039 ; s probably going to edit this, but that&#039 ; s okay. Because I was asked that question that you were just asking, and [still flipping through pages] LK: About the natural-- DC: I found it. Okay, I had said here, on here &quot ; preserving tradition&quot ; and this is, you know― [turning the booklet to Linda to show her the specific pages]--I ended up being in the booklet, okay, okay, on this Indian Rock Project [shows front cover] You could probably go online, you know, and download it, because they don&#039 ; t have any more of these booklets. But, when you asked me that question, I said [she&#039 ; s reading from the booklet] &quot ; a lot of our things are being destroyed. If you look at our environment around us, we have development, development, development. Juncus and all the plants that we use for actually making the baskets are being destroyed. When we are out driving, we stop, we get out there, and we take pictures. I want to find a spot, notify the nearest reservations, notify the Forestry, notify the developers--&quot ; Can we go in? Can we pick? Can we transplant? Because if you are going to develop it and destroy it, let us go in.&quot ; That was a statement that I had made, you know, for--for, for, like an interview for this booklet. So-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then it went on [flipping through booklet again] into who I am or whatever. But, um, yes, the development. And so more developers now are finding out that if you do have--if you do identify traditional materials and stuff, they are now trying to hopefully preserve &#039 ; em, or to have you come in and take them, or use them. But it is. Southern California is, gets hit with a lot of development because you look around here and you&#039 ; re looking at it. I&#039 ; m looking at the Mission San Juan--Mission, excuse me, San Luis Rey Mission. If you ever go by there, and stuff like this, you&#039 ; ll see we had wetlands there right next to it, and through the Lavanderia and right next to the Mission, what&#039 ; s happening now? The Mission leased it out, or sold it, whatever you want to say--99-some years. You&#039 ; ve got this big, huge retirement center going in there. It&#039 ; s like a resort. They are built on the wetlands, and uh, there went something that was natural, native, etc., and it&#039 ; s being developed. You drive around to different places now, here in San Diego County, and you&#039 ; re seeing development. So, it&#039 ; s really hard on-- LK: Everywhere you look. DC: Yeah, and I just don&#039 ; t understand, for me, where they&#039 ; re getting their water from. Because if we have a resource of, of water--that&#039 ; s one of the things that we don&#039 ; t have here in southern California. We have to bring it in from other places. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: How can you develop and, and, and bring in people, more and more people, so how are you going to give them water? Feeding you know--if you&#039 ; re going to feed, you&#039 ; ve got the grocery stores yet, or whatever. You still can&#039 ; t even have farmland any more hardly, but water. Water is essential for all living things. So, where they come, the water? I mean, the lease on the Colorado River is coming up. That was only a 99-year agreement. How are they going to negotiate that, if they want to stop the Colorado River from coming in? You know, I know they&#039 ; re doing desalting plant, but that&#039 ; s not even good for the ocean, you know, and not even good for us as people. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: So, um, that&#039 ; s a big question that I ask. Every time I drive around and see these developments, you know, and it&#039 ; s money. It&#039 ; s politics and money. Okay, we can go on. We won&#039 ; t go into that--[laughs] LK: Well, going back to the baskets-- DC: Okay. LK: Can you tell us some of the natural fibers that you use, natural plants you use in the baskets. DC: Okay. LK: The traditional-- DC: --Traditional plants. In the state of California, we have over 243 different tribes, 26 different dialects of language, and each one of the--in California, it&#039 ; s kind of divided up, like in northern, central, and southern, and we all don&#039 ; t use the same plants. Here in southern California, we basically use about five. And that would be Juncus textilis, which is a green reed that grows near water. It needs water. It&#039 ; s like a tule, if you&#039 ; ve seen tule in― LK: Mm-hmm. DC: ―these wetlands, and stuff, or at these lakes, lagoons, but it&#039 ; s not cornered or-- Tule has three--is three-sided. Juncus textilis, is round. It&#039 ; s a round reed, and it grows up straight. It could--If you know how crab grass grows, it has, is that right? How it goes--what do you call that [gestures with her right hand, pointing straight and making curves in a snake-like fashion]-- you know, you pull it out of the shoots-- LK: Uh-huh. DC: --you know, like crab grass-- LK: Yeah. DC: And, anyway, uh, depending on where it&#039 ; s growing at and the materials that are in the--minerals--excuse me--that are in the soil, the bottom of the root type of thing, where the shaft comes out of there, the reed comes out of that shaft, it&#039 ; ll have color on it. And it&#039 ; s either from a deep light brown, mahogany color, to a deep red mahogany color. And, I didn&#039 ; t bring any of those baskets with me. I was going to, okay, but maybe I should have, but I didn&#039 ; t. If you ever notice some of the traditional baskets, you&#039 ; ll see this deep red color or brown color-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: That&#039 ; s usually coming from the Juncus on the, on the end of the shaft on there, bottom part, which is in the ground. It&#039 ; s green when you plant--It&#039 ; s green when you collect it. You have to process it. It takes time. It grows with poison oak. That&#039 ; s another thing. We call it--it&#039 ; s our protector. The only time we go and gather the Juncus textilis is when we say the poison oak goes to sleep, and that only means that the leaves are gone. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But it&#039 ; s still going to be contaminated, probably, with poison oak. And that&#039 ; s why we don&#039 ; t teach it as much, because some people don&#039 ; t want to be dealt with, with poison oak. That&#039 ; s what, that&#039 ; s the reed that we use for coiling. Okay? And that takes a process, splitting, etc., and getting it ready. It takes anywhere from six months to a year to even get your material ready to do a basket. The next one that we use for our start would be the center, which is the center of the basket, is yucca. And that, again, is that--what is it, yucca--uh, the Whippi? Or they call it the &quot ; Lord&#039 ; s Candle.&quot ; It think you&#039 ; ve seen it down by the road. You&#039 ; ll see it growing on the hillsides. There&#039 ; s different ways to use that. Some people will take the dead leaves, those great big green ones that they have and they grow pretty, even from the agave-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC:--and the yucca. When you see those dead ones, or dried out, in the desert, etc., you can take those and you can soak them really, really big in a big tub, and then you take that, and you pound it. And you just keep pounding it, when they&#039 ; re--you know, when you&#039 ; re drying them. And they&#039 ; ll--they&#039 ; ll turn fibrous, like string-- LK: Oh. DC:--and that&#039 ; s how you get your yucca sandals, and things like that, that they use in fiber, or your cordage. The other way you can do is with the yucca is you take the center of the new shoots that are coming out, before it becomes a flower in the stalk. [gestures up with an open hand] You take that, and you twist it, and you get about 30 or 40 small, small [gestures to indicate smallness of an object] little leaves, and then you take those and you shred &#039 ; em with a needle--we do--or pound them, and uh, you don&#039 ; t need to go out there anymore because you&#039 ; re not going to make 30 or 40 bags in your lifetime, as far as I know. I&#039 ; m not going to. But you have enough to where you don&#039 ; t have to go out there and gather them. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Then, deer grass. People use deer grass as a native plant for decoration or whatever, because it&#039 ; s drought tolerant. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But it&#039 ; s not that Pampas grass that you see waving from that Africa--that African one is an invasive plant. I wish people would just take it away, and these nurseries--just take it out, you know get it--because that Pampas grass kills everything on the native plants. It just takes over. And deer grass is similar to it, but it doesn&#039 ; t have that fan on the top. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And, uh, the deer grass, we gather that and we take the shoots or the stems on them, and we gather, and that&#039 ; s what we coil around [gestures in a coiling fashion with both hands] So, the traditional, for the Mission baskets they called here that the Luiseño use, Cahuilla use, Kumeyaay use, the Cupeno use here in southern California, even the Chumash further up, and your Tongva and your different people. We do a coiling technique. Okay? So have you ever seen those baskets in museums, etc., you&#039 ; ll see that one by one, they&#039 ; re coiling. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: They&#039 ; re coiling the Juncus textilis. They&#039 ; re coiling around with sticks that they use, which would be deer grass. And the center star that you see in the middle [creates a circle with her fingers on her left hand] is done with yucca. And sometimes it&#039 ; s also done with Juncus on Juncus, or Juncus on Deer Grass. It all depends who the weaver is, etc. Since we have to gather that, and we can&#039 ; t find it all over, you know what we do, we try to really work with the forestries, and private owners, and people. Try and get them to plant. It&#039 ; s not easy to plant the Juncus textilis because it&#039 ; s not going to grow everywhere. So, there&#039 ; s different areas that do have it. If you want to see Juncus textilis, where it&#039 ; s at, you can see it in the public, it&#039 ; s in the public discovery center there in Carlsbad. LK: Oh. DC: They have a good--kind of like a little garden, that they have it growing there. And the deer grass and the yucca. And that was done because we worked with the Discovery Center years ago with Cal State San Marcos and the students. And we did all the planting there, when it was there. So, if you want to see that, I would go there and visit it. And you can see what the Juncus textilis looks like. See, uh--[sighs]--but doing basketry is that--what I have here is samples. I did bring a basket. I just brought these hair pieces that I&#039 ; ve made for my two granddaughters [shows beautiful, small round woven hairpieces]. Can you see them okay?--LK: Yes, yes. DC: Out of Juncus. If you see, this one here is a little bit darker, and the black there [now holding only one of the hairpieces, with a woven black ring in the mid-region of the weave, and gesturing to this area] is dyed Juncus, okay? Now, that Juncus, um, was dyed with--[looking at the hairpiece now, more intensely]--I don&#039 ; t know, this was given to me, [chuckling] the dyed Juncus, so I&#039 ; m assuming they did it with, um, elderberry leaves, okay, and um, put in the Juncus, and in a can, okay, or, or like a coffee can that&#039 ; s all rusty. And what you do--you put the rusted can in there. You have your Juncus already split and put into the weaver, and then you put, um, into a coffee can [gesturing to show the size of the can] and it&#039 ; s all rusty. You put some rusty nails in it at the bottom, and then you start layering it with the Juncus textilis. It&#039 ; s the process. And on top of that you put elderberry leaves, and you keep going &#039 ; til you fill it. [gestures indicating layers building up] Then you fill it with water. LK: Oh. DC: And then you let the water--and then you put that can somewhere so it can ferment. It&#039 ; s like I tell you, it&#039 ; s got to get all yucky and like, rotten, and what it is is that it probably turns black. And it&#039 ; s--and you&#039 ; re getting the iron--what do you call that? Iron oxide?-- LK: Uh-huh. DC: --from the, from the nails and from the rusty can. Then when you empty it out, your Juncus is black. LK: Wow. DC: Dyed black. And that&#039 ; s also what&#039 ; s coming from the elderberry leaves. Another way that our ancestors did it was that during the creeks they knew where there was iron oxide in the soil, in the sand. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: They would get their Juncus, and they would bury it in that sand. They&#039 ; d come back, weeks later or whatever, and dig it out, and it&#039 ; ll be black. Another way they do it, up in northern California, and in here too, is using walnuts, because we had, you know--black walnuts is a native plant of California. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And so they would take the shells, crunch &#039 ; em up, you know shells, the outside shell, they&#039 ; re called, and if you&#039 ; ve ever picked walnuts, you know that your hands get black? LK: Yeah. DC: Okay, because that--on the hull--because you take that, well they&#039 ; ll take that hull and chop it up, and then put in water, and put your Juncus in there, and with the walnut there, and they&#039 ; ll turn black, too. LK: Wow. DC: That&#039 ; s just one other way. It takes time. And they also use the acorn husk, or the shell of the acorn, and the black acorn, or any of the acorns, crush &#039 ; em up again and put them in water, put the Juncus in there, and then you have to leave it. So it is a time consuming deal. So these are two headpieces I did. Now, when we get to the schools--when you get to the school-- [holds up a small woven basket] this is a little basket that I&#039 ; ve had for years. But this is not a native material. This material that we use for teaching is from, okay, rattan. Everybody knows what rattan is. Rattan has a pith in it. Rattan and bamboo look similar but bamboo is hollow. Rattan is got the pith. To get the pith out of the rattan, pull it, press it, and make cane. This is how you get cane. LK: Oh. DC: And so what we use here, is that you can buy cane in different rounds, or different sizes or gauges. You can get it flat. You can get it round. Uh, we get the round, and this is called Cherokee Single Wall twine. I call it, uh--we have our own twine, excuse me, but it&#039 ; s not like this one, the Luiseño. And why I use Cherokee is because one of the easiest ones that the kids can use at school. It&#039 ; s the closest thing that I can get to the river cane, from the Cherokee and Choctaw and the people there, in Oklahoma and that area, will use, because they go and pick their river cane. We don&#039 ; t have river cane here in California. If we do have it, I wouldn&#039 ; t want to go down there because it&#039 ; s probably contaminated. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: It&#039 ; s got all those other things, and they probably sprayed it a lot with pesticides. And so this is what we teach in school, and I call it &quot ; Cherokee Single Walled Twine.&quot ; We make the starts. The kids can make one of these [holding up a skein of yarn] within an hour, even the adults, over two hours. And maybe not this size, maybe a little bit bigger. But this way, they don&#039 ; t have any allergies or con― such so far, uh, getting sick from it. Because, I can&#039 ; t guarantee our native traditional plants that we do use aren&#039 ; t--it doesn&#039 ; t have some type of pesticides on it, or some poisons on it that we&#039 ; re not aware of. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And we use our mouth [wipes her right hand across her mouth] a lot for our third hand when we&#039 ; re weaving with our traditional materials. LK: Because you have to keep them-- DC: We have to keep them very moist. LK: Moist. DC: Everything has to moist. It has to be pliable. It has to be moist. If you&#039 ; re going to be weaving with almost anything, even with cloth, even with weeds, even with flowers or stems or, you know, branches. We do use willow, though, okay? Aurora willow, or the willow tree. We make baskets out of that too. If you ever notice the big acorn granaries, they call &#039 ; em, have you ever seen them on pictures-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --that the tribes had next to their kiichas or their ewaks for here in southern California, even northern California. They have great big acorn granaries. Those are made out of willow. They&#039 ; re woven green, and when they&#039 ; re woven green, uh, then they let―they dry. But do they use willow? Willow is a natural insecticide. It keeps the insects away from the acorns. And that&#039 ; s why they have them high up on a stilt like, or platform, to keep their small animal away from them, or whatever. But if they do―these small animals try to get to the acorn, then they can also plug it up, or whatever. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But those acorn granaries can last for hundreds of years, you know. They&#039 ; ve found, when they&#039 ; ve done research, you know, in the mountains or at their villages, you&#039 ; ll see a granary that is still up. But, it&#039 ; s a natural insecticide. People don&#039 ; t realize that the willow is a natural insecticide-- LK: That&#039 ; s interesting. DC: --to weave with it. LK: So, in traditional weaving, was it always the women, the tribal women, that did the baskets or did men-- DC: I would say-- LK: --create baskets as well? DC: Uh, yeah. Traditionally, mostly it was the women and the girls, okay? Because you&#039 ; ve got to think about--before contact, especially here in California, we&#039 ; re the last native people that were contacted as they came west-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: ―our baskets were used for cooking, for storage, for gifting, for birthing, for death. And that was our--they were utilized for everything. And that&#039 ; s why they can say that &quot ; Mission baskets were woven so tight that they can hold water.&quot ; LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Well, yes and no. The only reason why they can hold water is that the deer grass in what they&#039 ; ve coiled around swells. [laughs] LK: Oh. DC: So, but they also had the--and when they cooked in them, they used another plant that we do. It&#039 ; s more fire resistant. And that&#039 ; s your Trius lobata, or your sumac. And that&#039 ; s kind of―it&#039 ; s white. Have you ever seen baskets that have more of a white bottom to it? LK: Mm-hmm. DC: That&#039 ; s because it&#039 ; s usually with sumac, and that one has a resistance to fire. But, only be--resistance, how can I say this--fire tolerant but not to a point. When they cooked in baskets, the cooking baskets, they were done with a stick that they&#039 ; d keep moving [circles her right arm as if stirring], and they were used with river rocks, hot rocks in there. Central northern California used lava rocks a lot, but that had been tumbled in the rivers. But the ones that are here, we would probably get the smooth river rocks, and then you heat them up and then you put them into the basket, and you have to keep stirring them [makes a stirring motion with her right hand] into that food. Men probably did the baskets that were, um, that were for fishing, like the fish traps, or your great big, huge granaries,―LK: Oh, yeah. DC: Okay, on that? And they&#039 ; re made out of the willow. Um, they didn&#039 ; t make them--northern California, they made &#039 ; em a lot of out of the different plants up there, the branches there. But, almost all of them are made out of willow, you know, because it was pliable to work with. But, that&#039 ; s your bigger gathering baskets or fish traps, etc., you know. But mainly, it&#039 ; s mostly the women. But men did do that. We do have men today that are top weavers, um, so, we even have one in our tribe that&#039 ; s a fantastic weaver [chuckles]. LK: So, it&#039 ; s a form of functional art. I mean, &#039 ; cuz it is a form of art. That&#039 ; s what-- DC: Well, it didn&#039 ; t become a form of art until it--until I would say, after contact-- LK: Right. DC: --because it was a utility that we had to use, you know. It was something. LK: Right. It was functional. DC: Yeah, and I say, you know, when pots and pans came out, I, I would have been one that threw the baskets away. [laughs] Let&#039 ; s use a pot, too, you know. LK: [laughs] DC: It&#039 ; s just like when you gather your foods, you know. I gather the acorn and I make that wiiwish, we call it, the acorn mush. I use a processor to crack all my--you know, to mix it up, you know, and get the nuts, ground it down. You know, if you ever see these, um,--how can I say these--we call them gathering, gathering spots or metates are these big rocks that have the holes in them--the grinding area, they call &#039 ; em grinding stones, grinding-- Can you imagine the woman that&#039 ; s sitting there, or a child, or whatever, pounding acorn to get a meal out of it, you know, to get it real fine like a flour. And, and how long they pound it up there to get those holes in there. How old! You can just tell the age of the--by looking at these grinding areas, or grinding rocks that you see, how, how hard they must have done it, so it just--it didn&#039 ; t happen overnight, to make those holes, you know, in those rocks. It had to be― LK: Right. DC: [gesturing in a pounding motion] ―years and years of processing. And, uh, I&#039 ; ve tried it. We have two in our backyard, and I didn&#039 ; t last five minutes. Raising that rock, that pestle, over my head and pounding the acorn, okay? I mean, I couldn&#039 ; t, after that, I couldn&#039 ; t raise my hand after five minutes, or even three minutes. My mom was laughing at me out there― LK: [chuckles] DC: ―you know, and I said &quot ; Our women must have had--the women must have had shoulders and-- LK: Strong arms. DC: --biceps, strong arms, to do that, daily, every day, to get the acorn to get it ready for the mush because that was a staple for the people, you know, because the acorn--wiiwish, we call it--or the, um, what do they call it, with the Kumeyaay, um--we call it wiiwish, they call it, um, okay, I&#039 ; ve got to think about it. I know it starts with an &#039 ; s.&#039 ; But anyway, um, everyday. Because, see, that&#039 ; s 100% protein. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: The acorn is 100% protein. So, it was a staple and it was also a replacement for when they didn&#039 ; t have any meat, you know, so it was always used. So, when these processors came through, they said &quot ; Diania, how come you don&#039 ; t do it the traditional way?&quot ; I said &quot ; Uh-uh&quot ; [shaking her head] I said &quot ; my ancestors would have popped in that, those electrical things to plug in, they would have used it too.&quot ; I said &quot ; There&#039 ; s no way I&#039 ; m going to go out there and you know, [she and Linda start laughing] and pound.&quot ; I mean it&#039 ; s kind of like a joke but it&#039 ; s, it&#039 ; s, it&#039 ; s, it&#039 ; s--you know, you know, when progress comes, I&#039 ; m sure they, they would have--they wouldn&#039 ; t have stayed with their old ways. That&#039 ; s how I look at it. [chuckles] LK: Circling back, you mentioned a few institutions like Cal State San Marcos, The Discovery Center in Carlsbad, CIBA, and you&#039 ; re part of the Pesticide― DC: Oh, Tribal― LK: ―with the National Parks? DC: Well, I belong also to the Tribal Pesticide Program Council through EPA. And that&#039 ; s because of the pesticides and insecticides and stuff that effect our, our plants. A lot of people don&#039 ; t realize that, when they see our traditional plants, they think they&#039 ; re weeds. LK: Oh. DC: And they&#039 ; ll spray them. Or also, that, um―there&#039 ; s drifts that happen and if you have native plants that are growing near there, and you&#039 ; re not aware of the native plants that are there, and if how they&#039 ; re spraying, and if the wind comes up [she makes a &quot ; whoosh&quot ; sound, and waves her hand in a broad sweep to indicate wind over field], the drift will go over there. There&#039 ; s no signs that tell you that &quot ; Hey, we&#039 ; re going to be spraying today!&quot ; LK: Mm-hmm. DC: County doesn&#039 ; t even tell you that, I mean, unless they come around, you know. The mosquitoes, like in Central California, Sacramento, they post it, because with all those rice fields that they have up there, they have to. They have to do that, spraying for the mosquitoes. And they do it by helicopter. And I&#039 ; ve been up there when they&#039 ; ve done that, and they&#039 ; ve got notices all over―&quot ; Shut Your Windows&quot ; , &quot ; Shut Your House&quot ; , &quot ; Stay in Your House Between This Hour and This Hour&quot ; ― because they&#039 ; re coming in and just sprayin&#039 ; and it goes all over your cars, etc., out there. In the University of Davis, Woodland, in that area. So, but they don&#039 ; t do that too much down here, okay. So, when you don&#039 ; t know about it, and then you see the plants and you&#039 ; re going to go through it, you don&#039 ; t know if it&#039 ; s been sprayed or anything, or drifted on. And then you pick it, and then you get it, and you put it in your mouth, or whatever, you smell it to see if it is, you get hit. And I&#039 ; ve had, that&#039 ; s how I got into pesticides. I went to pick a plant that I thought that the only way you can identify it is to smell it, so I popped it [gestures breaking a stem open] like you know you see you pop it, and I stuffed it up one nostril and within five minutes my whole side of my face went red [gestures a swipe across right side of her face]. Rushed in to Rincon Indian Health Center. They said &quot ; Diania, what did you do?&quot ; I says &quot ; okay, this is where I was at.&quot ; And, I had a chemical reaction, that it was sprayed, that it somehow got sprayed. And so I was on―the first time I got steroids, and shot with steroids and it&#039 ; s five-four-three-two-one [gestures counting on fingers], you know, you&#039 ; re taking all those pills, five days. Found out that the golf courses are the worst [chuckles] people, or development, or whatever, that use herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, any type of your &quot ; cides&quot ; they said, because they want to keep their grass green and they want to keep their flowers beautiful and colorful. They don&#039 ; t want any rodents. They don&#039 ; t want anything upsetting that golf course out there. And if you have any native plants that are near there, uh, they&#039 ; re probably going to get hit with that type of thing. And the golf course is another one that doesn&#039 ; t tell you that they&#039 ; re spraying. I don&#039 ; t, I&#039 ; ve never gone by a golf course that said &quot ; Hey, we&#039 ; re spraying today. There&#039 ; s a sign.&quot ; And I worry about the people that are out there golfing, okay. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You know, and I love to watch golf. Don&#039 ; t get me wrong. I mean, I enjoy, I&#039 ; m not a golfer but I love watching the Masters and stuff. And it goes through my head, when these guys are out there, and the women, you know, and they&#039 ; re walking in it, but you don&#039 ; t know if they&#039 ; ve been told about the spraying, or you know, if they have an asthma thing, or, or something like that. So what happened was that I got into pesticide with CIBA. [chuckles, and reaches to her left for a brochure] So then I was working, we worked with a brochure [laughs, and shows for the camera a brochure, then reads the front of it] they call, it&#039 ; s called &quot ; Pesticides: What Basket Weavers Should Know.&quot ; But, this doesn&#039 ; t just tell you for basket weavers. It&#039 ; s for everybody― LK: Mm-hmm. DC: ―okay? And the contact people [flips the brochure over, and points to the back side of the brochure] like for here in Southern California, you&#039 ; ve got the contact if you&#039 ; ve had this. It just tells you what to look for on native plants, if they look dead, if they&#039 ; re doing anything. [opens brochure and looks inside] I&#039 ; m trying to get EPA right now to try to start making us some more of these, but if I have some more, [turns the inside of the brochure to face the camera] like if I gave you, you know, some handouts that you could make your own, you know. They don&#039 ; t have to be in color. [closes brochure, but still holds it up] But, it&#039 ; s just an awareness about pesticides when you&#039 ; re out there. And it, you don&#039 ; t have to be gathering. You can just be taking a trail ride out there, or hiking. Your animals could come back with pesticides or insecticides on them, and then you have your kids rubbing them [gestures petting an animal], and playing with them, and hugging them, and then you wonder also why your child is coming out with a rash. Why are they coughing? Why are they sneezing? And so, most of the time, it&#039 ; s some type of spraying and it&#039 ; s out there. So I sit on that, that, across the United States, we&#039 ; ve got all the tribes. But the bigger tribes like the, your Black Feet and your Crow, etc. you know, they, they lease their land, because they&#039 ; ve got millions of acres on their reservations. So they lease their lands to Montanyo [sounds unsure]. One of that does soy beans, and corn, and all these big guys. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But they need to have the pesticides, but they&#039 ; re trying to regulate it more so especially on native ground or Indian country, because, um, they don&#039 ; t want to be digesting it. They don&#039 ; t want this corn and everything that is going out to the public to be digested, because if you go on to a lot of your other farms and stuff like this, they&#039 ; re not telling you what the pest―what is being used. But the, in the Indian country, they want to make sure it&#039 ; s safe. They don&#039 ; t want to get sick. They don&#039 ; t want their own families to get sick. So, it&#039 ; s a big political thing. But what had happened in northern California, how this--how CIBA became involved in the 90s, about &#039 ; 93, is that the weavers in northern California get their―they use a lot of roots. LK: Mmm-- DC: And they use a lot of willow roots. So, during the―on the rivers of northern California, they go high. But when they recede down, that&#039 ; s when the roots stick out from the, from the banks where all the willow trees are growing. And so they go into the water, and they&#039 ; re picking from the banks of the river, all the roots coming out [gesturing pulling something towards her]. LK: Uh-huh. DC: Okay? When you kind of think of, when the water is high [gestures raising up as in water level], this is where the roots are going. They&#039 ; re going to get water for the, for the trees. Well, industry up nor―up, up river, where they call, where they, where it is coming down into the river, they were dumping chemicals into the water-- LK: Hmmm-- DC: --as a dump. You&#039 ; re talking about the lumber mills, some of the uh, other industrial things are doing it. That&#039 ; s what was stuck in the salmon, also. And so the weavers were doing it. Then all of a sudden they were finding their elders the weavers were getting cancer around their mouth [gesturing around her mouth] LK: Oh, no. DC: And they were getting cancer inside. They were losing their teeth [pointing at her teeth]. And they couldn&#039 ; t figure out why. Because it wasn&#039 ; t just happening to just one tribe. It was happening to all the ones that, that were gathering, you know. You&#039 ; re talking the Pomo, the Uroquois, the Hupas, the Kuroks. All the ones that use this type of material. And so in &#039 ; 93, they found out that, they had EPA come out. They had this whole thing. They wrote a paper on it, a risk assessment, and found out that it was chemicals in the water when they tested the waters on these big ones. And so that started, for CIBA anyway, with the pesticides-- LK: Huh. DC: --to get on there, to be more sort of a―― how can I― a public, you know, awareness. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You can only educate. You can&#039 ; t stop it. You can only, you know. That&#039 ; s why you have all these, um, lawsuits right now, happening in northern California and their waters. Look at the salmon. What&#039 ; s happening, not just in California, but in Oregon and Washington with― because of the chemicals. Uh, you can&#039 ; t, sometimes you can&#039 ; t even eat, you know, some of that salmon because they can&#039 ; t even go upstream, because when they come upstream, they come back sick. And the worst one is in Alaska. LK: Right. DC: See, people don&#039 ; t want to hear about Alaska. But everything that we use down here in, in, in the &quot ; mainland&quot ; they call it, the chemicals, anything, okay, it all goes into our atmosphere, right? [points upward with both hands]. I mean, you spray, and it&#039 ; s going to go up. LK: Yep. DC: Okay, when it goes up, where does it go? It goes to the Poles. [gestures as if touching top and bottom of a globe] North Pole, north pole is getting it mostly. South Pole is not as much, because they don&#039 ; t get that drift like they did. But what it did, it collects up here [circles her hand in a rotating motion] in the atmosphere, and what it is, over Alaska in the Arctic area. That&#039 ; s why it&#039 ; s cleaning out too. Because it&#039 ; s just going around, all these chemicals. It, it forms a warmth and a heat. And that why, that&#039 ; s what&#039 ; s, and now when it rains up there, it drops down [laughs, and gestures as if something is falling] into their land and into their trees, and into their plants, and they&#039 ; re contaminated. And it&#039 ; s all because of us down here, meaning, I&#039 ; m saying &quot ; us&quot ; , mainland and you know, uh, North, Central, South America, all of us, you know, Europe, that using all these different chemicals and things like this, and drifts up [raises her hands up], collects in that atmosphere up there [circles in the air with her left hand], goes to the North Pole. It&#039 ; s going around and around. It rains, or whatever, and it comes down, [indicates rain coming down, with both hands] and that&#039 ; s why Alaska is having all those problems right now with their food [gestures as if counting on her left hand], climate change, the heating, etc. And, uh, a lot of it is the use of chemicals and pesticides. LK: Well, what started out as a― DC: [chuckles] LK: ―lessons in patience for you― DC: [bursts out laughing] LK: You&#039 ; ve expanded your knowledge to all aspects of basketry and, and working with other organizations. So, I know those aren&#039 ; t the only ones you work with, though, and I can list a couple just to jog your memory. I know you work with Camp Pendleton. DC: Oh, well yeah, well, Camp Pendleton is― LK: And Daly Ranch. DC: Daly Ranch. Well, Daly Ranch was because [sighs] I went to, I went to be a docent. Okay? Because I had to find something to do after, you know, I, and that I, before I had my surgery, I became a docent, and I wanted to do the trails. Okay? The native trails. But when I had, after my surgery, I couldn&#039 ; t do the walking anymore. And so they did have a small &quot ; Indian program&quot ; you know, on there. And one of the rangers I, you know, I, I love him dearly, he&#039 ; s still there, we worked together, he was the one that was doing the Native American aspect of the Daly Ranch, what they would give to the public and school district. Fifteen minutes [gestures making air quotes] is all he would have. So I went through his training, on the docents, and he brought in a native person from souther―from Kumeyaay territory, I think, a weaver. I can&#039 ; t think who the weaver is now. She did a display and stuff. And so Ranger Robert, I think I mentioned him, he did a lot, because of his sons were in Boy Scouts, you know, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Eagle Scouts, and they had to do a lot of the native areas of, on there. So he made a lot of the artifacts that the Daly Ranch uses and I use right now for exhibit. And he learned about the plants, and the foods, etc. Well, he went to serve wiiwish, acorn. And when he served it, it was great. And I just went &quot ; What?&quot ; , you know. And it, it was [gesturing as if saying &#039 ; no&#039 ; with her fingers] I don&#039 ; t know. And I&#039 ; m going asking &quot ; How did you do this?&quot ; Well, he used the acorn, but he didn&#039 ; t use the acorns that we normally would use. He used a different type of acorn. And how he fixed it, or whatever. And so, when we had our barbeque when we graduated from the docent class, I went home [laughs] and I made the ______________. This is supposed to look like, okay, you know, our wiiwish does that. And he says &quot ; well, teach me!&quot ; So we started working together. Then they asked me if I would come in and do the native American part, you know, with the Daly Ranch. Daly Ranch through the 7th graders and the whole school district, in Escondido School District, they run the 7th graders through there for 6 weeks, in the Daly Ranch, twice a week, like a Tuesday and a Wednesday, from 8 o&#039 ; clock until 2. And we do about two hundred some a day. LK: Wow! DC: I&#039 ; m the native American part of it, and they do plants, and then they do insects, and then they do the large predators, you know, and then they, the tricks. But, I&#039 ; m the native American portion of it. It started out as 15 minutes, and now all of a sudden, now I&#039 ; m doing about 35 minutes, and just expanding it-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --to get them knowing that this was our first―you know, Daly Ranch is on the, one the land of native peoples. There&#039 ; s, there&#039 ; s areas out there on Daly Ranch that the public can&#039 ; t see, that know that they&#039 ; re―they live there. They have artifacts, etc., on that. So, um, and I got asked to, to do that. It&#039 ; s all voluntarily. If I get paid from anything for doing that―I&#039 ; ve been doing that going on 16 years now―it&#039 ; s a surprise for me, because they do it through grants. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: I started out, like I said, volunteering, and it had expanded it to bigger working with Fred Wood, who&#039 ; s a retired school teacher, you know, from a junior high, 8th grade. And I started with my cousin, Kathy Wallace, who&#039 ; s our story teller now, and her son Brandon―he was about 9 or 10 years old―we would do it together. Well, it got to a point to where she expanded out [gestures expansion thrusting her right hand out away from her], you know, he got older. And so, I had Teeter Romero used to come down for me and help me, from San Juan Capistrano. And then, also now, I got it for myself and it&#039 ; s hard to get people to want to take it over. Because the first question they ask &quot ; Well, how much do you get?&quot ; And I says &quot ; Nope.&quot ; I says &quot ; I can&#039 ; t guarantee you anything on that. If I get paid, it&#039 ; s a surprise for me at the end of the six weeks, depending on how much the grant through--It&#039 ; s through a grant, that they get― LK: Right. DC: ―that. That&#039 ; s to the Friends of the Daly Ranch. Even though the Daly Ranch is owned by the city of Escondido, this Friends of the Daly Ranch and the docents do it because of they want to. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: The only ones that really get paid on there is the rangers, because they&#039 ; re employees of the city of Escondido. LK: Right. DC: And uh― LK: But that&#039 ; s not the only institution that you do work. You, you go to elementary schools and― DC: Well, yeah, I have. I did elementary schools. I think, you know, we do―like San Elijo. We&#039 ; ve been doing that for seven years, and that&#039 ; s during that one basket that I just showed you, with the Cherokee style. We do third graders there. [sighs] Before they built that new elementary school, we were doing anywhere from 2 to 300 hundred a day, in well, one day. We had it for 35 minutes, at 70, at the time. And then, because they had a program going. Kathy would be the story teller. They had adobe making. They had―and so these children are going [gestures in a round circle with her right hand] all day, every half hour they&#039 ; re going to another, another thing. I would have four weavers come in to help me. And then we would give a quick 10-minutes, 5-minute thing with parent volunteers, to come in and help to, to and I think you&#039 ; ve even done it before, [chuckles] to just help these students. And so you&#039 ; d have all these third graders in one room, sittin&#039 ; on the floor, on these things, ten, ten to a circle so I know it&#039 ; s seventy, because we had seventy cir―seven circles in there. We&#039 ; d done seventy at the time, forty-five at the time, and then within thirty-five minutes, you know, they&#039 ; re done. If they didn&#039 ; t finish this basket [holds up small basket which can fit in the palm of her hand] in their time, then they would take them with them and complete it in their ar--in their art department students. So we&#039 ; ve been doing that for quite a while. I&#039 ; ve done the thing with Cal State San Marcos with their students up there, giving the demonstrations, etc., given a talk. And then even teaching the students, you know, the basketry. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Same thing with the senior center, in El Corazon [gestures to Linda]. LK: El Corazon. DC: We just did that for three days, and they really enjoyed it. LK: We cannot leave out one other entity, which was the Mission-- DC: --Oh! LK: --San Luis Rey. How could we forget that. DC: [laughs] You know, she&#039 ; s sees, she&#039 ; s getting me into the basketry thing, here. Um, San Luis Rey--people don&#039 ; t understand. San Luis Rey is one of the missions here that is not part of the diocese, or owned by the Catholic Church, per se. They&#039 ; re owned by the Franciscan order of the Catholic Church. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Or, errr, I&#039 ; m not--I&#039 ; m a Catholic, but I&#039 ; m not that kind. I&#039 ; m not a practicing Catholic. Let&#039 ; s put it that way. But, um, so they&#039 ; re owned by the Franciscans. San Luis Rey, Santa Barbara, and there&#039 ; s one more, and I&#039 ; m going to better learn that one too because there&#039 ; s three missions in the state of California that are not part of the &quot ; Catholic.&quot ; San Juan Capistrano is part of the Orange County diocese. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And they bring in the most money for the missions in the state of California. San Juan Capistrano does, because you&#039 ; ve got to pay to get in, you know, and everything else. But anyway. The friars--well, they&#039 ; re not--they&#039 ; re friars--the Franciscan order, um, are there, at the San Luis Rey Mission. You don&#039 ; t know that they&#039 ; re there, because they&#039 ; re not really public other than when you see &#039 ; em walking around in their brown robes. They have a retreat there. They live there. They study there. They go through their schooling, sometimes, there at the San Luis Rey Mission. And I was notified by Gwen, the director, and Helena, whose at the museum, that they were having a retreat there. And they wanted a activity, and so Gwen says &quot ; Contact Diania, and see if they want to do a basketry.&quot ; Well, Father David, or Brother David--he&#039 ; s up at Santa Barbara now--he used to be here at San Luis Rey, and my brother used to work with him. And he knew I did baskets. That&#039 ; s why he probably agreed. But these Franciscans were coming from all over the world. They weren&#039 ; t just coming from the United States. They were coming as novices ; ones that are almost going to graduate into their order ; some that were graduated already into the order ; some that were retiring from the order. Some they didn&#039 ; t speak English. And, um, there was forty, almost fifty of them. LK: Forty-six. DC: Forty-six of them, and they were there for a week [chuckles] And they asked &quot ; Diania, would you mind doing, you know, a demonstration and talking about the basketry, or people, etc.?&quot ; My brother videoed it, you know, and I haven&#039 ; t really even seen it yet. I think he gave you a copy, right? LK: It&#039 ; s great. DC: Okay. I have to give Roberta--not Roberta, but Reinette and Ella Sue, I think, also. But, um, I says &quot ; Okay, I need four weavers, and uh, to do this.&quot ; And we did that in the back of the mission, and here I was expecting--when we were setting up, all of us were expecting--there&#039 ; s Linda Kallas, Ella Sue Snyder (she&#039 ; s a Acjachemen), Reinette (I can&#039 ; t pronounce her last name. My cousin--Reinette Omah, Olvera, but I can&#039 ; t pro--) LK: Olvera. DC: Yeah, but she goes by that Italian married-- LK: Contreras. DC: No, no. It starts with an &quot ; A&quot ; [indicates a letter &quot ; A&quot ; as if writing in the air]. Anyway. LK: Okay. DC: And you, and me, okay. Linda was--Linda, who was going to interview me, she goes &quot ; Me?&quot ; and I says &quot ; Oh yeah. You know how to do these! You&#039 ; ve been sittin&#039 ; with us for a while. You can come in here.&quot ; And we&#039 ; re going to do the Cherokee style basket. I just gave a talk about our traditional materials, etc. So, we get all set up and here come these men, you know, coming through. You know, I, I was expecting them to come into--with their robes on. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You know, their brown robes. That&#039 ; s what I was expecting. Here these men come in. They&#039 ; re in shorts. They got T-shirts on that say &quot ; Surf&#039 ; s Up!&quot ; you know. All these different things coming home with these hats, sandals, barefoot, you know. I mean, they&#039 ; re coming from the retreat area, you know, tennis shoes on, and all different ages. And it was interesting because I&#039 ; m going &quot ; Whoa, okay.&quot ; You would have, you would have put them on the street. You would not have known that they were friars, okay. And, uh, like I said, all ages. They had a--we had a good time, laughing, etc. Like I said, we do have that, um, if you knew my brother did with that. They were all anxious. They made beautiful baskets. [laughs] LK: They were so impressed with you, and um-- DC: You know. LK: They were so grateful and so full of gratitude for learning that skill-- DC: Yeah. Well, we took a lot-- LK: They really enjoyed it. DC: Well, we took a picture, a group picture, at the end and then we had all their baskets on top of that one rocker area. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And you can see that these baskets--[turning to her left, and reaching for something] I showed you this [holds up the little basket that she showed previously in the interview] and this is mine. But that doesn&#039 ; t mean that you&#039 ; re going to make the same thing like this. Your basket is, is going to be completely different. Even though they start out the same, your basket will be with what you create with your hands. [puts down basket] And so that&#039 ; s what they were really impressed with, because we had some beautiful baskets. You had some real nice round ones [gestures a round object]. You had flat ones [gestures flat object]. You had long ones [gestures a tall object] and they just had a good time. LK: They cherished them, right? DC: Oh, it was a--it was--it was--it was rewarding, you know, on that. But that&#039 ; s what happens when we do that. We did it with the seniors-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --out there, and they all thought that they were going to be making their own little ba--baskets that we showed them. And then when they finally was looking at it, even the men there, you know, everything was different. And so, that&#039 ; s what I enjoyed about the baskets. Even with the kids, you know, they don&#039 ; t-- No two baskets are alike. LK: Exactly. And, expanding on that, we have the elementary school named Pablo Tac after a Luiseño native that was educated in the Mission. But also, you&#039 ; re--you have an opportunity to demonstrate there coming up, correct? DC: Yes, coming up on November 4th, 2022. I&#039 ; ll be demonstrating and so will Roberta--hopefully Reinette will be there--traditional weaving. We&#039 ; re not going to be teaching. That&#039 ; s probably, hopefully coming up next year. LK: Yes. DC: You know, on that. We just had the demonstration also at Camp Pendleton. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Uh, there. I&#039 ; m a docent for the Santa Margarita Ranch and Lost Forest Ranch, docent there at Camp Pendleton. But I&#039 ; ve been working with the Archaeology department since, uh, ugh, &#039 ; 90s with Stan Berryman and then Danielle [Page], and now Kelly Bracken is in charge of it so--. Because we have a lot of sites there on ran--on Camp Pendleton. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: People don&#039 ; t realize it, that we&#039 ; ve got over 600 some building sites there, and sites, and sacred sites, etc., on Camp Pendleton, so we&#039 ; re kept close with the--they&#039 ; re kept close with the different tribes. And since I&#039 ; m the weaver in the native plants, I have a different aspect of it. I try to make that, if the plants are out there, please, you know, don&#039 ; t do this with them, and stuff. So, they notify us that if we have native plants there, do you want us to move them. Do you want to collect them, etc. They do have a native garden there that we do collect the deer grass from, which is up there by the pavilion, behind the new hospital. Um, that way I know they&#039 ; re not being sprayed, when we go there. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: We just did elderberry tree, um, [chuckles] gathering from the berries, and I made some for your, for you for your husband. I thought I was making jelly, and it ended up being syrup. But he likes, he loves it, you know, &#039 ; cuz we gathered there at Camp Pendleton, because [chuckles again], because then I know that, um, also those aren&#039 ; t being sprayed. And, so there&#039 ; s different areas by Camp Pendleton. Plus, with the cultural, okay. And why I started with the, the new General, the Commander-in-Chief, there, at --I can&#039 ; t think of it. I just--I worked with her, and um, was--a-- how?--docent there for the Santa Margarita Ranch. They were going to be the ones dealing with the party. She had her fiesta there, a couple weeks ago. And, um, I didn&#039 ; t want to just be the docent dressed in the--how can I say this?-- We dressed in this Spanish shawl. I don&#039 ; t know if you&#039 ; ve seen the docents from center. [gestures to someone other than Linda Kallas, seated to her left] You&#039 ; ve been there, right? And, uh--Tanis. And, uh, we have that costume [still looking to the other person] or the regalia that they use. I&#039 ; m comin&#039 ; in, because I put these on [hold up her necklace] and I&#039 ; m, you know, trying to keep the Native American thing going there. And you heard me [points to person off camera, and continues to talk to him/her] this last meeting, you know, and Larry was over here [points to opposite direction, and laughs]. Uh, it&#039 ; s that, uh, react? That we&#039 ; ve forgotten, you know, on that. And they do think--they kind of forget us. But anyway, and so I says [still talking to the person off camera] &quot ; I&#039 ; m not going to be a docent. I just--can I come in and do traditional weaving, you know, with our people,&quot ; with her. And she just said [shaking her head]--she says &quot ; heck yes, please, let&#039 ; s come in&quot ; and stuff. So, um, I had the drapes on there. I wasn&#039 ; t going to go San Luis Rey Band because we were all San Luis Rey Band members that were going to do this traditional weaving demonstration. But we&#039 ; re all CIBA members also. So, I used this California Basket weavers --uh, weaving drape on our table. They put us up there, you know, with the rest of them, and, um, I had Mark, who is our weaver, one of our top weavers for our tribe. He had--he was demonstrating his baskets. We were all doing a demonstration, and, and appreciating that, you know, on there. That&#039 ; s the last thing we did on the traditional, you know, weaving thing with Camp Pendleton. Then we&#039 ; re going to do this one November 4. LK: And then the Jubilation of the Valley Festival? DC: Oh yeah, we&#039 ; re going to have, coming up in November-- LK: --the Luiseño Day. Mm-hmm-- DC: --Spirit of the Valley-- LK: --Spirit of the Valley. DC: --with Studio Ace. And we&#039 ; re going to be doing baskets there. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And I&#039 ; m going to be doing teaching the Cherokee style-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --okay? It&#039 ; s not gonna--it&#039 ; s not Luiseño style. And so we&#039 ; re going to be doing, uh, [sighs] all day [laughs]-- LK: And you&#039 ; ve been invited-- DC: --from 11 to 3. LK: --to do basket weaving at a senior dance at the-- DC: Aw, come on now, [gestures pushing away from herself with her right hand] I know. LK: [laughs] DC: It&#039 ; s just a--thank you, Linda. Um, that&#039 ; s December 15th. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And that&#039 ; s coming in because of the senior center over there. That&#039 ; s just an activity they wanted us to do. Plus, we do basket traditional weaving in front of the Mission, hopefully, every 4th Sunday of the month. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But sometimes we don&#039 ; t, because we have other things to do. So it&#039 ; s almost a contact--they--a website, or contact one of us to do that. We do it at Rancho Guajome, but we&#039 ; ll kind of travel with our weaving person. Um, one of the things I want to say is that I do get feedback sometimes from our own Indian people--&quot ; why are you in front of the Mission, Diania?&quot ; okay, you know. Because they see a pictures of the background where we&#039 ; re weaving, and, um--&quot ; why are you doing it on the, on the Mission grounds?&quot ; I mean, you have this animosity with some of our people that have gone through the Mission system and their ancestors were really treated bad, etc. I&#039 ; m not going to say the missions were the best things that happened to the indigenous people in the state of California, or even in the other missionaries throughout the, throughout the different tribal people-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --in Indian country. But, I&#039 ; m trying to tell them &quot ; I&#039 ; ll let you know. I&#039 ; m not there to, to praise the Mission. Don&#039 ; t get me wrong, okay? I have my aspects with them, too, but I&#039 ; m there--we&#039 ; re there, really, to respect and honor our ancestors that are buried there.&quot ; I&#039 ; ve got a lot of family that&#039 ; s buried there in that old cemetery. I know our ancestors had built that mission and helped it. We&#039 ; ve got a lot of ancestors that are buried in those grounds that aren&#039 ; t in the cemeteries. When you had your epidemics, the pox, the small pox epidemic-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --there&#039 ; s a lot of burials in, on those grounds at the Mission that had to do multiple burials real fast. So, we&#039 ; re there honoring our people. I&#039 ; m not there to honor the Mission. And, I have to let them know that. I mean, don&#039 ; t get me wrong. I was raised with the Catholic there. My mom went to school there. My great-grandfather, he was part, you know. Every Sunday it seemed like the Father was always there in his house at the ranch there in the valley, having dinner. But I don&#039 ; t really have that, um, hatred, or whatever you want to call it-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --to the Mission system. Yes, they know that they&#039 ; ve done wrong. My brother and I sit on the committee for the 225 anniversary that&#039 ; s coming up, honoring San Luis Rey Mission. I&#039 ; m there on it, and so is he, to make sure the indigenous people aren&#039 ; t forgotten. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: They&#039 ; ve got to have something that&#039 ; s, that&#039 ; s still representing, you know, them with the ethnic group. We have our powwow there that&#039 ; s been there for 23 years, you know. We just haven&#039 ; t had it since Covid. And that&#039 ; s another thing that&#039 ; s on the Mission grounds. You have some of the indigenous people who will not come to our powwow because it&#039 ; s on Indi--on mission grounds. But, to me, that&#039 ; s personal for them. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: The Mission has not been at a controversy for us. Yes, we know some of our ancestors were treated wrong, you know. You can walk in that Mission, and, um, you can see different things that, um, and the stories you hear, you know, and the longondria &lt ; sic&gt ; that&#039 ; s going down there, where they had to do the washing and stuff. You&#039 ; ve got Pablo Tac. You know, he came from that Mission, and was taught, who can, you know, going back to Barcelona, you know, and Rome also, and is buried over there, and died. But, um, you--we--how can I say this? San Luis Rey Mission, they, the Luiseños around the Mission San Luis Rey weren&#039 ; t as-- LK: It was a-- DC: --progressive as LK: --Luiseño village, correct? DC: Yes, it was a Luiseño village there, but they didn&#039 ; t attempt to burn it down like the Kumeyaay did, at the old--in San Diego. They burned that mission down three times [holds up three fingers]. But it comes with people, and how they took it, um, as a, as a rewards system, or whatever. Okay? They were fed! Can you imagine? I mean, ee were nomads and gatherers and movers. Meaning nomadic, it&#039 ; s not like we moved all over [gestures in a sweeping motion]. It was like we went from ocean to the mountains [points from right to left, indicating movement from west to east] to gather and to the desert [points forward]. You see what I&#039 ; m saying. As being nomadic. We didn&#039 ; t have &quot ; a permanent&quot ; village. We knew what village we came from, but if we had to go, you had people that probably stayed there, the elders, and then the rest went out to gather. But we weren&#039 ; t a warring people. Sure, we probably fought with the Kumeyaay and any others that came through. But with the Kumeyaay people, they were warring people. Now, they came from the, from the Colorado area. I mean, you&#039 ; re looking at warriors, you know, came across, and when they were doing that with the missions and stuff, you know, you--they--it was on their land. They, they didn&#039 ; t like it. They, you know, they, and they, to me, with San Diego Mission, um, and you read the history on that, it, it was, it was harsh. Where here, Father Peri --&#039 ; cuz remember, San Luis Rey was the 19th mission. It was the one that--it was at almost the end that it was built. Okay? And San Luis Capistrano really was the 2nd one. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then they come around there [circles her arm] and they built San Luis Rey, 19-what, a number 19, in 1798. Okay? So, you&#039 ; re looking at all these other missions that were built way before that. Father Peri, he--his system was more with the native people. Yes, you could come, but he let &#039 ; em build around him, also. But it was not the Fathers that were chased in the mission, the Indians. It was the soldiers at the--that&#039 ; s who were supposedly protecting the Fathers. They were the ones that went out and chased the Indians down. They were the ones that did the punishments, when they had their, their, their soldiers--the ones that were in charge--they took it to their head, you know, I mean, to do the punishment, because as far as native indigenous people were below the Mexican people. You had the Indians [gestures making layers, indicating layers of hierarchy], then you had the Mexicans, the Spaniards, you understand, that, that-- LK: Were higher, you know. DC: --hierarchy. So, um, I don&#039 ; t have that too much on there, you know, with that. Everybody has their own. I have it because the missions only because they kept &#039 ; em down [gestures downward with her right hand], and they did use &#039 ; em--I wouldn&#039 ; t--I don&#039 ; t use the word slave, but they--I guess, slave labor. They were the laborers, where else they really didn&#039 ; t--they didn&#039 ; t get paid. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You know, on there. And then when the missions were done, and the secularization, when they did that, they were lost. They cried, you know. I mean, they were starving, because of that--and then what had happened, the ranchers got us here, Picos, the Marrons, the Couts, all of the rest of them--they went and destroyed the mission. They were, they were tearing it apart. They were taking the beams. They were taking all the statues. They were taking the different things, and using them to build. You know, you get some of these ranchers, they have some of the beams on that are from--that are from the Mission. The artifacts. LK: Wild. DC: You know. But you don&#039 ; t hear that side of the story. That&#039 ; s why at Camp Pendleton and Rancho Santa Margarita and them, when it, they hid the stories and that--&quot ; Come on, you guys, you know. Pico wasn&#039 ; t the best guy.&quot ; LK: Mm-hmm. DC: He, he was really one of those really against the Indians. LK: So, in addition to your passion and your education with the basketry, you are like a historian of your people, and the area, and I see that you brought some other materials. Is there anything you want share? DC: [again reaching to the left] Well, one of the things is that, uh, okay, and I know that for you, you&#039 ; re trying to do this. I did study the language [holds up some leaves of paper], but since I didn&#039 ; t--wasn&#039 ; t able to have--speak to somebody, I went through the Pechanga -- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --and they sent me to Cal State--I mean, to Riverside, also to the international classes that was there. But since I didn&#039 ; t have anybody to communicate with [gestures as if transmitting words to another person], it was hard for me. I can read it, and I can probably understand it when they&#039 ; re--when they start talking to me, you know-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --get the words right. But I&#039 ; m fortunate that I did have that. But this is one [looks at paper] of the things that I&#039 ; m going to share--I&#039 ; m going to be sharing this at the, uh, Spirit of the Valley, once they get over there. But it&#039 ; s like this one here, okay? [turns paper toward Linda. The paper is laminated, and has a colored drawing of a deer, with the word &#039 ; şúukat&#039 ; ] You hear that one What&#039 ; s that? LK: Soosh-kah? Soo-kah-- DC: Soos-kwaht, okay? LK: Soos-kwaht. DC: Deer. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Okay. I&#039 ; m just going to be doing that. This is for the children. Ishwoot? [holds up a laminated drawing of a wolf with word &#039 ; ˈíswut&#039 ; ] What&#039 ; s that? Ishwoot. LK: That is a wolf. DC: Yeah, wolf. Okay? And then this is something that I use with kids [holds up a laminated drawing of a grasshopper with word &#039 ; wiˈét&#039 ; ]. Whee-uht. LK: Grasshopper. DC: Or cricket. LK: Or cricket. DC: Yeah. Whee-uht. And so, you see in these names--why I use these, because you see in these names, being with the native kids now, that they&#039 ; re being named this. [holds up a laminated drawing of a bear with word &#039 ; húnwut&#039 ; ] LK: Hunwhat. DC: Hunwhat. LK: It&#039 ; s a bear. DC: It&#039 ; s a bear. Children are being named that now, with these, especially with these names here, with their--for the children. They&#039 ; re proud of being called &#039 ; hun-what.&#039 ; They&#039 ; re proud of being called &#039 ; soos-kwaht,&#039 ; called--proud of being called &#039 ; whee-uht,&#039 ; you know, instead of just being called &quot ; cricket,&quot ; you know, on there. And so that was one of the things that I found I have been proud to do, you know, on that. And then, also, you have &quot ; Tuk-woot&quot ; [holds up a laminated drawing of a cougar with word &#039 ; túˈkwet&#039 ; ]. Who is this? LK: A cougar or mountain lion. DC: It&#039 ; s a cougar, okay? LK: Cougar? DC: You have &#039 ; tuk-woot&#039 ; village, &#039 ; tuk-woot&#039 ; village, &#039 ; tuk-woot&#039 ; court, at Cal State San Marcos! LK: Yes, that&#039 ; s right! DC: Okay? &quot ; Aush-woot?&quot ; [holds up a laminated drawing of a hawk with word &#039 ; áşwut&#039 ; ] I know that&#039 ; s not a [unintelligible] of an eagle, but that&#039 ; s an &#039 ; aush-woot.&#039 ; The eagle. LK: The eagle. DC: Yeah. And these are words that, um, are the alphabet, pretty long, you know, and considered more than 26 letters, that are important to the kids because they can identify with them. You know. I also have a coloring book, and you know, 1-2-3 and stuff like that I&#039 ; m sharing. But one of these [reaches to the left for something else] that I want to end with, if you don&#039 ; t mind, is that if, um, [sighs] in 2004, this is the Heritage Keepers [holds up a magazine entitled &quot ; Heritage Keepers&quot ; ]. This is a magazine coming from the Ramon Learning Center [reads back of magazine] LK: Hmmm. DC: Okay. And, um, it&#039 ; s still going on from Banning, California. And I wrote a poem [opening magazine, and finding page where poem is printed], um, and I wanted to read it and share it with you. Is that okay? LK: Yes! I would love that. DC: Okay. It&#039 ; s that, um, I wrote this poem when I was doing the--learning the Luiseño language, and I had to write this poem because I was, um, trying to pull the words out [gestures as if churning things over in her head] of my head that I knew. And where I was at--it was Teeter Romero and I were up in Rainbow, up there by north of us here. And we were going to go out there to gather Juncus in Gomez Creek area, which is behind Riamb--Rainbow. You gotta go up the mountain. And when we were up there at the top of the hill--it was early in the morning, and we stopped because we looked out towards the valley towards the ocean [points to the left] and that morning it was clear. You can--you could--you could see the, see the ocean shining clear at the, at the other end, which is really not-- [shakes her head]. But then you saw El Moro Kukutuk, okay? That&#039 ; s another story. One day you might have to say it, but Kutukutuk too, is part of our creation story. And you can see that mound really clearly, with the ocean in the background, shimmering, and that mound there in the valley near Camp Pendleton, and Bonsall and Fallbrook area. In this part of our creation story, I got these things in my head as I&#039 ; m looking at it, and I thought of our people. Because of the creation story, of trying to be saved. They were, they--we had the flood, also, in our creation story. And all I could think of, and was watching it, seeing the ocean shimmering, seeing that mound and thinking of &quot ; Oh my God, that&#039 ; s what came up. The ocean came up.&quot ; And the people were running, because the water was coming in and coming in, and they had nothing to save &#039 ; em. And the people from Pechanga were up there on their high point [points up with left hand], which is up there by Rainbow. If you ever go by Pechanga on the back way you&#039 ; ll see the big hill that&#039 ; s up there. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: That&#039 ; s one of their lookouts, and I don&#039 ; t know that there--the name of it, but it&#039 ; s a point. And they were looking at the people, you know, the Luiseño people in the valley, running. And all they could do was keep singing. Now I don&#039 ; t--I have the words to that song, that they had-- that they started there. But, I don&#039 ; t have that with me right now. But they were singing up there to hopefully save their people. They&#039 ; re crying for them, and trying to save, save their people. Well, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this mound comes up. And so they were watching their people swimming towards it, and running towards it. And this mound kept coming up, and that&#039 ; s more--El Moro Hill, or Kuktuk. That is a volcano cone. People don&#039 ; t realize that, you know, we do have volcanic areas-- [laughs] LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --in this area. And that&#039 ; s a volcano cone that came up and our people in that valley, meaning my ancestors, okay--were saved. They were able to go on to Tuktuk, El Moro Hill, and come up, and go up there. You can visit that here--uh, that mound or that little knoll or dell, if you want to call it. It&#039 ; s on Indian Rock Road. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: It&#039 ; s Sleeping Indian Rock. It&#039 ; s Sleeping Indian Road [scratches head] right there. Part of it&#039 ; s on Camp Pendleton. Part of it&#039 ; s in Fallbrook. And, part of it is owned by the County of San Diego. You can&#039 ; t build on it. You can build on--near it, but you can&#039 ; t build on the Camp Pendleton side, because that&#039 ; s a blind--ammunition dump. And the Navy owns it. Fallbrook owns a third of it, and San Diego County owns a third. There&#039 ; s a trail that you can go up on there, if you want to visit it and go, and there&#039 ; s a hearth on the top that they do celebrations, ceremonies up there. My great-grandmother was born there, at the base of that El Moro Hill. So, yeah, we&#039 ; ve got history in there, and, you know, our aunt used to tell--my aunt, my great aunt, used to tell stories, you know, about that-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --and they used to go, go there. But what I did was wrote a poem as I was doing, uh, looking at it, and I was thinking, my language is going in my head, but I could only pick out some words that I knew at that time. So it&#039 ; s called &quot ; Naqmayam&quot ; and I was saying it--first saying it in Luiseño, then I&#039 ; ll read it again in English, what it meant. LK: Okay. DC: Okay. It says &quot ; Naqmayam. Toonquay qawiinga/noo toowq &#039 ; ataxmi/naqmayam/noo toowq &#039 ; ataxmi heelaqal/&#039 ; ataaxum naqmawun! Popuu&#039 ; uk ponakilvoy/yu&#039 ; pan heth&#039 ; aan/no$uun toonavan &#039 ; ataaxum poomoto/naqmayam! Heelaxam!&quot ; Now, I usually sing this, I know. It&#039 ; s just--it&#039 ; s--it&#039 ; s--I usually--it sticks after a while, I&#039 ; m singing it, because I do sing it, at the Mission on All Soul&#039 ; s Day. [chuckles] So, if you come on All Soul&#039 ; s Day, on November 2nd, around 6 o&#039 ; clock, between 6 and 6:30, I&#039 ; ll be doing it and lighting the candles there, and I&#039 ; ll be--I can sing it. And why I like to sing it, it&#039 ; s sometimes I can hear my voice [gestures to her right ear], it bounces off the mission wall. It scared me the first time that it happened-- LK: [chuckles] DC: --because I never had an echo come back like that. And, anyway, &quot ; naqmayam&quot ; means &quot ; listen.&quot ; &quot ; Toonquay qawiinga&quot ; means &quot ; from the rock on the mountain.&quot ; Naqmayam. I see the people. I see the people singing. People listen. The door was closed. Again it will open. My heart will weave among the people. Listen and sing. I wasn&#039 ; t looking at them crying, you know. I was thinking about them singing, and being happy. And the door was closed at one time for us, but it was now opening. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then my heart, at that time, with the weaving, there, my heart will weave among the people. And, um, so it was kind of, you know--and they published it, in that--in that--in there-- LK: It&#039 ; s beautiful. DC: --It kind of gives the story of me. This has happened in 2003 [laughs]. And that&#039 ; s how long ago, with the language. And I&#039 ; m still trying to bring the language back, you know, I mean, we did it with--for a while when we were together with the Rotary Club. But then again I&#039 ; m doing it, trying to get it back with people, and with our people, on that. It&#039 ; s still going on at the Pechanga, with this fantastic Pechanga . I started back with them, way back when, and they started at the preschool. And then, now, they&#039 ; ve taken it all the way up through their 6th grade there on their reservation at Pechanga. They don&#039 ; t speak any English in the classes. All their instructors or the teachers have to learn the language. It&#039 ; s taught in Luiseño. They&#039 ; ve got an agreement with the school district of Temecula, that they follow them all the way through school, all the way through high school, that they have to release them at least, I don&#039 ; t know how many times a week, to be brought in and taught their language, to keep it up. LK: That&#039 ; s wonderful. DC: They take it all the way through high school. But, Pechanga has done really good. Pauma is also―has a class there, you know. Pauma does. Rincon does. Pala, uh, I don&#039 ; t know if Pala does. But, each one has a different, like a dialect, you know. The only sad thing is when you get politics coming in. I&#039 ; m just going to let you guys know. Politics is really deep within the tribes, on there, and um, I&#039 ; m right, you&#039 ; re wrong, etc. And it&#039 ; s sad, because we&#039 ; re all the one people, but that&#039 ; s the way it goes. You&#039 ; re born into being an indigenous people, not just for us here in California, but across the United States. You&#039 ; re born into politics, whether you like it or not. So, um― LK: Well, I just want to close with saying that it&#039 ; s been an honor and absolute pleasure to interview you and listen to you. I want to acknowledge that you went from accounting to weaving to becoming an educator of your pe―of your tribal background, and also a historian, and I think a big part of your legacy is to keep this out there. And you&#039 ; re doing it pretty much on your own. It&#039 ; s not like you have all this, um, Federal money behind you, like the federally recognized tribes, so― DC: We don&#039 ; t have that [shaking her head] LK: ―you do not have that. You&#039 ; re not federally recognized. But I just wanted to honor that in you, and thank you so much for allowing me to do this. DC: Okay. LK: No $uun. DC: Noh [bowing her head, and chuckling] I was going to say No $uun Looviq. https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives csusm.edu if you need reproductions made. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=CaudellDiania_KallasLinda_2022-10-17_access.xml CaudellDiania_KallasLinda_2022-10-17_access.xml Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Caudell, Diania. Interview October 27, 2022 Description An account of the resource Interview with Diania Caudell focused on her Native American ancestry as well as her past occupation as an accountant. Also included is her implementation of Native American education in the San Juan Capistrano School District and how her back injury led her to become a basket weaver. The written transcription of this interview also contains a glossary and poem in Luiseño with English translation, written by Caudell in 2003. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-22 Subject The topic of the resource Basket making Education -- Native Americans Luiseño Indians Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-10-27 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Diania Caudell Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Linda Kallas Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Oceanside (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Luiseño Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Diania Caudell Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving image Art and artists Community history Native American experience North County Oral History Initiative Women's experience Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Jennifer Ho Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dilcie Perez OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PerezDilcie_HoJennifer_2023-05-30.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 5.4 Perez, Dilcie. Interview May 30, 2023 SC027-43 01:25:52 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library Special Collections oral history collection CSUSM This oral history was made possible in collaboration with the Cross-Cultural Center and with generous funding from the Instructionally Related Activities fund. csusm California State University San Marcos. Cross-Cultural Center ; Education, Higher ; California State University. Multicultural Programs ; California State University San Marcos. Student Affirmative Action ; California State University San Marcos. Student Academic Services Outreach Program ; Mural painting and decoration ; Human rights Dilcie Perez Jennifer Ho Video PerezDilcie_HoJennifer_2023-05-30.mp4 1:|14(12)|25(19)|35(6)|51(10)|66(8)|85(4)|98(10)|112(13)|136(9)|154(3)|167(3)|181(15)|195(3)|210(8)|227(5)|246(5)|257(3)|276(8)|297(11)|326(16)|336(17)|354(3)|368(12)|379(6)|397(16)|416(9)|428(16)|441(4)|458(14)|477(6)|489(3)|502(3)|516(13)|530(9)|545(9)|556(5)|568(15)|580(8)|594(7)|608(5)|626(9)|641(8)|657(14)|669(15)|686(7)|700(16)|711(9)|725(14)|740(3)|757(8)|772(4)|786(7)|816(6)|831(15)|843(12)|855(14)|869(5)|882(6)|895(4)|910(9)|924(14)|938(6)|953(13)|971(11)|988(4)|1006(7)|1039(3)|1051(12)|1071(13)|1084(7)|1102(16)|1118(16)|1125(9)|1142(17)|1156(10)|1176(7)|1195(4)|1218(3)|1244(4)|1261(8)|1285(9)|1303(9)|1320(6)|1335(10)|1360(14)|1380(3) 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/16aaafbcb8a9a79b2431516903eafa19.mp4 Other video english 0 Interview Introduction 0 21 Childhood and Education Perez describes what her life was like as a child from a military family, she traveled to various places and graduated high school in Japan. As an adopted child she describes her family dynamic. Perez then goes on to explain how she collected various credits from community colleges and finished her bachelors at California State University San Marcos and received a Masters at Central Michigan. &#13 ; &#13 ; Adopted ; Bachelors ; Masters ; Military ; Japan ; California State University San Marcos 0 211 Moving to California/ First Impressions of CSUSM Perez moved to California because her husband at the time was to be stationed at Camp Pendleton, California. She then describes that at her CSUSM orientation she realized how advanced the campus was in regards to DEI (Diversity, equity and inclusion) work. Camp Pendleton ; military ; Diversity, equity and inclusion ; California State University San Marcos 0 357 Early Career Experiences Perez worked in Student Affirmative Action (SAA) as a student and was participating in outreach and various programming in schools. After graduating she worked at GEICO in North Carolina and shortly after received a job at CSUSM for a position in Student Academic Services Outreach Program. Student Affirmative Action ; Student Academic Services Outreach Program ; Assistant Outreach Coordinator ; CSUSM ; GEICO 0 537 Experience at CSUSM Perez describes her experience as a non-traditional student since she came in with credits from various community colleges and was married with a full time job. She explains how great the faculty was at CSUSM and how they genuinely cared for their students. Perez created a deep connection with her professors and still considers them as lifetime mentors. She treasures the opportunity to star in a production on campus that expressed the diversity of the lives of seven African women. non-traditional student ; married ; faculty ; CSUSM ; mentor ; Third Word Counselor's Association ; DEI ; Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Wasn’t Enough (Is Enuf) 0 936 Planning the 10th Anniversary Event Perez explains how when she came back to plan the 10th anniversary event for CSUSM the campus was going through an identity crisis. She was trying to make the campus more relatable. CSUSM ; Charger girls ; Jazz ; Mature ; Relatable 0 1170 Cross-Cultural Center Forming Out of a Crisis When Perez was first working at CSUSM there were little to no student-centered spaces. There were political issues on campus and no visible form of DEI being practiced. She quit her position in Student Academic Services Outreach Program (SASOP) due to burnout and in response people in administration provided a new opportunity for Perez, to be the Associate Director of Multicultural Programs in which would mark the beginning of the Cross-Cultural Center. Student Academic Services Outreach Program ; Western Association of Schools and Colleges ; Associate Director of Multicultural Programs 0 1561 Creating a Vision for the Cross-Cultural Center Perez explains how she hit the ground running when she began building Multicultural Programs. She spent time talking to the community and building relationships by creating various programs and events to provide representation on campus. Perez describes the struggle of getting a space on campus for the department and how people undermined the importance of the program itself. Multicultural Program ; Tukwut ; Powwow ; DEIJ ; Cross-Cultural Center ; Multicultural Programs 0 1859 Building a Foundation for the Cross-Cultural Center Perez describes how she would make space deals with various organizations to grow the Cross-Cultural Center. She expresses how she had to manage creating learning outcomes for the students while bringing in new faculty for the center. She explains how it took some years for the campus to adopt diversity practices. Cross-Cultural Center ; Institute for Social Justice and Equity ; WASC ; diversity 0 2211 How CSUSM Shaped Her Perez expresses not only her childhood but the programs and community at CSUSM shaped her into being the person she is today and prepared her for her career. She changed her viewpoint within DEIJ work and realized identity-based centers are only impactful when student support is the main focus. CSUSM ; Veterans Center ; Student Affirmative Action ; Third Word Counseling Association 0 2668 The Role of Identity-Based Centers Perez explains the importance of intersectionality and how the different centers play a role independently but also in unison as one. She explains how the focus should be on social mobility and supporting students regardless of their identity. Perez discusses how different campuses will have a different approach but there should always be a sense of faculty engagement. intesectionality ; identity-based center ; faculty engagement ; support 0 3128 What Students Needed and Addressing Discriminatory Issues Perez discusses how she spent time communicating with staff and students to understand the needs and necessary representation for the campus. She states that it wasn't until she became dean that she got involved in discriminatory issues on campus and recollects specific issues. She describes issues between student and faculty, and between faculty and faculty in which helped her to gain new viewpoints in regards to DEIJ. DEIJ ; Celebration of Culture ; CSUSM ; Gala GATSA 0 3865 Important People That Built the CCC Perez names a few people that helped make the Cross-Cultural Center and worked on building it up in the early years. Cross-Cultural Center 0 4007 The Third Space/ Current Role Perez explains how her research in the concept of the third space showed her how strengths and characteristics of certain cultures can blend into a single space. She discusses her current role (as Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academic and Student Affairs at the CSU) and who she works closely with in carrying out her daily tasks. The Third Space ; CSUSM ; Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic and Student Affairs 0 4265 Mural for the Cross-Cultural Center Perez discusses how the campus supported DEIJ work and there seemed to be no obstacles along the way. She talks about the making of a mural for the Cross-Cultural Center in which provided a visual marker of unity and diversity for the center. mural ; arts ; Cross-Cultural Center ; DEIJ ; Diversity ; Unity 0 4586 Program Funding/Making Campus Traditions Perez explains how Multicultural Programs was created out of a lottery fund and that they often fought for space on campus. She discusses deals she would make with other programs and how she made connections within the community. Perez recollects on how traditions were made and how she was given total freedom to make big moves on campus. Cross-Cultural Center ; Tukwut Life ; Friday Night ; traditions 0 4873 Proud to Be a Part of CCC Perez expresses her deep gratitude and pride to be apart of creating the CCC and how Floyd Lai has expanded DEIJ work on campus. She explains how faculty has continued to add and beautify the CCC. DEIJ ; Proud ; Mad As Hell ; Social Justice Summit 0 Video Dilcie Perez is a California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) alumna. She graduated with her degree in Bachelors of Arts in Political Science. In this interview, Perez explains how CSUSM was ahead of its time in regards to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) work ; however at the beginning of her employment with CSUSM, the university did not have Multicultural Programs (the predecessor to the Cross-Cultural Center). Perez recalls her work with Multicultural Programs, including her being offered the opportunity to open the program upon tendering her resignation to the university. Jennifer Ho: Okay. Today is May 30th, 2023. My name is Jennifer Ho, and I am interviewing Dr. Dilcie Perez for the CSUSM (California State University San Marcos) Cross-Cultural Center (CCC) Oral History Project. Thank you so much for being with me today, Dr. Perez. How are you? Dilcie Perez: Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. Ho: Great. Okay, so I just wanted to start with a little bit about you personally. Can you tell me where you're from? Perez: No (both laugh). So I grew up in a military family, so I had the wonderful opportunity to live in places like Arizona and Maine and California, and Okinawa and traveled around and graduated high school in Okinawa, Japan. And moved to California as--in the nineties, early nineties. And had started , when I graduated high school in Japan, I wasn't sure where I wanted to go to college. And so I kind of took a lot of classes at community colleges. And when I moved to California someone said to me, “Have you ever heard of a place called Cal(ifornia) State San Marcos?” And at that time, I had not. And so they said, “Oh, they have programs at the time for juniors and seniors, and so you should check them out.” And so I applied to go to school at San Marcos and was accepted. And so I can talk about that later, obviously. But I, my, I come from a family of--I have my parents and I have two brothers, and I am the only girl and the youngest. However, I was also adopted, and so found my biological family later in life. And so in that family, I am the oldest of three girls. And so, have a wonderfully blended family. My education, I graduated from Cal State San Marcos in (19)94-ish. And I say that because I had the wonderful opportunity to speak at commencement in (19)94 as the speaker, one of the student speakers. And, and I think my speech might, I don't know if it's in the archives, but there's gotta be some video or something of all the, the different commencements. But moved immediately after that to North Carolina and had two classes to finish. And so I was also pregnant at the time, and so it took me about a year to get those two classes done. So I walked in (19)94, but my, my diploma says (19)95. And came back to San Marcos and then went and got my master's at Central Michigan. So they have--they had a military on-base education. And so they would fly out the instructors from Central Michigan to do an executive master's program. And this is back in the early 2000s. So this was years ago. And then I waited thirteen years to go back and get my doctorate from San Diego State in educational leadership with the emphasis in community college. Ho: Thank you. Can I ask you what brought you out to California in the first place? Perez: Yeah, the military. So I met my ex-husband in Okinawa, and then we moved to North Carolina, and then he received orders to Camp Pendleton. And so we lived in Oceanside actually at that time, and then I went to school. Ho: Okay. Okay. That's great. What were your impressions of--of California, of San Diego, of Oceanside when you, when you arrived for the first time? Perez: Yeah, I don't think that I had anything particularly of California. Because I traveled the world. And so it was another place. I remember living in--off of Mission Avenue and just appreciating being close to the beach and the weather. And but I will tell you this, that I came, so when this was (19)91-ish. And when someone referenced, like to go to Cal State San Marcos, and I say this, I tell the story all the time: that when I applied to Cal State San Marcos, got accepted, I went to orientation. And orientation at that time in 1992 was at Cal State Jerome's. So you've probably heard the stories across the street. Ho: Yep. Perez: And I can see it. One, I will tell you, I still have my 1992 orientation binder that I received when I came. Still. So I've traveled and moved. But I recently was, you know, consolidating. I was like, “No, I'm keeping this, like this is good, important stuff in 1992.” And I will tell you that what is pivotal for me of having been in a military family traveling the world, that I remember walking out of orientation feeling like it was a place that I belonged because of the message of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And, you know, in (19)92, we didn't always use those words. Ho: Right. Perez: But, but diversity was a value for the campus from the start. And I remember people, someone at orientation saying, “We don't want to be a melting pot. That's old, outdated language.” And this was in (19)92, right? “Because a melting pot blends everyone together, and you can't tell the difference. We wanna be a salad bowl and we want everyone to have a unique.” And so that resonated with me that I felt like I found a place, even at my orientation in 1992 at Cal State San Marcos. Ho: Wow, that's, that's amazing. That's really great to hear. So is that--just to fast forward a little bit, is that what brought you back to CSUSM? Perez: That's interesting. So literally when I worked in as a student, I worked in what was at the time Student Affirmative Action. So they called it SAA. Someone by the name of Denise Hollis became a mentor. I think Eric Cardoso or folks in Student Affirmative Action (Program). And this was obviously before Prop 209. That then started to abolish offices such as that, right? And so when I worked in those areas and SASOP (Student Academic Services Outreach Program) and stuff, I was a student going out and doing motivational outreach. So we would do programs in schools, and I was going out doing that, and I had such a powerful experience as a student. And I moved to North Carolina right after I graduated for a year and a half, two years. And when I came back, I was at a party, like a barbecue, I can't remember. And someone said to me, “Hey, you know I got a new job.” It was somebody that I worked for. She said, “I got a new job.” And I was like, “Ah, I want your job.” Like, “I want your job.” And she just started laughing. She was like, “Ha.” I was like, “No, no, no, no, no, no. I really want your job.” Like, “What do I need to do?” And her assignment was temporary. And so this was--so really why I came back to work was because there was a temporary opportunity. It was an Assistant Outreach Coordinator in Student Academic Services Outreach Program. And so I started back at the campus that I love so much, and really in official capacity doing what I had done as a student. Ho: That's wonderful. And was that after you got your, your doctorate from SDSU? Perez: No. So this is all in 1998, (19)90. So I graduated in (19)95. I was in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And then I came back, I think in (19)97 and worked for GEICO, did temp work. I was like, “What's my life's purpose? Where am I headed? What am I doing?” And then I met her at this party or saw her again at this party. And then the rest is history about (CSU) San Marcos, because I left, there's a lot to the story. But I left, but stayed for a long time and really had a great professional experience. Ho: That's wonderful. Do you remember the name of the person from the party? Perez: Oh, Mary Wardell. Um-hmm. Ho: Mary Wardell. Perez: Yeah. She was, she worked in Student Affirmative Action, and she moved and went to the Dean of Students' Office, was an Assistant Dean of Students. And that's when I saw her. 'Cause she had just received that pro-- promotion. Now she works at--she moved to, I think, University of the Pacific, but she does DEI work, she’s done written books and done amazing things in this area. Yeah. Ho: Thank you. Perez: Yeah. Ho: So now backtracking again. I wanna hear about your time as a student, because obviously it had a profound impact on you. So, so did it meet--did being a student meet your expectations after that orientation? And can you tell me about some experiences on campus and the people that you met and some pivotal moments? Perez: Oh, I love it! So I will tell you that I (laughs)--I, I had a fun experience at (California State) San Marcos, but I wasn't your traditional student. Like, I didn't know what a Dean of Students was. I didn't know about higher education. I knew that I had gone, I didn't learn this until later. I'd gone to like six different community colleges picking up classes. I spent time at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, picking up classes. So I was going to school constantly, but picking up classes as we traveled. And so when I got to, you know, (CSU) San Marcos, it--you have to remember the culture was so different because it was so small and the faculty and the students were so tight. And when I arrived, there were no first year students. It was only juniors and seniors. And we only had three buildings. So Science Hall, Academic Hall, and maybe well, Administration Building, Craven, which is not Craven anymore. So it was those three buildings. And I will say to you that I was married, right? And so I was working during the day, I was going to school, and I took classes. I will tell you, that's really profound. And to this point, I'm still connected to these faculty members today. Leslie Zomalt. So, you know, the (Ernest and Leslie) Zomalt Award they're very, I'm very close to them. She was my faculty member in California History and we're still close. And she gave me a B! Like a B, a B. So I was like, “Why do I like you so much? You gave me a B.” But she was so good because she would, what I loved about her--I was going through a personal, difficult personal situation during that time, and I must have missed class or something must have happened that, she called me and she said, “I realize that you're not around. I wanna check on you and see how you're doing.” And that was pivotal to me. I remember that she went to a conference and she loves to read. She still loves to--I, I'm going to her house for quilting. She got me connected to quilting. I hate quilting. I hate it. I hate it. But I love you know, I, when I came back one time, I said to her, “Will you make me a quilt?” Is what I said to her. Literally this bold. And she said, “I will not make you a quilt. I will teach you how to quilt.” And I was like, “Ah, okay.” So, but every year, for about ten to fifteen years, we have quilted at her house for a year, for at one time a year. Now, I don't quilt any other time. I still hate quilting. But I love the sense of community and the mentorship and the love that goes into it, that I literally will quilt one thing within my range once a year when I go. And so I will say to you that what I think about at San Mar--and Jill Watts. So let me tell you, Jill Watts is still there. She is a historian beyond historians. And, and I talked about her in, in my commencement speech that the best African American History class I have ever taken is by a white woman. Hands down. She is brilliant. She is, you know, phenomenal. It's funny, even when I worked at (California State) San Marcos, I wouldn't see her as much, but she would just beam every time that she saw me because she knew who I was as a student. I remember that Peter Zwick, I don't know if you've heard that name. He used to be over (at) Global Affairs at the time, but was really a hard, hard political science instructor. Like people were scared of him. Hard. And I decided, 'cause I was lost, I was gonna do Poli Sci as a major. And he, I went to him, who's my faculty advisor too. He must've been. And I sat there and I said, “I'm graduating in May.” And he was like, “Dilcie, how are you graduating when you haven't hardly taken any political science classes?” I was like, “It’s a technicality. Technicality.” So I took twenty-one units, most of those political science classes, upper division in one semester. Ho: Wow! Perez: I thought I was going to die. And I think a few of them, 'cause he was a hard one, like one or two were with him. But I will tell you this, is that one, it was hard 'cause I was working and taking twenty-one units and picking up. But I will tell you that that was the best I did. That was the only semester I've ever made Dean's list (laughs) in my college career, because I knew I didn't have a lot of room to play. But I will say to you that as I think about (Cal State) San Marcos, it was pivotal to me because of the relationships, particularly with faculty that I established. Denise Hollis was administration, but we were, we used to go to a Third Word Counselor's Association. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it was years ago, and it was doing DEI work, and they were taking us there to those events. But even during the time, so I didn't get involved in a lot of co-curricular events. I have a colleague now, that used to work at Chancellor's Office and I just had an event for her. And I was like, we went to college together at (CSU) San Marcos. She's very--Sabrina Sanders. We went to college. And I was like, I don't completely remember her, but we went to college together. Right. Because she remembers me. And I just wasn't involved in a co-curricular way. So I would tell you my co-curricular experience really was the relationships with them. But we did a play. So this is in the archives as well, but for Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Wasn’t Enough (Is Enuf). Ho: Okay. Perez: We, we all practiced for months. I--months on weekends and nights and did this two-weekend play or maybe one weekend. And it was in like the school newspaper. Gezai (Berhane) showed it to me later, that we all did this play. It was sold out in ACD 102 sold out. It was just wonderful. That--those are the pivotal moments for me. My orientation, my relationship with faculty, my--spending time in that (production). That's what I think when I think about my (CSU) San Marcos experience that I treasure the most. Ho: That's lovely. Thank you. And what did you say the title of that play was? Perez: For Color Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow (Is) Enuf. So it's about seven African American women and the diversity of their life. Ho: Thank you. Perez: Yeah, it has some pretty heavy topics in it, quite honestly. And so that's what made it so impressive quite honestly. Yeah. Ho: And can you speak a bit about--about the culture on campus for you as a student? Whatever comes to mind, but in particular I'm interested in, in culture and community and, and DEI and, and different groups of students. Perez: So, that's an interesting, I am grateful for this question. I don't think that I was mindful enough to know at the time with words and language what I was experiencing. I think I felt like I mattered. That I was making relationships and making connections. And I, and I hate to--I don't always like the cliche of mattering and belonging because I think people have to unpack that and think about what that means. But I will tell you, I felt like I belonged at (CSU) San Marcos from day one. From day one. And so--but I also didn't have a lot of needs, right? So at that point in time for the two years that I was there, two or three I think it served the need that I had as a non-traditional student. When I came back in (19)97, the campus had changed because the first-year students came in (19)95. So it was not the same. We--I could tell we were going through an identity crisis, right? We were planning the 10th anniversary event when I returned, and I brought the (laughs) Charger girls. I was gonna bring them to the event. And I don't know if you know, but back in the day and you have to be careful about this, this part, but back in the day we had a librarian who was heavily involved in the campus and (laughs). Ho: Okay Perez: And there was a lot of music, it (was) like jazz, right? That works for an older population. And so it was wonderful for the campus when there was juniors and seniors and older people, but first-year students and sophomores (laughs), I don’t--jazz isn’t it all--like, we have to be more than that. And so I really was proud of myself, quite honestly. And I was like, I got the Charger girls! They're coming into this event. They literally took me to, we--I don't know if you've heard of Surge? So Surge used to be the coffee shop. Ho: Okay. Perez: That was on the corner, kind of down by--by Block C by, you know where the quad is? It was on the corner there. There's a real estate office there now. They took me down to the Surge for coffee and they said, “We don't want T&amp ; A at our event.” Like, and I said, “What? Like, the Charger girls are like, like professionals (laughs)! Like they, they're not, they're not T&amp ; A, what’re you talking about?” But they would not let me bring the Charger girls to that event. I had to cancel them. Ho: Oh my goodness. Wow. Perez: And I think that the campus was in that transition from this kind of older and more mature thing to saying we have to be more relate--like, I was trying to push us to be more relatable and it did not work that day at all (laughs). Ho: Wow, what a conversation that must have been. Perez: Oh, it was fun. But you know, I've always, I've always liked to get into good trouble, right? Ho: Yeah. Perez: And so for me it was then how are we meeting the needs of students? Because what we, what we did for, it was supposed to be like 10th anniversary in a preview day, and it really was just, you know, the same old thing that we had been doing all of that, that time period. So-- Ho: Okay. Perez: Yeah. Ho: Did--are you saying the event turned out to be kind of the same old, same old? Perez: Uh-huh, uh-huh. Ho: Okay. Okay. Perez: 10th anniversary jazz ensemble (laughs). Yeah. Ho: Okay. Okay. Perez: And people showed up, but it wasn't what you really would think of, of a traditional college experience. So we went through transitional times such as that. Ho: Okay. Well that's a good segue into the Cross-Cultural Center then. So when you were a student at that time, there was not a Cross-Cultural Center, is that correct? Perez: That's correct. Ho: Okay. So when you came back to CSUSM in a staff role what are your first memories of rumblings of a Cross-Cultural Center, of a Multicultural Center? Do you remember? Perez: None. None. So let me put the context around, and this is where it--it's a, it's an interesting story. So if I go back to (19)98, (19)97, I worked in Student Academic Services Outreach Program. So SASOP doing early outreach, motivation, academic preparation. And I would say that that team and the people were diverse. We had the Dome (food services originally operated by San Diego State University’s Aztec Shops) as a space, which was really, if I remember correctly, only the primary kind of student-centered space. There wasn't a lot, you had lunch there, right? And you ate there, everything happened in the Dome. I would say to you, we were going through as a division, a lot of work around our values and trying to clarify and integrate our values in our, in for the team. And I would say to you what was hard, I'm trying to remember. I remember that there were WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges) self-study and that it came back with some campus climate challenges. Ho: Uh-hmm. Perez: And I remember, and all my years kind of blur, right? So, but I have a time period of when, like pre--I have to explain it. But when I was in SASOP, I was heavily involved in a lot of different things. In outreach. And I remember, I think during that time, there was a noose hanging on the tree outside of Academic Hall. Not, excuse me, I'm lying to you. Outside of the Administration Building. So that fifth, fifth floor, you have Founders' Plaza, there was that--there's a tree there. Ho: Yeah. Perez: That tree had a noose. And so that caused a lot of energy. So the part that's interesting is that I was heavily involved in the community. I was working tremendously. And I think I had kind of burnt out, honestly, in outreach. So I was there five and a half, six years, and I had been thinking about, I need to change. I need to do something differently. And so I was driving to work one day, and I had talked to my ex-husband. I was like, “I think I'm, I'm done. Like, I'm tired, like I'm exhausted.” And he, he said, “(I) support you, do what you need to do.” And I had written a letter and I had it for like months and I hadn't done anything with it. And then one day I was driving to work and I can tell you exactly where I was when I was driving to work. And I said, “I'm done.” And so I came in to the office and I gave them my notice. And one thing that I will tell you is that when someone quits a job and gets another job, most people will say, “Oh, Jennifer got another job. She's moving on to better things.” Well, you get a lot of attention when you say, “I'm leaving.” And they're like, “Where are you going?” And I'm like, “Nowhere. I'm just done here.” And so folks in administration came to me and they said, “Hey, you know, we don't want you to leave. What's going on?” And one of the administrators said, “If we create an opportunity for you, will you stay?” And I was like, “Eh, I don't, I don't think so. No, no, no. I--I'm pretty tired.” And the campus threw a big going away party for me, huge. But what they had said to me is, “Leave, go ahead. Take two weeks. Don't, we're not gonna submit everything. You go think about this opportunity and let us know.” And I will tell you that it was until that last day, I think they had given me till 1:00 PM and they said, and I called at twelve fifty-five because I wasn't going to do it. I was tired. And the opportunity that they had was the Associate Director of Multicultural Programs. And so that was the first start to the Cross-Cultural Center. So that is how, honestly, it really--and so I'll tell you that what I know now, after I got into that position was we were doing 2010 visioning at that time. And I, this was, you're talking 2002 when I, when I shifted. Two thousand two/three. And they had already, I would say Jonathan Pollard, you've probably heard that name, and Bridget Blanshan. Ho: Uh-hmm. Perez: They had done some visioning, 2010 visioning. And, and I don't know, I could, I don't, I can't dig probably for you, but they have it-- Ho: Um-hmm. Perez: This document. And in it, they had said they wanted to open Multicultural Programs and hire and do a space. So what happened, I believe, is that there was me saying, “I'm outta (laughs). I'm gone.” The campus not wanting to necessarily just let me walk away. And knowing they had an opportunity for strength and growth under Bridget is when I accepted and changed and came and opened Multicultural Programs. Ho: Wow. It's a good thing you put in that notice. Perez: Oh, who you telling (Ho laughs)? 'Cause the campus one, I'll tell you this. And if I'm being quite honest, and I, if I had tried to apply for that type of role--as an outsider to a place, I don't, I would've not received that role. I didn't have the pedigree. I didn't have, you know, sure I had some of the education, but what people used to say at the time is that you're not a traditional Student Affairs practitioner. And I actually resent that type of statement because I don't think there's a traditional student affairs person anymore. Like that's old thinking. Ho: Uh-hmm. Perez: But I would say to you that I think I wouldn't have, I, what, what I believe was happening is I had established strong relationships. People knew my quality of work, knew that I would come in and at least set the ground running. That, that that's what I did. And so, honestly, when I came in, started the position, and literally I was in a cubicle inside on the fourth floor of Craven (Hall) and really had to set the, the vision. And so I met with nineteen, twenty people and I said, “What are our needs on campus? What do we think we should be doing? What do you want Multicultural Programs to be?” And I created oh my gosh, so many programs that first year. Like I was a party of one and a student assistant. But we started, I remember, oh, I can't remember. There's, there has to be somewhere. I did a flag, it had international flags everywhere. And we did a culture of celebration, or celebration of culture. Celebration of Culture was the first event. And then in that time, we started with--I partnered with Jonathan (Pollard) to start the African American Faculty Staff Association. We did the fires. We had the (brush) fires. And so we, because part of my job was volunteerism too. They threw volunteerism and engagement in there. So I did a fire, a drive, a, a clothing drive for the for out of the center for the victims of the fire. I did Soul Food Lunch, helped start Soul Food Lunch, which is gone now, but Soul Food Lunch, I think we did over 20 programs that first year that I was there. But it was all because of what people told me they wanted and what we needed. Oh, Powwow! I did the planning of the (Tukwut) Powwow with everyone. I, oh man. I could try and go back. Like we just, it, it really, I was, it was a way in which I could engage the community and build relationships across the campus. And so that is the foundation for how I really began to, I think cement my knowledge base in DEIJ (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice). Was really kind of this piecemealing and building. And so the piece that I will tell you is I, between Bridget (Blanshan) and I, I can't--we advocated for the space next door to Student Life and Leadership. And it's a square wall. It was it--that room? Hon--it is so small. Do you hear me? It is so small. But, we put a couch. I went and got a couch from (unclear) who, I don't know if you know her, she works. I went to her house and picked up a couch. We got--we built me a cubicle in there because I thought it was important to have a separation of space between any students. We did all this stuff. Oh my gosh. We were in there and they tried to come and take that space. I remember one of our academic colleagues, literally, I was sitting in the space and I turned around and she's standing there summing up the space for sure. And didn't say a word to me, and then turned around and walked out. And I remember going to Bridget and saying, “You've got to be kidding me. Right?” Like, you can't come while someone's sitting in the space trying to sum it up for, 'cause space wars were real. Ho: Um-hmm. Perez: And I think at that time, people didn't realize the power of a Cross-Cultural Center. And there was intentionality and, you know, we called it Multicultural Programs. And then I opened up the Cross-Cultural Center, and literally, as I see how you've written it, we had, do you put the dash in between Cross-Cultural Center and do we not? And later on there was the, the version of, is it C3, which we branded and branded well. And then, then people hated that brand, and then they had to move, which is fine, right? But I often, I laugh because I can't believe that the Cross-Cultural name has still stayed. And, and I'm exceptionally proud. This part, we may not wanna put too public, but that's the one center that has had no controversy (laughs) on the campus. Ho: Really (both talking)? Perez: Right? Yeah. Ho: So there was no pushback or anything when you started? Perez: Nah, Nah, none. No. Um-um. And they could have. But I think because the campus was small, I had great relationships. The way in which I did--did it in relationship. It was a community effort. People were engaged, people were support(ive). None. None. But I will say to you too that the way in which we approached DEI work was pretty soft at that time. You know, it was a very supportive nature. I wasn't tackling policy. I wasn't, you know, tackling searches and recruitments, and I was building community and that level of awareness around what we can do collectively. I think I wrote a mission in the beginning. But here's the thing: I will tell you that I was, in my humble opinion, the grassroots person, because I got it going. And gave, gave. And then I was there 18 months maybe, and then I moved to Japan. And when I came back, Alexis Motevirgin had taken it to a more formal place. And, and I was like, I think we had a mission statement back then? But Alexis, I think really formalized the mission and the work. I just, I just was the grassroots starter for all of that at the time. And then Alexis came, stayed just a few months, right? And then I, I think that I hired Augie (Augustin Garibay) and he didn't stay very long. Augie Garibay and then hired Sara, Sara Sheikh. And then she stayed for a little bit and moved on. And then Floyd (Lai), and he's the longest standing. Really, I think built a solid foundation. I was there. So this is where it gets weird. Because I was, I would say the associate director, or the first, however we wanna frame it for Cross-Cultural Center. But I was there from 2003-ish to (200)4 into (200)4, so probably eighteen months. And then I went to Japan, and I was gone a year and a half, and then I came back. So part of my work in the evolution of the Cross-Cultural Center, was when I was the Director of Student Life, and it was in my portfolio. So had the ability--so I was making--I hate, I feel awkward because it's almost like you're bragging. And so I'm trying not to brag. But we used to make lots of deals back then. So I would hustle to make deals for space, quite honestly. And so--we moved Student Life. So this was part of the plan. We moved Student Life to third floor, right? And that in the rotunda, I don't know what's the, it's Guardian Scholars, I think there're now, but it has a weird kind of diagonal room. Ho: Um-huh. Perez: So we went from the fourth floor down to the rotunda, and it was small in an awkward space, small. So we were there not too long. And then I worked a deal to switch. We put Leadership Programs down, I believe, or student org(anization)s down in the rotunda and in Commons 206 area, right across where I think Alumni Affairs is. We got a really good space and partnered with ASI (Associated Students Incorporated), they gave us that space to put the Cross-Cultural Center up there. And that's when the Cross-Cultural Center got its real visibility because it was in a prominent space, gorgeous space. Great. We had couches. Alexis, you might hear in stories about these beautiful red couches. So by the time I came back from Japan, these beautiful red couches were in the space. Those couches have lasted for a long time. People used those couches. I, when I got back, I actually--I tell people at the Chancellor's Office, bought a TV for the space. I wanted to buy a TV to do announcements on this, on the thing. And this isn't, you're talking about 2000. Whatever. And Bridget was so cute. She was like, “What are your student learning outcomes for them?” And I was like, “What?” So, you know, I had to, you know, write whatever. And then some things happened with staffing, and someone filed a whistleblower on me for buying the TV. Because I bought the TV. Uh-huh. And so I had to defend at the--for the Chancellor's office why I bought this TV for this Cross-Cultural Center back in the day. So it's interesting that what we consider is normal, were some things that as you build the infrastructure, right? And, you know, when you build something like this, people want it to be all things to all people. And I think that when I started, that was easy because it was just building. But as you've seen the iteration, I think each of the people who have led it have really had to think about what is the purpose of the center and the space, and how can it be most effective? Ho: So then when you were, when you were building, what was the purpose of it in your mind? Perez: Yeah. I think one, to provide space, a safe space for our students. To be a centralized resource and location. So I would say to you that in some ways I was, you know, the start of a diversity person on the campus in that realm. It was kind of a catchall at that time. I think that it, it--whether articulated or not, was to build really kind of the celebratory awareness events. And have the visibility and do that work to acknowledge the diversity of our communities on the campuses. And I--I'm having a hard time kind of remembering between the two roles, but I began to get brought into, we had an Institute for Social Justice and Equity that was created, a center. And that when I got back, we were heavily involved in. A lot of the bias response pieces because of student life I was involved in. And so I think it became a resource. And when I got back from the CSU--when I got back from Japan, I will tell you that it was then that I--we got really involved in more serious things. So some of the campus climate pieces, the WASC pieces, there was a, maybe diversity committee that was working on a diversity statement for the campus that I think we worked on that for a long time and it never got out. But what did get out of that, or come out of that work on that committee was the very first Diversity Officer. And so that was Gary Rollinson, who then I think in that. Dowd, spent some time in that. And then, you know, (Willie) “Derrick” Crawford, and then now, you know, there's Arturo Ocampo and then Aswad (Allen, current Chief Diversity Officer). So I think it was the foundational really for a lot of the diversity work that was happening on the campus. Ho: So you mentioned when we first started this conversation, you were really a part of a lot of different communities as a kid. So military, you were adopted, which I imagine had a profound impact on your sense of identity and being. And then moving from place to place and having to integrate yourself into these different places. So do you think that that this childhood experience of--of being maybe different in so many ways from so many different people, had any impact on, on this career that you found yourself in at CSUSM? Perez: Oh, I love this question. I don't know. When I was doing my doctoral work there was a pivotal, a quote that has been pivotal to my life. It says, “Everything changes, everything's connected, pay attention.” And I would say to you that while I was trying to figure out what the purpose of my life was going to be, (laughs) working at GEICO, coming to work in outreach, right? Susan Mitchell, who has since passed away, was a great mentor in telling me I was a leader without the position. Like in instilling this belief in me, I would say to you that every experience I had at (CSU) San Marcos prepared me for that role. That my work in outreach and Student Affirmative Action to the Third Word Counseling Association that I talked to you about, to the outreach to the people that I worked with and the value statements to the engagement that I had as a student. Yeah. I mean, all of that. I think you pull from those as tools, right? What I do think helped is I love the community. And I think to your point I don't think even then I understood as a student what it meant to be an African American woman. I don't know that I understood how all of my identities felt, but I did know what it meant to feel like you mattered and belonged, and how to resource and the support on the campus. That even though I'm not first gen(eration), both of my parents went to college, I know I struggled at points. Like, it wasn't until I applied to go to grad school that I realized I pulled my (CSU) San Marcos transcript, and I was like, “Really? I wasn't that bad of a student. Why did I feel like I wasn't a good student?” Like, I literally did not see myself as a good student, right? I was just doing what I needed to do to possibly get out. You know, my GPA ended up like a 3.11, but all the stuff I was doing and the movement and the, you know--but I, I would say to you that I think that sure, I pull on all of that because you want students to have a good experience. And what has happened since then with my research around a concept called Third Space, I do believe it's our role to break down any obstacles and challenges that students have to face. And I think that's the way in which I've approached the work is that sometimes it's, it's our organizational structures that are weeding students out. And that to me is probably the greatest social inequity of all. Ho: Especially on a college campus of all things. Perez: Especially on a college campus. That's supposed to, while we reflect society, we should often we should be a safe space. Ho: Hmm. Perez: I will tell you that during my time, so you're talking when I was director of SLL (Student Life and Leadership), then the Associate Dean, then Dean of Students, right? So all these are kind of merged, but once the Cross-Cultural Center opened, I had the opportunity to partner with John Segoria and Vicki Hernandez to open the Veterans Center. Then the president pulled on a team of us after a list of demands. And I just, I had the opportunity a few years ago to participate in the Latino Resource Center and helping them get started. And that came out of crisis. And so we created that. That I--I was gonna tell you some piece about that, but oh, that Floyd had invited me back, I think, for the 15th year. Or whatever. And when we were opening the Latino Resource Center, some folks thought that as we were having that, I would, I would raise questions. And I said, “If we, if we open a Latino Resource Center (Latin /X Center), are we ready to open a center for all identities?” Because that's what's gonna happen. And I'm, and, and people thought I was against it, and I was like, “No, no, no, no, no, no.” Because if you look, we had started the Cross-Cultural Center because we understood that the intersectionality of all of our identities. And so we were trying to build the model originally off of the value of the intersectionality. Right? And then as life happens in society and on the campus, there was a need. And so the Latino Resource Center, I was like, I'm not against it. I'm just asking are we ready to open additional centers? And to the president's credit, she was , because then the Black Resource Center (Black Student Center) came, the Dreamer Center came, right? And additional centers. And so I will tell you that when he invited me to come back for the 15th year and speak, I wrote a speech that I had to think about because I was like, where am I at? Is it Cross-Cultural Center or is it all the different identity-based centers? And I will tell you, I was at MiraCosta (Community College) at the time, and I wrote in the speech, I said, until we make DEIJ training mandatory across the institution, because the reality is those that choose to come to the trainings do, but those aren't the folks who are making it a chilly spot. Not always discriminatory, but chilly, and making it difficult for students until they are mandated to go to training and they get to opt out. Oh, we best believe we need centers. Ho: Um-hmm. Perez: To get rid of all of the isms, to get rid of all the things that are hindering our students. You absolutely need a safe space. And so I am for whatever identity-based center we feel like we need that can validate students, provide the academic and co-curricular support to students all day, every day. So I put that in the speech, right? That at, at the 15th (year) and tell me that the students at MiraCosta got a hold of that speech somehow, and they were trying to fight for a Latino center. And they quoted that speech and plastered it all over campus, because they also feel like if she's saying that we need that there, why wouldn't we need that here? And so, I will tell you, I've shifted my approach, actually. I think cross-cultural is important, but I, I think identity-based centers as we need them, are critically important until we're going to focus on the entire organization and hold everyone accountable to creating student support. You know, it's not, I--I really, quite honestly, you have a choice to believe what you want to believe. I'm not here to, to force people to believe. But what you can't do, or what you won't do is weed a student out because of your beliefs. Ho: Um-hmm. Perez: Or cause an obstacle for a student. That, that we, we need to understand that there are societal injustices, that mirror themselves in our college campuses that we need to mitigate if we're really truly serious about doing this work. Ho: Could you elaborate a bit on--on why identity focused centers are so important and also their relationship to a, a Multicultural Center? Like what, what is, what is the difference, frankly? Perez: Well, I don't know. And I, and I would tell you, I think Floyd's been working on that, right? Because what you probably know is that we had so many discussions in the beginning because the students, it was always busy in the Cross-Cultural Center. But it was our APIDA (Asian-Pacific Islander Desi American) students that were in there and using the space. And so people were like, “Well, you have to have an APIDA center 'cause that's who's in there.” And we had so many conversations in the beginning around how do you diversify the space. Because it's not just about our APIDA students. The reality is it is any student taking territory. Claiming territory. Like what do you do to make sure the space is, you know, culturally diverse? And at some point, we just gave up quite honestly, because we didn't feel like that was our right to then try and mess with the dynamics. Like create a space where people, if they choose to walk in the door, that they would feel welcome. Does that make sense? But we will not exclude anyone from the spaces like the space. That's what it is here for. And so, I will tell you that I think that I don't know, and I haven't been connected in a very long time, in an in-depth way, if we have ever clearly achieved the, the goal of the intersectionality and how a Cross-Cultural center or could really, really benefit that. I think you would, quite honestly, there's nuances between multicultural and cross-cultural, right? And I think you will play, people don't call, and they may now. Multicultural. And so Multicultural Programs died that, that term. I think I-- and Floyd had it in his title for a while, but I can't remember where that ended up. But I would say to you that I think as we think about the future, that really is the essence. That the identity-based senders, I don't, you can't silo my identity, right? So I am an African-American woman. Does that make sense? I am a military dependent family member. That is a huge, huge part of my identity. I am a woman. Gender Equity Center. I am an ally to LGBTQ. Like, so to think that a student, we can silo the identities of students? But what I will tell you is this, I find community in ways that are authentic to me. So what I love about the identity based, and it's a different idea, is I get to choose which identity I'm (unclear) in those moments. I don't have to pick them, because I do think sometimes in our work, we're back to the melting pot concept, where we're like, “Let's just be all happy and get along.” And we really don't create that space for the uniqueness of our identities to come forward. So what I love about where (CSU) San Marcos is now is honestly, yeah. They were willing to open centers for like, when I was there. There's two other centers popping up, right? You know, what I, what I think is interesting is you have the National Latino Resource Center. And you have the Latino Resource Center (Latin /X Center), and you have the Dreamers Center. And my question is, how are all of them partnering and working together? And are we creating living learning spaces? Because I will tell you, I don't think you need separate spaces just for belonging. What we need are spaces that allow a student to live and to learn. And often the connection to academic, their academics is critically important. Does that make sense? Like, I will tell you, I do a lot of work around basic needs. This is not a popular statement that I'm about to make, but everything we do for students' basic needs should be connected to them moving forward to achieve their educational goals. Period. If we're not helping a student progress forward or persist, the reality (is) we're not a social service agency. That is not our area of expertise. What we are is, as I see Jennifer as a student, Jennifer has needs, some of them are more immediate, some are more long-term. So, Jennifer, how can I help connect you for your immediate, basic needs, to a community organization? Cal-fresh. Housing. That can help you so that I'm not, I'm, I'm helping you to fish. Not just trying to fix this need right now. Because oftentimes people will say, “Well, Jennifer can't go to school because she has so many life things.” And I'm like, yeah, but the reality is we have to balance, how do we supply the needs? So Jennifer, 'cause that's, that's social mobility for a student. That's what's gonna change a life. That's what, that's what we want. We wanna change our life through helping Jennifer get their degree. Ho: Yeah. Perez: Am I preaching to you? But that's what, to me, the crux of what we're doing is, I think every campus is gonna be different, quite honestly. And I think (CSU) San Marcos has found its niche, right? I think when it moved all the identity-based centers into a unit. So that they can collaborate, coordinate, partner. I think it's fabulous. Ho: So do you see do you see a trend with college campuses overall moving from multicultural centers to, to these focused, identity-based? Perez: So I've changed and morphed a little bit too. And I will tell you that it's funny. My, my vision is similar, but different. And I think that's from being at (CSU) San Marcos, but also having the identity-based spaces conversation at MiraCosta Community College, and then Cerritos College, and then now in the system. I would tell you my ideal, which is not new to me. Does that make sense? It's just the model, model that I love, is where you have this cross-- and this kind of was where we had started, but it never got there. Cross-Cultural is the hub, right? But then you would have physical spaces because symbolism matters to identities. But you would have some spaces connected. So you could have your LGBTQIA, you could have Gender Equity, you could have, you know, I'm trying to—Black--you know, all the different centers that aren't necessarily disconnected. The hub is the cross-cultural part. So (California State University) Fullerton, to my understanding, has this model where they have a coordinator for each, but they're all interconnected in their work and in the way they do this. That to me is the ideal quite honestly. I don't think having separate spaces across campuses, across whatever are the ideal. I think having them where there could be a synergy together. I think (CSU) San Marcos is close, right? Because most of them are in the (University Student) Union. They've done a really good job of trying to put everything in the Union. Some are a few out, you know, I used to serve on the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center’s taskforce. And then, you know, I just learned they're working to do a Native Center. And I was like, but you have two, like two spaces, like two, like what's the difference? So, you know, I don't know where it starts or stops. I just think that each campus has to have its hand on the pulse of what their students need. And I think engaging faculty in these spaces matters. You know, that is one of the most critical relationships. Is I've talked about my experiences. You know, it could be a staff member. Absolutely. But your faculty relationships matter. Ho: Yeah. When you were, when you were starting out as this, as the Associate--Associate Director-- (Both talking) Perez: Director-- Ho: --of Multicultural Spaces, is that correct? Perez: Multicultural Programs. (Both talking) Ho: Multicultural Programs. Perez: Um-huh. Ho: Okay. Thank you. You said you spoke to different people on campus. Did that include students and faculty as well? Perez: Yeah. You know, it--my world was so blended. So the, the, the thing that's a little different at (CSU) San Marcos--so when I left San Marcos in 2016, I would tell you and I give all credit, Lorena, Mesa, and Checka at the time, they threw a phenomenal party. I would tell you mostly faculty were there, right? So the way in which I navigated the campus was really fluid between Student Affairs and Academic Affairs. Ho: Um-hmm. Perez: Yes. I mean, I would tell you, like, can I remember? I--I think I met with Gary Rollinson. I think I remember meeting with advisors. I think students, I don't have the list, obviously. It was 19 years ago. Which is crazy. But yeah, I mean, I think we, we just were more fluid between the organization back then that, yeah, I remember meeting with as many people that would meet with me. Ho: That's great. And did that include students as well? Perez: Yes. But I can't tell you the exact names of the students. Yes. Ho: Oh, that's okay. That's fine. One of my questions on my list here is what did the students say that they wanted? Perez: Yeah. Yeah. I think what's hard for me is what a student would say today and what a student would say in 2004 are very different things. So I think we're, we are more knowledgeable about DEIJ language. And about--I hate to say it this way, but the hatred, the discrimination, the oppression that's in the world. And I think that at the point when we started our work around DEI was still kind of in the--I I hate to say it, in the happy phase. So you know how I said the Latino Center--resource center was built out of crisis, right? And the Black Resource Center, I think a crisis. Veterans Center, not so much. I think it was us being strategic and the community. But the Cross-Cultural Center wasn't built out of a crisis. It was built out of an opportunity to strengthen the student experience and to create a resource for students. So I would say to you that I think students at that point were wanting a sense of community. Does that make sense? Wanting a pla-- a space. So space, which we gave. They wanted the celebratory aspects. Like we talked about the Powwow, and I don't know if the powwow has come back to San Marcos. It was huge, the Powwow, huge, huge! It took months to plan those things. So I went in as the University Liaison to the groups to help them plan that. Gala GATSA for the Oaxacan community. I was on the Gala GATSA community. I remember sitting in the back and, and I think this is me and Cross-Cultural Center, literally (laughs). I had never been to a Gala GATSA before. It was five thousand people! Do you hear me? Five thousand. We, this was, these were huge community events. I was sitting in the back next to and Humberto Garcia, (Jr.). I don't know if he's still there in risk managing--manager. Girl, they threw whole pineapples and cantaloupes through the audience. I'm literally standing there and I was like, is that, is that a whole pineapple? That's a tradition in the, like, in that, you know. But so for us, I think it was more of just really being there to support students. It wasn't until I became a dean, quite honestly, and I got into to the associate director (position) that I started tackling some of those more difficult, sensitive--it was probably director on that, that I was in those conversations that were tackling some of the discrimination that was happening on campuses. You know, there were many conversations where faculty members were saying and doing things that they shouldn't be saying or doing that I as a dean or you know, would say, you can't, that's, you can't do that (laughs). Like, no. We had a faculty member that were, they were very upset about students and their perception of, and they tried to kick students out of the class. And you know, I went in and the faculty member literally when I went in and said, “What the f are you doing here?” And I was like, “You have a right to an advocate and so do students. And so I'm here as a student advocate.” And so we had the conversation and that faculty member said, “You're wasting my effing time.” And just so you're, you're taught if I'm dealing with this! If, if I'm dealing with this as an administrator, and, and mind you, that person was a person of color that said this, it was not, you know, so I--I don't want to send the wrong, it was a person of color. That, you know, and there's a, a story that I've told, and I'll, I know it's seven (o’clock), but I, there's a story that I, I've told publicly. So I started the, it was the Celebration of Culture. 'Cause we used to do it a lot. The Celebration of Culture in the beginning. And so it was, I think an acknowledgement and recognition, of the work that was being done on the campuses. And I was--we had a first Amendment issue that happened when I was an administrator. And we had a controversial speaker that was on campus that was very discriminatory. And we called a meeting and we had a conversation. And in this meeting were a whole bunch of administrators. And someone was giving examples and they said, well, Dilcie, if you--someone called you the N word--and used the word--we wouldn't, you know, this is what would happen or whatever. And then they went to, if someone called you a whore. And then they went to me. And I didn't realize how upset I was getting in this meeting. And the person that was sitting next to me put their hand on my lap and stop me, just help stop me from shaking. And they said, “Can we stop using Dilcie as the example?” And the person said, “I didn't know if Dilcie was Black. I thought she was a hot-headed Puerto Rican.” And mind you, I was an administrator on the campus. Administrator on campus. And finally someone had enough sense to say, “We need to end this meeting.” So we all went our separate ways. And the next morning went in the meeting and I just, I just, I, I was so upset . So, so, so upset. And so they said, you know, we're gonna have this person, you know, apologize, whatever. And so the person came and gave me a half-baked apology. And so a year, a couple years went by. And they came and asked me to do the keynote for, it was, it must have been Celebration of Culture or something at the time. I can't remember. And I decided that one, I would never share who the person was 'cause that wasn't important, but that we were gonna tell the story. And so publicly, in front of 250 people, Executive Council, we did a split screen. And so the person who served as my ally in that moment, and me had a screen between us and we told the story of what happened that day. And with the point of, you never know when you're gonna need an ally. And you never know, even as an administrator, if it can happen to an administrator, it can happen to a student. And so, (CSU) San Marcos, we say that we're inclusive and that we value these things? We need to, we need to be serious about it. Right? And so at the end of the speech, the room did not move, Jennifer. It was silent. And I thought, oh no, I've lost my job. Like I, it is not good. And all of a sudden it broke out into applause and the room stood up and everybody was so happy. And I received so much support, quite honestly, for that. And the president called me, she said, “Is there anything I need to do?” And I was like, “No.” Like, “I just needed you to hear, there's nothing, thank you. Nothing.” And so a few years later they said, “Dilcie, we're gonna have to put you on a team with this person.” And I was like, “No buddy, no, you're not.” And they said, “Yeah, like, we have no choice.” And I said, “Let them say one dumb thing. I'm telling you I'm not putting up with it. I'm not mess--like one dumb thing.” And this person, and I served on this team together for about a year and a half, two years. And about after a year of us working together, we were sitting in my office on a, working on a tough case. And they said, “I just want to truly, truly apologize for what happened. I'm sorry. I was ignorant. I didn't know any better. I know better now. I'm very sorry.” To that point, that individual and I are exceptionally close to this day. I have been to their home, have been to events at their house. He knows not to say those dumb things anymore. But he, there is, there is--there is restoration in some of those things. There is forgiveness, there is learning, there is growth. Does that make sense? And so I share that very long story to say that when I think about (CSU) San Marcos is at the core of, no matter what happens at the Cross-Cultural Center, at the identity based cen--it's relation, it is about relationships. When students were picketing over, some things happened at the campus. The president had the reports to the community. And I went out and I was on the picket line with the students. And someone got back to me that someone said, “I don't like Dilcie. 'Cause she's out there picketing with the students.” No, I wasn't, I was making sure the students had their right to use their voice and that it didn't impact the event, but they had a right to be there. And so let's do that in a way that's supportive of them. Right? When the abortion people came, they may still come with the big signs. (Perez holds hands up over her head) We sat down and had a team and said, “Here's the deal. You're gonna have protestors. Let's manage it accordingly.” I remember putting blue tape right down the middle and said, “Here's the space (laughs), and here's your space. Have at it be respectful.” Be--and I walked down and supported both sides as they did those things. Because I think to me while -- and I think a lot of people on the campus believe this -- while we want to be protected from hateful language, the reality of this is the world that we live in. And what we have to do is create a space where all voices can be heard. Ho: Uh-huh. Perez: And you have a right to safety. You absolutely do, but you don't have a right to be unoffended. Because I will tell you that in the first days of (CSU) San Marcos, there were all kinds of speakers that came that I didn't necessarily agree with. But what I loved is being exposed to ideas that were different than mine that helped to validate. Or invalidate my thought process that made me think about what I believed and didn't believe. That to me is the essence of higher education. That's where I think a Cross-Cultural Center, it's not that you say everything that's popular or bring one side and one belief. You have to be balanced. Ho: Thank you so much for sharing those stories and those memories. They really provide context to what the campus was. And a lot of it is behind the scenes that people wouldn't know, wouldn't expect. Especially students going about their day to day. So thank you for doing that. (both talking) Perez: That's right. There is, I mean, I think they can't, that (CSU) San Marcos is not a perfect place. But what I will say to you is I have, I have the opportunity to view all twenty-three (CSU campuses) now, and I’m oh so appreciative of the DEIJ, the Cross-Cultural Center, the work that's happening at San Marcos in this area. Yeah. Ho: You've mentioned some names of people that you've worked with, people you appreciate, are there, who are some more people that were really important to the Cross-Cultural Center that we might not know about? Perez: I--if you haven't talked to Jonathan Pollard, I think you should find him. He was the Dean of Students at the time who, who really said we're gonna make this happen. And he was part of that with Bridget (Blanshan) that did the 2010. And I think he had the original vision for it. So I would, I think he is part of that. I think, you're gonna ask me and I--Janet Perez-Covacevich, I have to think she was the first student assistant in that space. Ho: Hey, I was gonna ask you about your, that student assistant. Perez: Janet Perez. First, and let me give you her number 'cause I know it by heart from even back then. Ho: Okay. Let's do that via email. Okay. And not on this recording. Yeah. (both talking) Perez: Sure. So I can share that with you. And then Sida Munoz, I, she was in the center. She works at (CSU) San Marcos now. She was in the center in the very beginning a lot. I think sleeping and having space, but she partnered and volunteered a lot. We also added the Cross-Cultural Center and Multicultural Programs did the very first alternative spring break for the campus. So that was part of the work that we did that first year where we took students to San Francisco to the Glide to do work in the community. So that's a little tangential, that was more from the Multicultural programs. But it, all of that was flowing out of that space for sure. Ho: Thank you. Perez: You probably have most everybody else 'cause you have all the directors and everyone that worked there, right? Ho: Yeah. Floyd's reached out to--Floyd reached out to a lot of people. So we have-- Perez: Yeah-- (both talking) Ho: --A lot of folks responding. Perez: Yeah, yeah. Totally. Ho: Including himself. Yeah. (both laugh) Perez: As he, as he should, he's done a marvelous job. Very proud. (both talking) Ho: Yeah. He really has. Perez: Yeah. Ho: I--how are we doing on time? Perez: I probably could give you a few more minutes and then yeah, head out. Are you clo-- are you good or do you have more? Ho: Yeah, I really would like to know a little bit more about you mentioned this concept of the third space. Could you tell me more about that in general or, and or as it relates to CSUSM? Perez: Sure. So during, you know, as folks try and figure out what they're studying and researching, I was exposed and I came, can't even tell you how to, a concept by Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture that talks about when an individual transitions from one culture to the next, what they do is they take the unique strengths and characteristics of each of those cultures. So take the greatness, the goodness, and then make a third space out of it. And so my work is around breaking down the organizational silos between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, particularly with the research. But I will say to you that I think that spaces like the Cross-Cultural Center, like identity-based centers are examples of third spaces where you take the unique strengths of faculty and Academic Affairs and the unique strengths of Student Affairs, and you put 'em together. And so the spaces could be, you know could be literally or figuratively. And so for me, as you think about the center space, these are, these should be third spaces where we blend both the best of both worlds. So that's the way in which I approach the work in my daily work, quite honestly, is that students don't care about our organizational silos. They really don't. And so how can we create more seamless, holistic experiences for students? Ho: Um-hmm. Thank you. Perez: Yeah. Ho: Could you tell us what you, what you do now at-- Perez: In my current role? Ho: In your current role? Yes. (Perez laughs) Perez: So--so I left (California State University) San Marcos in 2016. I went to be the Dean of Student Life and Judicial Affairs at MiraCosta (Community College). So I was there two years. And then with my boss, who's amazing at the time, thought that I should consider being a vice president of student services. And so I left MiraCosta after two years and became the VP of Student Services and Associate Superintendent at Cerritos College. And so I was there almost four years. And then someone approached me about this job, which is, which was the Associate Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Equity and Belonging in the CSU. Right? So really my work now is to bring--is, well, it's hard, but. So I work with all the diversity officers in the system. So I love that, quite honestly, on the system. And so it's been helpful because I have experience doing some of that work and so helpful to highlight the wonderful and important work that they're doing. But my role changed. So I--I am almost been here a year, but I was promoted to Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic and Student Affairs. And so that was May 1st, but I will be the acting co-executive vice chancellor for the system for all of academic and student affairs. I know it's hard to keep up with. It's we, but it's movement. And so this position will, will really work with the presidents, provosts, and vice presidents. And the funny part is that Nathan Evans, I don't know if you know that name, he is a co-deputy, but he worked with me at San Marcos. So we started our relationship there. And so people, the chancellor has seen how well we work together, and so we both were promoted to co-lead the division. Ho: That's wonderful. Well, congratulations on your, on your promotion. Perez: Thank you. It's a lot to take in. I, it's, I'm very humbled by it. But it's a, it's a big gig, so. Ho: Yeah. Perez: Yeah. Ho: Cool. I guess we could start wrapping up. Are there any memories or stories or anything that you'd like to share from your CSUSM days? Perez: No, I think I've shared a lot of wonderful memories. I mean, I think of--despite challenges, there really were some pivotal moments that framed me as personally and professionally. When you asked about it, I remember we were trying to beautify the center and Jay Franklin, I think was serving as an interim during that time. And we did a mural and I don't know if you know about the mural, but we came on a Saturday and it was a community mural. And it's so funny because the mural was hanging in the Cross-Cultural Center for years, and finally we were like, it's time to get rid of it. I was like, just let it go. And Floyd would not. And so it's hanging in the College of Humanities, Arts and Behavioral Sciences. The first Cross-Cultural (Center) mural is in that conference room. He had it moved there. And so I, I love that the campus is, I'm telling you, there were no obstacles. And I think that I will tell you that while I know that everyone is not for DEIJ work, that everyone at San Marcos is not for it, I do think that we have tried to address challenges and obstacles in a collaborative, supportive way to start. But I do think that as, as the work continues kind of the way in which we started the rah rah and the hooray, we can't remember, we can't forget, the essence of the work is really in addressing the social injustices that unfortunately have infiltrated their way onto our college campuses. That to me is the essence of the work: is we should be building students up and not tearing them down. We should be beacons of light and hope for societies that are uninterested in confronting the social injustices that have significantly, disproportionately impacted many marginalized populations. That should not be okay. That should not be okay. That if we are telling a student, we want you to come here, we need to do everything that we can to help them be successful. Ho: Thank you. Perez: Yes. Ho: That was beautifully said and I appreciate it. I also want to come back to that mural. Could you, in case nobody else in their interviews have talked about it, could you give me a little bit of info on it just so we have it for the record? Perez: Yeah. So it is interesting. The mural we knew we needed, so somebody else in another department, and I think it may have been CAMP (College Assistance Migrant Program), had brought an artist to the campus and talked to us about them doing this mural. For their, for their program. So Jay (Franklin) and I and Dick said, “We wanna do that.” So we paid to have the artists come. And it was a Saturday, and I think it was in U(niversity) Hall, outside U Hall 100. We all were there. And he takes you through this process of where you're thinking about community, thinking about what you want, and then you each had like a sliver of the panel that you did. And I can't remember if he, he must have drawn an outline, I'm guessing, if I remember correctly. And if you see it, there's so many vibrant colors, so many vibrant colors. And I actually think we need to pull it and take pictures and document even more. Floyd probably has access to 'em because I can see, I just remember when I would walk around the room and see what people put, you were like, oh! And look at you (laughs). Right? But it represented the sense of community that was involved with the creation of the space. You have to remember, Cross-Cultural Center was there before any of the other centers. Ho: Yeah. Perez: It was the first, unless maybe not, maybe, and we have to confirm, National Latino Research Center may have been around. As a research institute base. But Cross-cultural Center, before all the centers, there was a Cross-Cultural Center that set the foundation for those to come. Ho: Um-hmm. Perez: So I would say to you that when you look at it, you'll see just the, the diversity, the tapestry of our community at the time. There's so many things in that mural. So you should go see it. So many things in that mural. Ho: Okay, thank you. (both talking) Perez: I haven't seen it in a few years, but definitely check the mural. 'Cause that we did that probably, maybe I came back in 2006, so maybe 2007, 2008. So that was about four years after we opened. So we're celebrating twenty years (of the CCC being open), right? I'm trying to think, is coming up. So we're, I came to the fifteen, I think he's (Floyd Lai) getting to twenty, so it's, so March, they should count March as kind of the opening, I'm guessing. Ho: Yeah, I think it is March. Perez: It was 2004. He's right, it was March 2004 when I started it. Yeah. Ho: Okay. Perez: So I think that that, that, that mural was really a great you know, I'm, I saw Chanel Bradley and um Gerardo Cabral, he, I'm sure some of the other folks, they're on Facebook and saw them. Diana Sal--Saldivar. I mean these were like the OGs of, and you know what I will tell you is I think that then for a while, students came and went like they were good and pivotal, right? But it was different when you were in the beginning. But I see Floyd recently 'cause I'm still on Facebook with some, and it's like, looks like they have a strong sense of community amongst the, the peer educators. And Floyd brought the interns. And so that has made the difference too especially with resources. I do remember as a director advocating for that space though. You know, I'm pretty proud of how we set that space up. There, there was a lot of political navigation in that and took, you know, a lot of collateral and 'cause you know, there people were vying for space, right? But we had a reputation. And in the negotiations, you see we did pretty good. We gave up some of the physical space on the inside to get the patio on the outside (laughs) like when you think there was a lot of strategy in, in the space and how we navigated those pieces. You gotta remember too – now you're bringing up all these memories for me – the, the Multicultural Programs was started with a lottery grant. Lottery. Ho: (unclear) mean? Perez: So lottery funds, we had to apply for lottery funds. And they were only supposed to be for like two to three years to get you started. So we had to write a lottery application to get it started, to get, to have funding, to have any programming money. Ho: Oh my goodness. I did not know that. Perez: And then I started making some interesting deals across campus to get other funds. Some we probably don't wanna record, but it got access to, to some, you know. And then, oh, and then before I left, I--oh, I forgot about this! So do you, do they still have co-curricular funds? The pro-- you can apply for co-curricular funds? Ho: I think so. Perez: I worked that deal. And so I had told Bridget (Blanshan), I was like, “We need to stop everybody from going all over getting funds. We need to get the funds.” And so by the time I came back, they had co-- Bridget had co-curricular funds. And so we had this process for co-curricular funds. And then Tukwut Life. This is outside. So in Tukwut Life, this, I did a deal with the president's office on Tukwut Life. 'Cause The president's husband came to me and said, “You need to start some campus traditions.” And so Tukwut Life was part of that. Ho: How did you, did you create Tukwut Life? Was that an original-- Perez: With a whole bunch of people. We sure did. Absolutely. Tukwut Life. (both talking) Ho: That's awesome. Perez: We sure did. And I think it's died down a little bit since then, but oh, it was a whole movement. Oh. Ho: What was it? What was Tukwut Life? Perez: It was Friday night and weekend programming so that to make sure that we had night and weekend programs for students because we were increasing the number of residents and we didn't have a lot of community at the time, right? And so we knew we needed some community. Athletics was coming on board in a greater way than it was. And so, and so this is all, this is tangential to the Cross-Cultural Center. I don't know who I thought I was. I really don't. I think I just didn't ask permission. And we were just a different campus then. I don't know. I was telling someone the other day, I--I'm sure we had policies and procedures. I know we did. But I literally, one day when I was trying to create tradition on, you know, Tukwut Courtyard--I, you know, those stickers on the window, I was the first one to put all those stickers on the window. You know how it has the, oh. And then I plastered the stairs with, with CSU Gear. I had a professional company come out. I don't know who I asked. Like I was trying to think like, “Did you ask anyone? Like who told you you could do?” No, I was gonna create Tukwut Courtyard as a spirit courtyard. I, we held a pep rally there. But literally I had stairs and, you know, we used to get, I get real happiness, students would come take pictures at commencement time with their family around those, those pictures, yeah. Ho: Um-Hm. Perez: And, but then I couldn't put the stickers up anymore 'cause the concrete's old. So then we had to get rid of them, so we couldn't do that anymore. So then I had to go think about something else. Um-hmm. I don't know who I thought I was. I just need you to know. I like, now everything's so bureaucratic, right? No. We just did stuff, we did what we needed to do. Ho: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you just have to not think about it and just do it. Perez: And I, the campus was gracious to me. I also wasn't doing dumb stuff. Right. I was doing things that, but I don't know where I—all of a sudden woke up one day and I was like, I couldn't, I'm hiring a company, put some stickers on some stairs. Ho: Yeah. (inaudible) Perez: But I think that with the Cross-Cultural Center, why it worked, is that I didn't have to always ask permission. I did--I knew what I was advocating for and the campus was gracious enough to entertain that. And I think I had enough credibility at that point that they trusted me. Ho: Yeah. I think so. Perez: I don't think everything's perfect. I probably could have documented stuff better. Literally like when I look at what Alexis did and you, I was like, I was, I was just doing the rah rah fun part. Getting it started. The sustaining it is the hard part, right? So I know what I've learned about myself as a professional. I'm great at starting things like I can get a vision going. Like Cross-Cultural Center that changed and redefined--I would not be here today had it not been for the work in Multicultural Programs (inaudible). I would not, it changed--that one decision to join that team changed the trajectory of my life and my career. Ho: That's really cool. Perez: I'm, I'm pretty grateful. Pretty, I am proud of the Cross-Culture Center. I'm proud of the way Floyd (Lai) has led it. I'm proud and I'm not trying to be funny. I'm proud it has stayed controversy free (laughs). I think it has done important work in really kind, meaningful relational ways. Floyd's out there doing DEIJ work, he just does it differently than someone that's out there yelling and screaming. His work that he's doing in that center, you look at what that center has done – as you are (laughs) – for the campus. He, he has that--each of the directors, I think has added and put their nuance and their flair on that center. And I'm internally grateful that 20 years later I am proud to be connected and associated with such great work. Ho: It really does feel like a center of, of love and acceptance. It's really a beautiful, a really beautiful place. And you can, you can see that from anybody that you, you talk to. They all love the Cross-Cultural Center. Perez: It is. And it really is. And he has just furthered that vision. Like we started with that. But the population, like you have to think, we only had, I don't know when I left, I don't even know, maybe 7,000 students at that, at the time when I left, you know, once. And then came back and we grew like in, you know, seven years to 15,000. That's, that center has stayed tried and true. Tried and true. So what that tells me is I, yeah, we set a great foundation but the folks that came thereafter have really done a magnificent job and created a legacy for that case. Sara Sheik, I think about what she added, you know, that's where the Social Justice Summit was started. We were all there. I don't know if they told you. We were sitting there and we felt like people were too much in their heads. Oh, they were just, they, it was outside of them. Outside of them. And we were like, no, no, no. I remember sitting on the swing there and we were like, we gotta do something. So then we created the exercise madder than Hell. Mad as Hell. And we wanted to get them to their hearts. And we did that exercise Mad as Hell. Scott Gross. Scott Gross and I started, Sara Sheikh came in, we created that Mad as Hell exercise. They're probably still not doing it 'cause it seemed like we had controversy at every Social Justice Summit. But we were doing that work with students. And honestly, I went through a training not too long ago and they were doing equity work and I was like, “Uh, we were doing this with students, like first-year students in 2005. And you're literally taking people through this right now? This is outdated work. What are talking about?” Then I think about the students at San Marcos? They were getting that in their first year. You tell me how much different and how transformative that would be for them coming out their senior year. Ho: Yeah. Perez: I'm inspired and moved. Ho: That's great. That's so awesome. Perez: You just made me excited about the Cross-Cultural Center even more. Ho: Wait, say that again? Perez: I said, “You just made me so excited about the Cross-Cultural Center.” Ho: I, I'm really happy and I feel like I'm supposed to wrap up this interview, but I'm afraid that you'll think of more great memories to share and things to say. I don't wanna cut us off. Perez: Yeah. Well here's the thing. I will let you know if some things come up that I think are important, I'll reach out to you and let you know. 'Cause I--I'm, I am so grateful that you all are doing this. I think it is a really critical part of San Marcos and its history. Not just as a center, but in DEIJ work. For sure. Ho: Absolutely. Yeah. And the stories from people who were there, who started these movements and experienced them and made them happen are really important. 'Cause they're not always documented on paper. Perez: Yeah. I didn't do that very well. And I'm sure others, (Ho laughs) we were, we were hustling. We were hustling for sure. Right. So, but we did it. Ho: That's great. Yeah. And we have the proof of it now, celebrating the anniversary coming up. Perez: That’s exciting. I'm excited for you. So, well, it's nice to meet you. I hope that we, I just did an official visit there a few months ago, but hope we have the chance to meet in person. Ho: I hope so too! Thank you Dr. Perez. I will go ahead and end the interview now. Perez: Wonderful. https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. &#13 ; &#13 ; This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PerezDilcie_HoJennifer_2023-05-30.xml PerezDilcie_HoJennifer_2023-05-30.xml https://archivesearch.csusm.edu/repositories/3/resources/19 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Perez, Dilcie. Interview May 30, 2023. Description An account of the resource Dr. Dilcie Perez is Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academic and Student Affairs for the CSU, as well as a California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) alumna. She graduated with her degree in Bachelors of Arts in Political Science. In this interview, Perez explains how CSUSM was ahead of its time in regards to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) work; however at the beginning of her employment with CSUSM, the university did not have Multicultural Programs (the predecessor to the Cross-Cultural Center). Perez recalls her work with Multicultural Programs, including her being offered the opportunity to open the program upon tendering her resignation to the university. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-43 Subject The topic of the resource California State University San Marcos. Cross-Cultural Center California State University. Multicultural Programs California State University San Marcos. Student Academic Services Outreach Program California State University San Marcos. Student Affirmative Action Education, Higher Human rights Mural painting and decoration Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-05-30 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dilcie Perez Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jennifer Ho Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant San Marcos (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Dilcie Perez Cross-Cultural Center oral history project CSUSM history Latine experience Women's experience https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/e4b63f52f64e75d6b2babf4b5ae15f82.pdf ba62a9bcaeab7b7107074cfb0e2ab846 PDF Text Text Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Jennifer Ho: Okay. Today is May 30th, 2023. My name is Jennifer Ho, and I am interviewing Dr. Dilcie Perez for the CSUSM (California State University San Marcos) Cross-Cultural Center (CCC) Oral History Project. Thank you so much for being with me today, Dr. Perez. How are you? Dilcie Perez: Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. Ho: Great. Okay, so I just wanted to start with a little bit about you personally. Can you tell me where you're from? Perez: No (both laugh). So I grew up in a military family, so I had the wonderful opportunity to live in places like Arizona and Maine and California, and Okinawa and traveled around and graduated high school in Okinawa, Japan. And moved to California as--in the nineties, early nineties. And had started, when I graduated high school in Japan, I wasn't sure where I wanted to go to college. And so I kind of took a lot of classes at community colleges. And when I moved to California someone said to me, “Have you ever heard of a place called Cal(ifornia) State San Marcos?” And at that time, I had not. And so they said, “Oh, they have programs at the time for juniors and seniors, and so you should check them out.” And so I applied to go to school at San Marcos and was accepted. And so I can talk about that later, obviously. But I, my, I come from a family of--I have my parents and I have two brothers, and I am the only girl and the youngest. However, I was also adopted, and so found my biological family later in life. And so in that family, I am the oldest of three girls. And so, have a wonderfully blended family. My education, I graduated from Cal State San Marcos in (19)94-ish. And I say that because I had the wonderful opportunity to speak at commencement in (19)94 as the speaker, one of the student speakers. And, and I think my speech might, I don't know if it's in the archives, but there's gotta be some video or something of all the, the different commencements. But moved immediately after that to North Carolina and had two classes to finish. And so I was also pregnant at the time, and so it took me about a year to get those two classes done. So I walked in (19)94, but my, my diploma says (19)95. And came back to San Marcos and then went and got my master's at Central Michigan. So they have--they had a military on-base education. And so they would fly out the instructors from Central Michigan to do an executive master's program. And this is back in the early 2000s. So this was years ago. And then I waited thirteen years to go back and get my doctorate from San Diego State in educational leadership with the emphasis in community college. Ho: Thank you. Can I ask you what brought you out to California in the first place? Perez: Yeah, the military. So I met my ex-husband in Okinawa, and then we moved to North Carolina, and then he received orders to Camp Pendleton. And so we lived in Oceanside actually at that time, and then I went to school. Ho: Okay. Okay. That's great. What were your impressions of--of California, of San Diego, of Oceanside when you, when you arrived for the first time? Perez: Yeah, I don't think that I had anything particularly of California. Because I traveled the world. And so it was another place. I remember living in--off of Mission Avenue and just appreciating being close to the beach and the weather. And but I will tell you this, that I came, so when this was (19)91-ish. And when someone referenced, like to go to Cal State San Marcos, and I say this, I tell the story all the time: Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 1 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 that when I applied to Cal State San Marcos, got accepted, I went to orientation. And orientation at that time in 1992 was at Cal State Jerome's. So you've probably heard the stories across the street. Ho: Yep. Perez: And I can see it. One, I will tell you, I still have my 1992 orientation binder that I received when I came. Still. So I've traveled and moved. But I recently was, you know, consolidating. I was like, “No, I'm keeping this, like this is good, important stuff in 1992.” And I will tell you that what is pivotal for me of having been in a military family traveling the world, that I remember walking out of orientation feeling like it was a place that I belonged because of the message of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And, you know, in (19)92, we didn't always use those words. Ho: Right. Perez: But, but diversity was a value for the campus from the start. And I remember people, someone at orientation saying, “We don't want to be a melting pot. That's old, outdated language.” And this was in (19)92, right? “Because a melting pot blends everyone together, and you can't tell the difference. We wanna be a salad bowl and we want everyone to have a unique.” And so that resonated with me that I felt like I found a place, even at my orientation in 1992 at Cal State San Marcos. Ho: Wow, that's, that's amazing. That's really great to hear. So is that--just to fast forward a little bit, is that what brought you back to CSUSM? Perez: That's interesting. So literally when I worked in as a student, I worked in what was at the time Student Affirmative Action. So they called it SAA. Someone by the name of Denise Hollis became a mentor. I think Eric Cardoso or folks in Student Affirmative Action (Program). And this was obviously before Prop 209. That then started to abolish offices such as that, right? And so when I worked in those areas and SASOP (Student Academic Services Outreach Program) and stuff, I was a student going out and doing motivational outreach. So we would do programs in schools, and I was going out doing that, and I had such a powerful experience as a student. And I moved to North Carolina right after I graduated for a year and a half, two years. And when I came back, I was at a party, like a barbecue, I can't remember. And someone said to me, “Hey, you know I got a new job.” It was somebody that I worked for. She said, “I got a new job.” And I was like, “Ah, I want your job.” Like, “I want your job.” And she just started laughing. She was like, “Ha.” I was like, “No, no, no, no, no, no. I really want your job.” Like, “What do I need to do?” And her assignment was temporary. And so this was--so really why I came back to work was because there was a temporary opportunity. It was an Assistant Outreach Coordinator in Student Academic Services Outreach Program. And so I started back at the campus that I love so much, and really in official capacity doing what I had done as a student. Ho: That's wonderful. And was that after you got your, your doctorate from SDSU? Perez: No. So this is all in 1998, (19)90. So I graduated in (19)95. I was in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And then I came back, I think in (19)97 and worked for GEICO, did temp work. I was like, “What's my life's purpose? Where am I headed? What am I doing?” And then I met her at this party or saw her again Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 2 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 at this party. And then the rest is history about (CSU) San Marcos, because I left, there's a lot to the story. But I left, but stayed for a long time and really had a great professional experience. Ho: That's wonderful. Do you remember the name of the person from the party? Perez: Oh, Mary Wardell. Um-hmm. Ho: Mary Wardell. Perez: Yeah. She was, she worked in Student Affirmative Action, and she moved and went to the Dean of Students' Office, was an Assistant Dean of Students. And that's when I saw her. 'Cause she had just received that pro-- promotion. Now she works at--she moved to, I think, University of the Pacific, but she does DEI work, she’s done written books and done amazing things in this area. Yeah. Ho: Thank you. Perez: Yeah. Ho: So now backtracking again. I wanna hear about your time as a student, because obviously it had a profound impact on you. So, so did it meet--did being a student meet your expectations after that orientation? And can you tell me about some experiences on campus and the people that you met and some pivotal moments? Perez: Oh, I love it! So I will tell you that I (laughs)--I, I had a fun experience at (California State) San Marcos, but I wasn't your traditional student. Like, I didn't know what a Dean of Students was. I didn't know about higher education. I knew that I had gone, I didn't learn this until later. I'd gone to like six different community colleges picking up classes. I spent time at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, picking up classes. So I was going to school constantly, but picking up classes as we traveled. And so when I got to, you know, (CSU) San Marcos, it--you have to remember the culture was so different because it was so small and the faculty and the students were so tight. And when I arrived, there were no first year students. It was only juniors and seniors. And we only had three buildings. So Science Hall, Academic Hall, and maybe well, Administration Building, Craven, which is not Craven anymore. So it was those three buildings. And I will say to you that I was married, right? And so I was working during the day, I was going to school, and I took classes. I will tell you, that's really profound. And to this point, I'm still connected to these faculty members today. Leslie Zomalt. So, you know, the (Ernest and Leslie) Zomalt Award they're very, I'm very close to them. She was my faculty member in California History and we're still close. And she gave me a B! Like a B, a B. So I was like, “Why do I like you so much? You gave me a B.” But she was so good because she would, what I loved about her--I was going through a personal, difficult personal situation during that time, and I must have missed class or something must have happened that, she called me and she said, “I realize that you're not around. I wanna check on you and see how you're doing.” And that was pivotal to me. I remember that she went to a conference and she loves to read. She still loves to--I, I'm going to her house for quilting. She got me connected to quilting. I hate quilting. I hate it. I hate it. But I love you know, I, when I came back one time, I said to her, “Will you make me a quilt?” Is what I said to her. Literally this bold. And she said, “I will not make you a quilt. I will teach you how to quilt.” And I was like, “Ah, okay.” So, but every year, for about ten to fifteen years, we have quilted at her house for a year, for at one time a year. Now, I don't Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 3 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 quilt any other time. I still hate quilting. But I love the sense of community and the mentorship and the love that goes into it, that I literally will quilt one thing within my range once a year when I go. And so I will say to you that what I think about at San Mar--and Jill Watts. So let me tell you, Jill Watts is still there. She is a historian beyond historians. And, and I talked about her in, in my commencement speech that the best African American History class I have ever taken is by a white woman. Hands down. She is brilliant. She is, you know, phenomenal. It's funny, even when I worked at (California State) San Marcos, I wouldn't see her as much, but she would just beam every time that she saw me because she knew who I was as a student. I remember that Peter Zwick, I don't know if you've heard that name. He used to be over (at) Global Affairs at the time, but was really a hard, hard political science instructor. Like people were scared of him. Hard. And I decided, 'cause I was lost, I was gonna do Poli Sci as a major. And he, I went to him, who's my faculty advisor too. He must've been. And I sat there and I said, “I'm graduating in May.” And he was like, “Dilcie, how are you graduating when you haven't hardly taken any political science classes?” I was like, “It’s a technicality. Technicality.” So I took twenty-one units, most of those political science classes, upper division in one semester. Ho: Wow! Perez: I thought I was going to die. And I think a few of them, 'cause he was a hard one, like one or two were with him. But I will tell you this, is that one, it was hard 'cause I was working and taking twenty-one units and picking up. But I will tell you that that was the best I did. That was the only semester I've ever made Dean's list (laughs) in my college career, because I knew I didn't have a lot of room to play. But I will say to you that as I think about (Cal State) San Marcos, it was pivotal to me because of the relationships, particularly with faculty that I established. Denise Hollis was administration, but we were, we used to go to a Third Word Counselor's Association. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it was years ago, and it was doing DEI work, and they were taking us there to those events. But even during the time, so I didn't get involved in a lot of co-curricular events. I have a colleague now, that used to work at Chancellor's Office and I just had an event for her. And I was like, we went to college together at (CSU) San Marcos. She's very--Sabrina Sanders. We went to college. And I was like, I don't completely remember her, but we went to college together. Right. Because she remembers me. And I just wasn't involved in a co-curricular way. So I would tell you my co-curricular experience really was the relationships with them. But we did a play. So this is in the archives as well, but for Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Wasn’t Enough (Is Enuf). Ho: Okay. Perez: We, we all practiced for months. I--months on weekends and nights and did this two-weekend play or maybe one weekend. And it was in like the school newspaper. Gezai (Berhane) showed it to me later, that we all did this play. It was sold out in ACD 102 sold out. It was just wonderful. That--those are the pivotal moments for me. My orientation, my relationship with faculty, my--spending time in that (production). That's what I think when I think about my (CSU) San Marcos experience that I treasure the most. Ho: That's lovely. Thank you. And what did you say the title of that play was? Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 4 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Perez: For Color Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow (Is) Enuf. So it's about seven African American women and the diversity of their life. Ho: Thank you. Perez: Yeah, it has some pretty heavy topics in it, quite honestly. And so that's what made it so impressive quite honestly. Yeah. Ho: And can you speak a bit about--about the culture on campus for you as a student? Whatever comes to mind, but in particular I'm interested in, in culture and community and, and DEI and, and different groups of students. Perez: So, that's an interesting, I am grateful for this question. I don't think that I was mindful enough to know at the time with words and language what I was experiencing. I think I felt like I mattered. That I was making relationships and making connections. And I, and I hate to--I don't always like the cliche of mattering and belonging because I think people have to unpack that and think about what that means. But I will tell you, I felt like I belonged at (CSU) San Marcos from day one. From day one. And so--but I also didn't have a lot of needs, right? So at that point in time for the two years that I was there, two or three I think it served the need that I had as a non-traditional student. When I came back in (19)97, the campus had changed because the first-year students came in (19)95. So it was not the same. We--I could tell we were going through an identity crisis, right? We were planning the 10th anniversary event when I returned, and I brought the (laughs) Charger girls. I was gonna bring them to the event. And I don't know if you know, but back in the day and you have to be careful about this, this part, but back in the day we had a librarian who was heavily involved in the campus and (laughs). Ho: Okay Perez: And there was a lot of music, it (was) like jazz, right? That works for an older population. And so it was wonderful for the campus when there was juniors and seniors and older people, but first-year students and sophomores (laughs), I don’t--jazz isn’t it all--like, we have to be more than that. And so I really was proud of myself, quite honestly. And I was like, I got the Charger girls! They're coming into this event. They literally took me to, we--I don't know if you've heard of Surge? So Surge used to be the coffee shop. Ho: Okay. Perez: That was on the corner, kind of down by--by Block C by, you know where the quad is? It was on the corner there. There's a real estate office there now. They took me down to the Surge for coffee and they said, “We don't want T&A at our event.” Like, and I said, “What? Like, the Charger girls are like, like professionals (laughs)! Like they, they're not, they're not T&A, what’re you talking about?” But they would not let me bring the Charger girls to that event. I had to cancel them. Ho: Oh my goodness. Wow. Perez: And I think that the campus was in that transition from this kind of older and more mature thing to saying we have to be more relate--like, I was trying to push us to be more relatable and it did not work that day at all (laughs). Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 5 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Ho: Wow, what a conversation that must have been. Perez: Oh, it was fun. But you know, I've always, I've always liked to get into good trouble, right? Ho: Yeah. Perez: And so for me it was then how are we meeting the needs of students? Because what we, what we did for, it was supposed to be like 10th anniversary in a preview day, and it really was just, you know, the same old thing that we had been doing all of that, that time period. So-Ho: Okay. Perez: Yeah. Ho: Did--are you saying the event turned out to be kind of the same old, same old? Perez: Uh-huh, uh-huh. Ho: Okay. Okay. Perez: 10th anniversary jazz ensemble (laughs). Yeah. Ho: Okay. Okay. Perez: And people showed up, but it wasn't what you really would think of, of a traditional college experience. So we went through transitional times such as that. Ho: Okay. Well that's a good segue into the Cross-Cultural Center then. So when you were a student at that time, there was not a Cross-Cultural Center, is that correct? Perez: That's correct. Ho: Okay. So when you came back to CSUSM in a staff role what are your first memories of rumblings of a Cross-Cultural Center, of a Multicultural Center? Do you remember? Perez: None. None. So let me put the context around, and this is where it--it's a, it's an interesting story. So if I go back to (19)98, (19)97, I worked in Student Academic Services Outreach Program. So SASOP doing early outreach, motivation, academic preparation. And I would say that that team and the people were diverse. We had the Dome (food services originally operated by San Diego State University’s Aztec Shops) as a space, which was really, if I remember correctly, only the primary kind of student-centered space. There wasn't a lot, you had lunch there, right? And you ate there, everything happened in the Dome. I would say to you, we were going through as a division, a lot of work around our values and trying to clarify and integrate our values in our, in for the team. And I would say to you what was hard, I'm trying to remember. I remember that there were WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges) self-study and that it came back with some campus climate challenges. Ho: Uh-hmm. Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 6 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Perez: And I remember, and all my years kind of blur, right? So, but I have a time period of when, like pre--I have to explain it. But when I was in SASOP, I was heavily involved in a lot of different things. In outreach. And I remember, I think during that time, there was a noose hanging on the tree outside of Academic Hall. Not, excuse me, I'm lying to you. Outside of the Administration Building. So that fifth, fifth floor, you have Founders' Plaza, there was that--there's a tree there. Ho: Yeah. Perez: That tree had a noose. And so that caused a lot of energy. So the part that's interesting is that I was heavily involved in the community. I was working tremendously. And I think I had kind of burnt out, honestly, in outreach. So I was there five and a half, six years, and I had been thinking about, I need to change. I need to do something differently. And so I was driving to work one day, and I had talked to my ex-husband. I was like, “I think I'm, I'm done. Like, I'm tired, like I'm exhausted.” And he, he said, “(I) support you, do what you need to do.” And I had written a letter and I had it for like months and I hadn't done anything with it. And then one day I was driving to work and I can tell you exactly where I was when I was driving to work. And I said, “I'm done.” And so I came in to the office and I gave them my notice. And one thing that I will tell you is that when someone quits a job and gets another job, most people will say, “Oh, Jennifer got another job. She's moving on to better things.” Well, you get a lot of attention when you say, “I'm leaving.” And they're like, “Where are you going?” And I'm like, “Nowhere. I'm just done here.” And so folks in administration came to me and they said, “Hey, you know, we don't want you to leave. What's going on?” And one of the administrators said, “If we create an opportunity for you, will you stay?” And I was like, “Eh, I don't, I don't think so. No, no, no. I--I'm pretty tired.” And the campus threw a big going away party for me, huge. But what they had said to me is, “Leave, go ahead. Take two weeks. Don't, we're not gonna submit everything. You go think about this opportunity and let us know.” And I will tell you that it was until that last day, I think they had given me till 1:00 PM and they said, and I called at twelve fiftyfive because I wasn't going to do it. I was tired. And the opportunity that they had was the Associate Director of Multicultural Programs. And so that was the first start to the Cross-Cultural Center. So that is how, honestly, it really--and so I'll tell you that what I know now, after I got into that position was we were doing 2010 visioning at that time. And I, this was, you're talking 2002 when I, when I shifted. Two thousand two/three. And they had already, I would say Jonathan Pollard, you've probably heard that name, and Bridget Blanshan. Ho: Uh-hmm. Perez: They had done some visioning, 2010 visioning. And, and I don't know, I could, I don't, I can't dig probably for you, but they have it-Ho: Um-hmm. Perez: This document. And in it, they had said they wanted to open Multicultural Programs and hire and do a space. So what happened, I believe, is that there was me saying, “I'm outta (laughs). I'm gone.” The campus not wanting to necessarily just let me walk away. And knowing they had an opportunity for strength and growth under Bridget is when I accepted and changed and came and opened Multicultural Programs. Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 7 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Ho: Wow. It's a good thing you put in that notice. Perez: Oh, who you telling (Ho laughs)? 'Cause the campus one, I'll tell you this. And if I'm being quite honest, and I, if I had tried to apply for that type of role--as an outsider to a place, I don't, I would've not received that role. I didn't have the pedigree. I didn't have, you know, sure I had some of the education, but what people used to say at the time is that you're not a traditional Student Affairs practitioner. And I actually resent that type of statement because I don't think there's a traditional student affairs person anymore. Like that's old thinking. Ho: Uh-hmm. Perez: But I would say to you that I think I wouldn't have, I, what, what I believe was happening is I had established strong relationships. People knew my quality of work, knew that I would come in and at least set the ground running. That, that that's what I did. And so, honestly, when I came in, started the position, and literally I was in a cubicle inside on the fourth floor of Craven (Hall) and really had to set the, the vision. And so I met with nineteen, twenty people and I said, “What are our needs on campus? What do we think we should be doing? What do you want Multicultural Programs to be?” And I created oh my gosh, so many programs that first year. Like I was a party of one and a student assistant. But we started, I remember, oh, I can't remember. There's, there has to be somewhere. I did a flag, it had international flags everywhere. And we did a culture of celebration, or celebration of culture. Celebration of Culture was the first event. And then in that time, we started with--I partnered with Jonathan (Pollard) to start the African American Faculty Staff Association. We did the fires. We had the (brush) fires. And so we, because part of my job was volunteerism too. They threw volunteerism and engagement in there. So I did a fire, a drive, a, a clothing drive for the for out of the center for the victims of the fire. I did Soul Food Lunch, helped start Soul Food Lunch, which is gone now, but Soul Food Lunch, I think we did over 20 programs that first year that I was there. But it was all because of what people told me they wanted and what we needed. Oh, Powwow! I did the planning of the (Tukwut) Powwow with everyone. I, oh man. I could try and go back. Like we just, it, it really, I was, it was a way in which I could engage the community and build relationships across the campus. And so that is the foundation for how I really began to, I think cement my knowledge base in DEIJ (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice). Was really kind of this piecemealing and building. And so the piece that I will tell you is I, between Bridget (Blanshan) and I, I can't--we advocated for the space next door to Student Life and Leadership. And it's a square wall. It was it--that room? Hon--it is so small. Do you hear me? It is so small. But, we put a couch. I went and got a couch from (unclear) who, I don't know if you know her, she works. I went to her house and picked up a couch. We got--we built me a cubicle in there because I thought it was important to have a separation of space between any students. We did all this stuff. Oh my gosh. We were in there and they tried to come and take that space. I remember one of our academic colleagues, literally, I was sitting in the space and I turned around and she's standing there summing up the space for sure. And didn't say a word to me, and then turned around and walked out. And I remember going to Bridget and saying, “You've got to be kidding me. Right?” Like, you can't come while someone's sitting in the space trying to sum it up for, 'cause space wars were real. Ho: Um-hmm. Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 8 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Perez: And I think at that time, people didn't realize the power of a Cross-Cultural Center. And there was intentionality and, you know, we called it Multicultural Programs. And then I opened up the CrossCultural Center, and literally, as I see how you've written it, we had, do you put the dash in between Cross-Cultural Center and do we not? And later on there was the, the version of, is it C3, which we branded and branded well. And then, then people hated that brand, and then they had to move, which is fine, right? But I often, I laugh because I can't believe that the Cross-Cultural name has still stayed. And, and I'm exceptionally proud. This part, we may not wanna put too public, but that's the one center that has had no controversy (laughs) on the campus. Ho: Really (both talking)? Perez: Right? Yeah. Ho: So there was no pushback or anything when you started? Perez: Nah, Nah, none. No. Um-um. And they could have. But I think because the campus was small, I had great relationships. The way in which I did--did it in relationship. It was a community effort. People were engaged, people were support(ive). None. None. But I will say to you too that the way in which we approached DEI work was pretty soft at that time. You know, it was a very supportive nature. I wasn't tackling policy. I wasn't, you know, tackling searches and recruitments, and I was building community and that level of awareness around what we can do collectively. I think I wrote a mission in the beginning. But here's the thing: I will tell you that I was, in my humble opinion, the grassroots person, because I got it going. And gave, gave. And then I was there 18 months maybe, and then I moved to Japan. And when I came back, Alexis Motevirgin had taken it to a more formal place. And, and I was like, I think we had a mission statement back then? But Alexis, I think really formalized the mission and the work. I just, I just was the grassroots starter for all of that at the time. And then Alexis came, stayed just a few months, right? And then I, I think that I hired Augie (Augustin Garibay) and he didn't stay very long. Augie Garibay and then hired Sara, Sara Sheikh. And then she stayed for a little bit and moved on. And then Floyd (Lai), and he's the longest standing. Really, I think built a solid foundation. I was there. So this is where it gets weird. Because I was, I would say the associate director, or the first, however we wanna frame it for Cross-Cultural Center. But I was there from 2003-ish to (200)4 into (200)4, so probably eighteen months. And then I went to Japan, and I was gone a year and a half, and then I came back. So part of my work in the evolution of the Cross-Cultural Center, was when I was the Director of Student Life, and it was in my portfolio. So had the ability--so I was making--I hate, I feel awkward because it's almost like you're bragging. And so I'm trying not to brag. But we used to make lots of deals back then. So I would hustle to make deals for space, quite honestly. And so--we moved Student Life. So this was part of the plan. We moved Student Life to third floor, right? And that in the rotunda, I don't know what's the, it's Guardian Scholars, I think there're now, but it has a weird kind of diagonal room. Ho: Um-huh. Perez: So we went from the fourth floor down to the rotunda, and it was small in an awkward space, small. So we were there not too long. And then I worked a deal to switch. We put Leadership Programs down, I believe, or student org(anization)s down in the rotunda and in Commons 206 area, right across where I think Alumni Affairs is. We got a really good space and partnered with ASI (Associated Students Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 9 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Incorporated), they gave us that space to put the Cross-Cultural Center up there. And that's when the Cross-Cultural Center got its real visibility because it was in a prominent space, gorgeous space. Great. We had couches. Alexis, you might hear in stories about these beautiful red couches. So by the time I came back from Japan, these beautiful red couches were in the space. Those couches have lasted for a long time. People used those couches. I, when I got back, I actually--I tell people at the Chancellor's Office, bought a TV for the space. I wanted to buy a TV to do announcements on this, on the thing. And this isn't, you're talking about 2000. Whatever. And Bridget was so cute. She was like, “What are your student learning outcomes for them?” And I was like, “What?” So, you know, I had to, you know, write whatever. And then some things happened with staffing, and someone filed a whistleblower on me for buying the TV. Because I bought the TV. Uh-huh. And so I had to defend at the--for the Chancellor's office why I bought this TV for this Cross-Cultural Center back in the day. So it's interesting that what we consider is normal, were some things that as you build the infrastructure, right? And, you know, when you build something like this, people want it to be all things to all people. And I think that when I started, that was easy because it was just building. But as you've seen the iteration, I think each of the people who have led it have really had to think about what is the purpose of the center and the space, and how can it be most effective? Ho: So then when you were, when you were building, what was the purpose of it in your mind? Perez: Yeah. I think one, to provide space, a safe space for our students. To be a centralized resource and location. So I would say to you that in some ways I was, you know, the start of a diversity person on the campus in that realm. It was kind of a catchall at that time. I think that it, it--whether articulated or not, was to build really kind of the celebratory awareness events. And have the visibility and do that work to acknowledge the diversity of our communities on the campuses. And I--I'm having a hard time kind of remembering between the two roles, but I began to get brought into, we had an Institute for Social Justice and Equity that was created, a center. And that when I got back, we were heavily involved in. A lot of the bias response pieces because of student life I was involved in. And so I think it became a resource. And when I got back from the CSU--when I got back from Japan, I will tell you that it was then that I--we got really involved in more serious things. So some of the campus climate pieces, the WASC pieces, there was a, maybe diversity committee that was working on a diversity statement for the campus that I think we worked on that for a long time and it never got out. But what did get out of that or come out of that work on that committee was the very first Diversity Officer. And so that was Gary Rollinson, who then I think in that. Dowd, spent some time in that. And then, you know, (Willie) “Derrick” Crawford, and then now, you know, there's Arturo Ocampo and then Aswad (Allen, current Chief Diversity Officer). So, I think it was the foundational really for a lot of the diversity work that was happening on the campus. Ho: So, you mentioned when we first started this conversation, you were really a part of a lot of different communities as a kid. So military, you were adopted, which I imagine had a profound impact on your sense of identity and being. And then moving from place to place and having to integrate yourself into these different places. So, do you think that that this childhood experience of--of being maybe different in so many ways from so many different people, had any impact on, on this career that you found yourself in at CSUSM? Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 10 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Perez: Oh, I love this question. I don't know. When I was doing my doctoral work there was a pivotal, a quote that has been pivotal to my life. It says, “Everything changes, everything's connected, pay attention.” And I would say to you that while I was trying to figure out what the purpose of my life was going to be, (laughs) working at GEICO, coming to work in outreach, right? Susan Mitchell, who has since passed away, was a great mentor in telling me I was a leader without the position. Like in instilling this belief in me, I would say to you that every experience I had at (CSU) San Marcos prepared me for that role. That my work in outreach and Student Affirmative Action to the Third Word Counseling Association that I talked to you about, to the outreach to the people that I worked with and the value statements to the engagement that I had as a student. Yeah. I mean, all of that. I think you pull from those as tools, right? What I do think helped is I love the community. And I think to your point I don't think even then I understood as a student what it meant to be an African American woman. I don't know that I understood how all of my identities felt, but I did know what it meant to feel like you mattered and belonged, and how to resource and the support on the campus. That even though I'm not first gen(eration), both of my parents went to college, I know I struggled at points. Like, it wasn't until I applied to go to grad school that I realized I pulled my (CSU) San Marcos transcript, and I was like, “Really? I wasn't that bad of a student. Why did I feel like I wasn't a good student?” Like, I literally did not see myself as a good student, right? I was just doing what I needed to do to possibly get out. You know, my GPA ended up like a 3.11, but all the stuff I was doing and the movement and the, you know--but I, I would say to you that I think that sure, I pull on all of that because you want students to have a good experience. And what has happened since then with my research around a concept called Third Space, I do believe it's our role to break down any obstacles and challenges that students have to face. And I think that's the way in which I've approached the work is that sometimes it's, it's our organizational structures that are weeding students out. And that to me is probably the greatest social inequity of all. Ho: Especially on a college campus of all things. Perez: Especially on a college campus. That's supposed to, while we reflect society, we should often we should be a safe space. Ho: Hmm. Perez: I will tell you that during my time, so you're talking when I was director of SLL (Student Life and Leadership), then the Associate Dean, then Dean of Students, right? So all these are kind of merged, but once the Cross-Cultural Center opened, I had the opportunity to partner with John Segoria and Vicki Hernandez to open the Veterans Center. Then the president pulled on a team of us after a list of demands. And I just, I had the opportunity a few years ago to participate in the Latino Resource Center and helping them get started. And that came out of crisis. And so we created that. That I--I was gonna tell you some piece about that, but oh, that Floyd had invited me back, I think, for the 15th year. Or whatever. And when we were opening the Latino Resource Center, some folks thought that as we were having that, I would, I would raise questions. And I said, “If we, if we open a Latino Resource Center (Latin@/X Center), are we ready to open a center for all identities?” Because that's what's gonna happen. And I'm, and, and people thought I was against it, and I was like, “No, no, no, no, no, no.” Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 11 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Because if you look, we had started the Cross-Cultural Center because we understood that the intersectionality of all of our identities. And so we were trying to build the model originally off of the value of the intersectionality. Right? And then as life happens in society and on the campus, there was a need. And so the Latino Resource Center, I was like, I'm not against it. I'm just asking are we ready to open additional centers? And to the president's credit, she was, because then the Black Resource Center (Black Student Center) came, the Dreamer Center came, right? And additional centers. And so I will tell you that when he invited me to come back for the 15th year and speak, I wrote a speech that I had to think about because I was like, where am I at? Is it Cross-Cultural Center or is it all the different identity-based centers? And I will tell you, I was at MiraCosta (Community College) at the time, and I wrote in the speech, I said, until we make DEIJ training mandatory across the institution, because the reality is those that choose to come to the trainings do, but those aren't the folks who are making it a chilly spot. Not always discriminatory, but chilly, and making it difficult for students until they are mandated to go to training and they get to opt out. Oh, we best believe we need centers. Ho: Um-hmm. Perez: To get rid of all of the isms, to get rid of all the things that are hindering our students. You absolutely need a safe space. And so I am for whatever identity-based center we feel like we need that can validate students, provide the academic and co-curricular support to students all day, every day. So I put that in the speech, right? That at, at the 15th (year) and tell me that the students at MiraCosta got a hold of that speech somehow, and they were trying to fight for a Latino center. And they quoted that speech and plastered it all over campus, because they also feel like if she's saying that we need that there, why wouldn't we need that here? And so, I will tell you, I've shifted my approach, actually. I think cross-cultural is important, but I, I think identity-based centers as we need them, are critically important until we're going to focus on the entire organization and hold everyone accountable to creating student support. You know, it's not, I--I really, quite honestly, you have a choice to believe what you want to believe. I'm not here to, to force people to believe. But what you can't do, or what you won't do is weed a student out because of your beliefs. Ho: Um-hmm. Perez: Or cause an obstacle for a student. That, that we, we need to understand that there are societal injustices, that mirror themselves in our college campuses that we need to mitigate if we're really truly serious about doing this work. Ho: Could you elaborate a bit on--on why identity focused centers are so important and also their relationship to a, a Multicultural Center? Like what, what is, what is the difference, frankly? Perez: Well, I don't know. And I, and I would tell you, I think Floyd's been working on that, right? Because what you probably know is that we had so many discussions in the beginning because the students, it was always busy in the Cross-Cultural Center. But it was our APIDA (Asian-Pacific Islander Desi American) students that were in there and using the space. And so people were like, “Well, you have to have an APIDA center 'cause that's who's in there.” And we had so many conversations in the beginning around how do you diversify the space. Because it's not just about our APIDA students. The reality is it is any student taking territory. Claiming territory. Like what do you do to make sure the space Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 12 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 is, you know, culturally diverse? And at some point, we just gave up quite honestly, because we didn't feel like that was our right to then try and mess with the dynamics. Like create a space where people, if they choose to walk in the door, that they would feel welcome. Does that make sense? But we will not exclude anyone from the spaces like the space. That's what it is here for. And so, I will tell you that I think that I don't know, and I haven't been connected in a very long time, in an in-depth way, if we have ever clearly achieved the, the goal of the intersectionality and how a Cross-Cultural center or could really, really benefit that. I think you would, quite honestly, there's nuances between multicultural and cross-cultural, right? And I think you will play, people don't call, and they may now. Multicultural. And so Multicultural Programs died that, that term. I think I-- and Floyd had it in his title for a while, but I can't remember where that ended up. But I would say to you that I think as we think about the future, that really is the essence. That the identity-based senders, I don't, you can't silo my identity, right? So I am an African-American woman. Does that make sense? I am a military dependent family member. That is a huge, huge part of my identity. I am a woman. Gender Equity Center. I am an ally to LGBTQ. Like, so to think that a student, we can silo the identities of students? But what I will tell you is this, I find community in ways that are authentic to me. So what I love about the identity based, and it's a different idea, is I get to choose which identity I'm (unclear) in those moments. I don't have to pick them, because I do think sometimes in our work, we're back to the melting pot concept, where we're like, “Let's just be all happy and get along.” And we really don't create that space for the uniqueness of our identities to come forward. So what I love about where (CSU) San Marcos is now is honestly, yeah. They were willing to open centers for like, when I was there. There's two other centers popping up, right? You know, what I, what I think is interesting is you have the National Latino Resource Center. And you have the Latino Resource Center (Latin@/X Center), and you have the Dreamers Center. And my question is, how are all of them partnering and working together? And are we creating living learning spaces? Because I will tell you, I don't think you need separate spaces just for belonging. What we need are spaces that allow a student to live and to learn. And often the connection to academic, their academics is critically important. Does that make sense? Like, I will tell you, I do a lot of work around basic needs. This is not a popular statement that I'm about to make, but everything we do for students' basic needs should be connected to them moving forward to achieve their educational goals. Period. If we're not helping a student progress forward or persist, the reality (is) we're not a social service agency. That is not our area of expertise. What we are is, as I see Jennifer as a student, Jennifer has needs, some of them are more immediate, some are more long-term. So, Jennifer, how can I help connect you for your immediate, basic needs, to a community organization? Cal-fresh. Housing. That can help you so that I'm not, I'm, I'm helping you to fish. Not just trying to fix this need right now. Because oftentimes people will say, “Well, Jennifer can't go to school because she has so many life things.” And I'm like, yeah, but the reality is we have to balance, how do we supply the needs? So Jennifer, 'cause that's, that's social mobility for a student. That's what's gonna change a life. That's what, that's what we want. We wanna change our life through helping Jennifer get their degree. Ho: Yeah Perez: Am I preaching to you? But that's what, to me, the crux of what we're doing is, I think every campus is gonna be different, quite honestly. And I think (CSU) San Marcos has found its niche, right? I Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 13 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 think when it moved all the identity-based centers into a unit. So that they can collaborate, coordinate, partner. I think it's fabulous. Ho: So do you see do you see a trend with college campuses overall moving from multicultural centers to, to these focused, identity-based? Perez: So I've changed and morphed a little bit too. And I will tell you that it's funny. My, my vision is similar, but different. And I think that's from being at (CSU) San Marcos, but also having the identitybased spaces conversation at MiraCosta Community College, and then Cerritos College, and then now in the system. I would tell you my ideal, which is not new to me. Does that make sense? It's just the model, model that I love, is where you have this cross-- and this kind of was where we had started, but it never got there. Cross-Cultural is the hub, right? But then you would have physical spaces because symbolism matters to identities. But you would have some spaces connected. So you could have your LGBTQIA, you could have Gender Equity, you could have, you know, I'm trying to—Black--you know, all the different centers that aren't necessarily disconnected. The hub is the cross-cultural part. So (California State University) Fullerton, to my understanding, has this model where they have a coordinator for each, but they're all interconnected in their work and in the way they do this. That to me is the ideal quite honestly. I don't think having separate spaces across campuses, across whatever are the ideal. I think having them where there could be a synergy together. I think (CSU) San Marcos is close, right? Because most of them are in the (University Student) Union. They've done a really good job of trying to put everything in the Union. Some are a few out, you know, I used to serve on the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center’s taskforce. And then, you know, I just learned they're working to do a Native Center. And I was like, but you have two, like two spaces, like two, like what's the difference? So, you know, I don't know where it starts or stops. I just think that each campus has to have its hand on the pulse of what their students need. And I think engaging faculty in these spaces matters. You know, that is one of the most critical relationships. Is I've talked about my experiences. You know, it could be a staff member. Absolutely. But your faculty relationships matter. Ho: Yeah. When you were, when you were starting out as this, as the Associate--Associate Director-(Both talking) Perez: Director-Ho: --of Multicultural Spaces, is that correct? Perez: Multicultural Programs. (Both talking) Ho: Multicultural Programs. Perez: Um-huh. Ho: Okay. Thank you. You said you spoke to different people on campus. Did that include students and faculty as well? Perez: Yeah. You know, it--my world was so blended. So the, the, the thing that's a little different at (CSU) San Marcos--so when I left San Marcos in 2016, I would tell you and I give all credit, Lorena, Mesa, Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 14 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 and Checka at the time, they threw a phenomenal party. I would tell you mostly faculty were there, right? So the way in which I navigated the campus was really fluid between Student Affairs and Academic Affairs. Ho: Um-hmm. Perez: Yes. I mean, I would tell you, like, can I remember? I--I think I met with Gary Rollinson. I think I remember meeting with advisors. I think students, I don't have the list, obviously. It was 19 years ago. Which is crazy. But yeah, I mean, I think we, we just were more fluid between the organization back then that, yeah, I remember meeting with as many people that would meet with me. Ho: That's great. And did that include students as well? Perez: Yes. But I can't tell you the exact names of the students. Yes. Ho: Oh, that's okay. That's fine. One of my questions on my list here is what did the students say that they wanted? Perez: Yeah. Yeah. I think what's hard for me is what a student would say today and what a student would say in 2004 are very different things. So I think we're, we are more knowledgeable about DEIJ language. And about--I hate to say it this way, but the hatred, the discrimination, the oppression that's in the world. And I think that at the point when we started our work around DEI was still kind of in the--I I hate to say it, in the happy phase. So you know how I said the Latino Center--resource center was built out of crisis, right? And the Black Resource Center, I think a crisis. Veterans Center, not so much. I think it was us being strategic and the community. But the Cross-Cultural Center wasn't built out of a crisis. It was built out of an opportunity to strengthen the student experience and to create a resource for students. So I would say to you that I think students at that point were wanting a sense of community. Does that make sense? Wanting a pla-- a space. So space, which we gave. They wanted the celebratory aspects. Like we talked about the Powwow, and I don't know if the powwow has come back to San Marcos. It was huge, the Powwow, huge, huge! It took months to plan those things. So I went in as the University Liaison to the groups to help them plan that. Gala GATSA for the Oaxacan community. I was on the Gala GATSA community. I remember sitting in the back and, and I think this is me and CrossCultural Center, literally (laughs). I had never been to a Gala GATSA before. It was five thousand people! Do you hear me? Five thousand. We, this was, these were huge community events. I was sitting in the back next to and Humberto Garcia, (Jr.). I don't know if he's still there in risk managing--manager. Girl, they threw whole pineapples and cantaloupes through the audience. I'm literally standing there and I was like, is that, is that a whole pineapple? That's a tradition in the, like, in that, you know. But so for us, I think it was more of just really being there to support students. It wasn't until I became a dean, quite honestly, and I got into to the associate director (position) that I started tackling some of those more difficult, sensitive--it was probably director on that, that I was in those conversations that were tackling some of the discrimination that was happening on campuses. You know, there were many conversations where faculty members were saying and doing things that they shouldn't be saying or doing that I as a dean or you know, would say, you can't, that's, you can't do that (laughs). Like, no. Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 15 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 We had a faculty member that were, they were very upset about students and their perception of, and they tried to kick students out of the class. And you know, I went in and the faculty member literally when I went in and said, “What the f are you doing here?” And I was like, “You have a right to an advocate and so do students. And so I'm here as a student advocate.” And so we had the conversation and that faculty member said, “You're wasting my effing time.” And just so you're, you're taught if I'm dealing with this! If, if I'm dealing with this as an administrator, and, and mind you, that person was a person of color that said this, it was not, you know, so I--I don't want to send the wrong, it was a person of color. That, you know, and there's a, a story that I've told, and I'll, I know it's seven (o’clock), but I, there's a story that I, I've told publicly. So I started the, it was the Celebration of Culture. 'Cause we used to do it a lot. The Celebration of Culture in the beginning. And so it was, I think an acknowledgement and recognition, of the work that was being done on the campuses. And I was--we had a first Amendment issue that happened when I was an administrator. And we had a controversial speaker that was on campus that was very discriminatory. And we called a meeting and we had a conversation. And in this meeting were a whole bunch of administrators. And someone was giving examples and they said, well, Dilcie, if you--someone called you the N word--and used the word--we wouldn't, you know, this is what would happen or whatever. And then they went to, if someone called you a whore. And then they went to me. And I didn't realize how upset I was getting in this meeting. And the person that was sitting next to me put their hand on my lap and stop me, just help stop me from shaking. And they said, “Can we stop using Dilcie as the example?” And the person said, “I didn't know if Dilcie was Black. I thought she was a hot-headed Puerto Rican.” And mind you, I was an administrator on the campus. Administrator on campus. And finally someone had enough sense to say, “We need to end this meeting.” So we all went our separate ways. And the next morning went in the meeting and I just, I just, I, I was so upset. So, so, so upset. And so they said, you know, we're gonna have this person, you know, apologize, whatever. And so the person came and gave me a half-baked apology. And so a year, a couple years went by. And they came and asked me to do the keynote for, it was, it must have been Celebration of Culture or something at the time. I can't remember. And I decided that one, I would never share who the person was 'cause that wasn't important, but that we were gonna tell the story. And so publicly, in front of 250 people, Executive Council, we did a split screen. And so the person who served as my ally in that moment, and me had a screen between us and we told the story of what happened that day. And with the point of, you never know when you're gonna need an ally. And you never know, even as an administrator, if it can happen to an administrator, it can happen to a student. And so, (CSU) San Marcos, we say that we're inclusive and that we value these things? We need to, we need to be serious about it. Right? And so at the end of the speech, the room did not move, Jennifer. It was silent. And I thought, oh no, I've lost my job. Like I, it is not good. And all of a sudden it broke out into applause and the room stood up and everybody was so happy. And I received so much support, quite honestly, for that. And the president called me, she said, “Is there anything I need to do?” And I was like, “No.” Like, “I just needed you to hear, there's nothing, thank you. Nothing.” And so a few years later they said, “Dilcie, we're gonna have to put you on a team with this person.” And I was like, “No buddy, no, you're not.” And they said, “Yeah, like, we have no choice.” And I said, “Let them say one dumb thing. I'm telling you I'm not putting up with it. I'm not mess--like one dumb thing.” And this person, and I served on this team together for about a year and a half, two Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 16 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 years. And about after a year of us working together, we were sitting in my office on a, working on a tough case. And they said, “I just want to truly, truly apologize for what happened. I'm sorry. I was ignorant. I didn't know any better. I know better now. I'm very sorry.” To that point, that individual and I are exceptionally close to this day. I have been to their home, have been to events at their house. He knows not to say those dumb things anymore. But he, there is, there is--there is restoration in some of those things. There is forgiveness, there is learning, there is growth. Does that make sense? And so I share that very long story to say that when I think about (CSU) San Marcos is at the core of, no matter what happens at the Cross-Cultural Center, at the identity based cen-it's relation, it is about relationships. When students were picketing over, some things happened at the campus. The president had the reports to the community. And I went out and I was on the picket line with the students. And someone got back to me that someone said, “I don't like Dilcie. 'Cause she's out there picketing with the students.” No, I wasn't, I was making sure the students had their right to use their voice and that it didn't impact the event, but they had a right to be there. And so let's do that in a way that's supportive of them. Right? When the abortion people came, they may still come with the big signs. (Perez holds hands up over her head) We sat down and had a team and said, “Here's the deal. You're gonna have protestors. Let's manage it accordingly.” I remember putting blue tape right down the middle and said, “Here's the space (laughs), and here's your space. Have at it be respectful.” Be--and I walked down and supported both sides as they did those things. Because I think to me while -- and I think a lot of people on the campus believe this -- while we want to be protected from hateful language, the reality of this is the world that we live in. And what we have to do is create a space where all voices can be heard. Ho: Uh-huh. Perez: And you have a right to safety. You absolutely do, but you don't have a right to be unoffended. Because I will tell you that in the first days of (CSU) San Marcos, there were all kinds of speakers that came that I didn't necessarily agree with. But what I loved is being exposed to ideas that were different than mine that helped to validate. Or invalidate my thought process that made me think about what I believed and didn't believe. That to me is the essence of higher education. That's where I think a CrossCultural Center, it's not that you say everything that's popular or bring one side and one belief. You have to be balanced. Ho: Thank you so much for sharing those stories and those memories. They really provide context to what the campus was. And a lot of it is behind the scenes that people wouldn't know, wouldn't expect. Especially students going about their day to day. So thank you for doing that. (both talking) Perez: That's right. There is, I mean, I think they can't, that (CSU) San Marcos is not a perfect place. But what I will say to you is I have, I have the opportunity to view all twenty-three (CSU campuses) now, and I’m oh so appreciative of the DEIJ, the Cross-Cultural Center, the work that's happening at San Marcos in this area. Yeah. Ho: You've mentioned some names of people that you've worked with, people you appreciate, are there, who are some more people that were really important to the Cross-Cultural Center that we might not know about? Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 17 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Perez: I--if you haven't talked to Jonathan Pollard, I think you should find him. He was the Dean of Students at the time who, who really said we're gonna make this happen. And he was part of that with Bridget (Blanshan) that did the 2010. And I think he had the original vision for it. So I would, I think he is part of that. I think, you're gonna ask me and I--Janet Perez-Covacevich, I have to think she was the first student assistant in that space. Ho: Hey, I was gonna ask you about your, that student assistant. Perez: Janet Perez. First, and let me give you her number 'cause I know it by heart from even back then. Ho: Okay. Let's do that via email. Okay. And not on this recording. Yeah. (both talking) Perez: Sure. So I can share that with you. And then Sida Munoz, I, she was in the center. She works at (CSU) San Marcos now. She was in the center in the very beginning a lot. I think sleeping and having space, but she partnered and volunteered a lot. We also added the Cross-Cultural Center and Multicultural Programs did the very first alternative spring break for the campus. So that was part of the work that we did that first year where we took students to San Francisco to the Glide to do work in the community. So that's a little tangential, that was more from the Multicultural programs. But it, all of that was flowing out of that space for sure. Ho: Thank you. Perez: You probably have most everybody else 'cause you have all the directors and everyone that worked there, right? Ho: Yeah. Floyd's reached out to--Floyd reached out to a lot of people. So we have-Perez: Yeah-- (both talking) Ho: --A lot of folks responding. Perez: Yeah, yeah. Totally. Ho: Including himself. Yeah. (both laugh) Perez: As he, as he should, he's done a marvelous job. Very proud. (both talking) Ho: Yeah. He really has. Perez: Yeah. Ho: I--how are we doing on time? Perez: I probably could give you a few more minutes and then yeah, head out. Are you clo-- are you good or do you have more? Ho: Yeah, I really would like to know a little bit more about you mentioned this concept of the third space. Could you tell me more about that in general or, and or as it relates to CSUSM? Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 18 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Perez: Sure. So during, you know, as folks try and figure out what they're studying and researching, I was exposed and I came, can't even tell you how to, a concept by Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture that talks about when an individual transitions from one culture to the next, what they do is they take the unique strengths and characteristics of each of those cultures. So take the greatness, the goodness, and then make a third space out of it. And so my work is around breaking down the organizational silos between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, particularly with the research. But I will say to you that I think that spaces like the Cross-Cultural Center, like identity-based centers are examples of third spaces where you take the unique strengths of faculty and Academic Affairs and the unique strengths of Student Affairs, and you put 'em together. And so the spaces could be, you know could be literally or figuratively. And so for me, as you think about the center space, these are, these should be third spaces where we blend both the best of both worlds. So that's the way in which I approach the work in my daily work, quite honestly, is that students don't care about our organizational silos. They really don't. And so how can we create more seamless, holistic experiences for students? Ho: Um-hmm. Thank you. Perez: Yeah. Ho: Could you tell us what you, what you do now at-Perez: In my current role? Ho: In your current role? Yes. (Perez laughs) Perez: So--so I left (California State University) San Marcos in 2016. I went to be the Dean of Student Life and Judicial Affairs at MiraCosta (Community College). So I was there two years. And then with my boss, who's amazing at the time, thought that I should consider being a vice president of student services. And so I left MiraCosta after two years and became the VP of Student Services and Associate Superintendent at Cerritos College. And so I was there almost four years. And then someone approached me about this job, which is, which was the Associate Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Equity and Belonging in the CSU. Right? So really my work now is to bring--is, well, it's hard, but. So I work with all the diversity officers in the system. So I love that, quite honestly, on the system. And so it's been helpful because I have experience doing some of that work and so helpful to highlight the wonderful and important work that they're doing. But my role changed. So I--I am almost been here a year, but I was promoted to Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic and Student Affairs. And so that was May 1st, but I will be the acting co-executive vice chancellor for the system for all of academic and student affairs. I know it's hard to keep up with. It's we, but it's movement. And so this position will, will really work with the presidents, provosts, and vice presidents. And the funny part is that Nathan Evans, I don't know if you know that name, he is a codeputy, but he worked with me at San Marcos. So we started our relationship there. And so people, the chancellor has seen how well we work together, and so we both were promoted to co-lead the division. Ho: That's wonderful. Well, congratulations on your, on your promotion. Perez: Thank you. It's a lot to take in. I, it's, I'm very humbled by it. But it's a, it's a big gig, so. Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 19 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Ho: Yeah. Perez: Yeah. Ho: Cool. I guess we could start wrapping up. Are there any memories or stories or anything that you'd like to share from your CSUSM days? Perez: No, I think I've shared a lot of wonderful memories. I mean, I think of--despite challenges, there really were some pivotal moments that framed me as personally and professionally. When you asked about it, I remember we were trying to beautify the center and Jay Franklin, I think was serving as an interim during that time. And we did a mural and I don't know if you know about the mural, but we came on a Saturday and it was a community mural. And it's so funny because the mural was hanging in the Cross-Cultural Center for years, and finally we were like, it's time to get rid of it. I was like, just let it go. And Floyd would not. And so it's hanging in the College of Humanities, Arts and Behavioral Sciences. The first Cross-Cultural (Center) mural is in that conference room. He had it moved there. And so I, I love that the campus is, I'm telling you, there were no obstacles. And I think that I will tell you that while I know that everyone is not for DEIJ work, that everyone at San Marcos is not for it, I do think that we have tried to address challenges and obstacles in a collaborative, supportive way to start. But I do think that as, as the work continues kind of the way in which we started the rah rah and the hooray, we can't remember, we can't forget, the essence of the work is really in addressing the social injustices that unfortunately have infiltrated their way onto our college campuses. That to me is the essence of the work: is we should be building students up and not tearing them down. We should be beacons of light and hope for societies that are uninterested in confronting the social injustices that have significantly, disproportionately impacted many marginalized populations. That should not be okay. That should not be okay. That if we are telling a student, we want you to come here, we need to do everything that we can to help them be successful. Ho: Thank you. Perez: Yes. Ho: That was beautifully said and I appreciate it. I also want to come back to that mural. Could you, in case nobody else in their interviews have talked about it, could you give me a little bit of info on it just so we have it for the record? Perez: Yeah. So it is interesting. The mural we knew we needed, so somebody else in another department, and I think it may have been CAMP (College Assistance Migrant Program), had brought an artist to the campus and talked to us about them doing this mural. For their, for their program. So Jay (Franklin) and I and Dick said, “We wanna do that.” So we paid to have the artists come. And it was a Saturday, and I think it was in U(niversity) Hall, outside U Hall 100. We all were there. And he takes you through this process of where you're thinking about community, thinking about what you want, and then you each had like a sliver of the panel that you did. And I can't remember if he, he must have drawn an outline, I'm guessing, if I remember correctly. And if you see it, there's so many vibrant colors, so many vibrant colors. And I actually think we need to pull it and take pictures and document even more. Floyd probably has access to 'em because I can see, I just remember when I would walk around the room and see what Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 20 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 people put, you were like, oh! And look at you (laughs). Right? But it represented the sense of community that was involved with the creation of the space. You have to remember, Cross-Cultural Center was there before any of the other centers. Ho: Yeah. Perez: It was the first, unless maybe not, maybe, and we have to confirm, National Latino Research Center may have been around. As a research institute base. But Cross-cultural Center, before all the centers, there was a Cross-Cultural Center that set the foundation for those to come. Ho: Um-hmm. Perez: So I would say to you that when you look at it, you'll see just the, the diversity, the tapestry of our community at the time. There's so many things in that mural. So you should go see it. So many things in that mural. Ho: Okay, thank you. (both talking) Perez: I haven't seen it in a few years, but definitely check the mural. 'Cause that we did that probably, maybe I came back in 2006, so maybe 2007, 2008. So that was about four years after we opened. So we're celebrating twenty years (of the CCC being open), right? I'm trying to think, is coming up. So we're, I came to the fifteen, I think he's (Floyd Lai) getting to twenty, so it's, so March, they should count March as kind of the opening, I'm guessing. Ho: Yeah, I think it is March. Perez: It was 2004. He's right, it was March 2004 when I started it. Yeah. Ho: Okay. Perez: So I think that that, that, that mural was really a great you know, I'm, I saw Chanel Bradley and um Gerardo Cabral, he, I'm sure some of the other folks, they're on Facebook and saw them. Diana Sal-Saldivar. I mean these were like the OGs of, and you know what I will tell you is I think that then for a while, students came and went like they were good and pivotal, right? But it was different when you were in the beginning. But I see Floyd recently 'cause I'm still on Facebook with some, and it's like, looks like they have a strong sense of community amongst the, the peer educators. And Floyd brought the interns. And so that has made the difference too especially with resources. I do remember as a director advocating for that space though. You know, I'm pretty proud of how we set that space up. There, there was a lot of political navigation in that and took, you know, a lot of collateral and 'cause you know, there people were vying for space, right? But we had a reputation. And in the negotiations, you see we did pretty good. We gave up some of the physical space on the inside to get the patio on the outside (laughs) like when you think there was a lot of strategy in, in the space and how we navigated those pieces. You gotta remember too – now you're bringing up all these memories for me – the, the Multicultural Programs was started with a lottery grant. Lottery. Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 21 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Ho: (unclear) mean? Perez: So lottery funds, we had to apply for lottery funds. And they were only supposed to be for like two to three years to get you started. So we had to write a lottery application to get it started, to get, to have funding, to have any programming money. Ho: Oh my goodness. I did not know that. Perez: And then I started making some interesting deals across campus to get other funds. Some we probably don't wanna record, but it got access to, to some, you know. And then, oh, and then before I left, I--oh, I forgot about this! So do you, do they still have co-curricular funds? The pro-- you can apply for co-curricular funds? Ho: I think so. Perez: I worked that deal. And so I had told Bridget (Blanshan), I was like, “We need to stop everybody from going all over getting funds. We need to get the funds.” And so by the time I came back, they had co-- Bridget had co-curricular funds. And so we had this process for co-curricular funds. And then Tukwut Life. This is outside. So in Tukwut Life, this, I did a deal with the president's office on Tukwut Life. 'Cause The president's husband came to me and said, “You need to start some campus traditions.” And so Tukwut Life was part of that. Ho: How did you, did you create Tukwut Life? Was that an original-Perez: With a whole bunch of people. We sure did. Absolutely. Tukwut Life. (both talking) Ho: That's awesome. Perez: We sure did. And I think it's died down a little bit since then, but oh, it was a whole movement. Oh. Ho: What was it? What was Tukwut Life? Perez: It was Friday night and weekend programming so that to make sure that we had night and weekend programs for students because we were increasing the number of residents and we didn't have a lot of community at the time, right? And so we knew we needed some community. Athletics was coming on board in a greater way than it was. And so, and so this is all, this is tangential to the CrossCultural Center. I don't know who I thought I was. I really don't. I think I just didn't ask permission. And we were just a different campus then. I don't know. I was telling someone the other day, I--I'm sure we had policies and procedures. I know we did. But I literally, one day when I was trying to create tradition on, you know, Tukwut Courtyard--I, you know, those stickers on the window, I was the first one to put all those stickers on the window. You know how it has the, oh. And then I plastered the stairs with, with CSU Gear. I had a professional company come out. I don't know who I asked. Like I was trying to think like, “Did you ask anyone? Like who told you you could do?” No, I was gonna create Tukwut Courtyard as a spirit courtyard. I, we held a Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 22 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 pep rally there. But literally I had stairs and, you know, we used to get, I get real happiness, students would come take pictures at commencement time with their family around those, those pictures, yeah. Ho: Um-Hm. Perez: And, but then I couldn't put the stickers up anymore 'cause the concrete's old. So then we had to get rid of them, so we couldn't do that anymore. So then I had to go think about something else. Umhmm. I don't know who I thought I was. I just need you to know. I like, now everything's so bureaucratic, right? No. We just did stuff, we did what we needed to do. Ho: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you just have to not think about it and just do it. Perez: And I, the campus was gracious to me. I also wasn't doing dumb stuff. Right. I was doing things that, but I don't know where I—all of a sudden woke up one day and I was like, I couldn't, I'm hiring a company, put some stickers on some stairs. Ho: Yeah. (inaudible) Perez: But I think that with the Cross-Cultural Center, why it worked, is that I didn't have to always ask permission. I did--I knew what I was advocating for and the campus was gracious enough to entertain that. And I think I had enough credibility at that point that they trusted me. Ho: Yeah. I think so. Perez: I don't think everything's perfect. I probably could have documented stuff better. Literally like when I look at what Alexis did and you, I was like, I was, I was just doing the rah rah fun part. Getting it started. The sustaining it is the hard part, right? So I know what I've learned about myself as a professional. I'm great at starting things like I can get a vision going. Like Cross-Cultural Center that changed and redefined--I would not be here today had it not been for the work in Multicultural Programs (inaudible). I would not, it changed--that one decision to join that team changed the trajectory of my life and my career. Ho: That's really cool. Perez: I'm, I'm pretty grateful. Pretty, I am proud of the Cross-Culture Center. I'm proud of the way Floyd (Lai) has led it. I'm proud and I'm not trying to be funny. I'm proud it has stayed controversy free (laughs). I think it has done important work in really kind, meaningful relational ways. Floyd's out there doing DEIJ work, he just does it differently than someone that's out there yelling and screaming. His work that he's doing in that center, you look at what that center has done – as you are (laughs) – for the campus. He, he has that--each of the directors, I think has added and put their nuance and their flair on that center. And I'm internally grateful that 20 years later I am proud to be connected and associated with such great work. Ho: It really does feel like a center of, of love and acceptance. It's really a beautiful, a really beautiful place. And you can, you can see that from anybody that you, you talk to. They all love the Cross-Cultural Center. Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 23 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Perez: It is. And it really is. And he has just furthered that vision. Like we started with that. But the population, like you have to think, we only had, I don't know when I left, I don't even know, maybe 7,000 students at that, at the time when I left, you know, once. And then came back and we grew like in, you know, seven years to 15,000. That's, that center has stayed tried and true. Tried and true. So what that tells me is I, yeah, we set a great foundation but the folks that came thereafter have really done a magnificent job and created a legacy for that case. Sara Sheik, I think about what she added, you know, that's where the Social Justice Summit was started. We were all there. I don't know if they told you. We were sitting there and we felt like people were too much in their heads. Oh, they were just, they, it was outside of them. Outside of them. And we were like, no, no, no. I remember sitting on the swing there and we were like, we gotta do something. So then we created the exercise madder than Hell. Mad as Hell. And we wanted to get them to their hearts. And we did that exercise Mad as Hell. Scott Gross. Scott Gross and I started, Sara Sheikh came in, we created that Mad as Hell exercise. They're probably still not doing it 'cause it seemed like we had controversy at every Social Justice Summit. But we were doing that work with students. And honestly, I went through a training not too long ago and they were doing equity work and I was like, “Uh, we were doing this with students, like first-year students in 2005. And you're literally taking people through this right now? This is outdated work. What are talking about?” Then I think about the students at San Marcos? They were getting that in their first year. You tell me how much different and how transformative that would be for them coming out their senior year. Ho: Yeah. Perez: I'm inspired and moved. Ho: That's great. That's so awesome. Perez: You just made me excited about the Cross-Cultural Center even more. Ho: Wait, say that again? Perez: I said, “You just made me so excited about the Cross-Cultural Center.” Ho: I, I'm really happy and I feel like I'm supposed to wrap up this interview, but I'm afraid that you'll think of more great memories to share and things to say. I don't wanna cut us off. Perez: Yeah. Well here's the thing. I will let you know if some things come up that I think are important, I'll reach out to you and let you know. 'Cause I--I'm, I am so grateful that you all are doing this. I think it is a really critical part of San Marcos and its history. Not just as a center, but in DEIJ work. For sure. Ho: Absolutely. Yeah. And the stories from people who were there, who started these movements and experienced them and made them happen are really important. 'Cause they're not always documented on paper. Perez: Yeah. I didn't do that very well. And I'm sure others, (Ho laughs) we were, we were hustling. We were hustling for sure. Right. So, but we did it. Ho: That's great. Yeah. And we have the proof of it now, celebrating the anniversary coming up. Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 24 2024-01-26 �Dilcie Perez TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-05-30 Perez: That’s exciting. I'm excited for you. So, well, it's nice to meet you. I hope that we, I just did an official visit there a few months ago, but hope we have the chance to meet in person. Ho: I hope so too! Thank you Dr. Perez. I will go ahead and end the interview now. Perez: Wonderful. Transcribed by Geneva Martinot and Aaron Williams 25 2024-01-26 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcripts Description An account of the resource Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Perez, Dilcie. Interview transcription, May 30th, 2023. Description An account of the resource Dr. Dilcie Perez is Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academic and Student Affairs for the CSU, as well as a California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) alumna. She graduated with her degree in Bachelors of Arts in Political Science. In this interview, Perez explains how CSUSM was ahead of its time in regards to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) work; however at the beginning of her employment with CSUSM, the university did not have Multicultural Programs (the predecessor to the Cross-Cultural Center). Perez recalls her work with Multicultural Programs, including her being offered the opportunity to open the program upon tendering her resignation to the university. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dilcie Perez Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jennifer Ho Geneva Martinot Aaron Williams Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-05-30 Subject The topic of the resource California State University San Marcos. Cross-Cultural Center California State University. Multicultural Programs California State University San Marcos. Student Academic Services Outreach Program California State University San Marcos. Student Affirmative Action Education, Higher Human rights Mural painting and decoration Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant San Marcos (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Dilcie Perez License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives@csusm.edu if you need reproductions made. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. Persons wishing to quote, publish, perform, reproduce, or otherwise make use of an item in the Library’s collections must assume all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of the copyright holder. The researcher assumes full responsibility for use of the material and agrees to hold harmless the University Library, and California State University, against all claims, demands, costs, and expenses incurred by copyright infringement or any other legal or regulatory cause of action arising from the use of the Library's materials. In assuming full responsibility for use of the material, the researcher also understands that the materials they examine may contain Social Security numbers, other personal identifiers, and/or sensitive material on potentially living and identifiable individuals (e.g., medical, evaluative, or personally invasive information). The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-43 Cross-Cultural Center oral history project CSUSM history Women's experience https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/24d0b5f1274c5333980a77f42e10980f.pdf fc3ce6202a3c7ec1f83a9311a0316116 PDF Text Text DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 Riccardo Savo: Awesome. Alright, so today is April 5th, 2023. I am Riccardo Savo, a graduate student at California State University of San Marcos. I'm interviewing Dinah Poellnitz for the University Library Special Collections Oral Project. Thank you so much for being here with me today. Unfortunately, you're not able to have the video, so we'll just rely on audio today, which is perfectly fine. And I would like to begin quite broadly if we can, if you could tell me how you became interested in art and how you initially related it to the community or to community engagement. Dinah Poellnitz: Um, then that's like a childhood memory question for me. I'm from North County. My dad came to Oceanside Camp Pendleton in the seventies. I was born in [19]76. I think my dad came out here in [19]78 and we lived on base and if you know anything about North County during that time, it was like, you go to church, you watch sports... and that was it, you know? And my mom's from the South. She's from Louisiana and you know, my mom's about church and we used to go to church all the time. And my mom had a friend named Carla. She was like a wacky woman too. She was just elusive, like all over the place. She used to be an architect and she saw that I loved to draw. And so one day she just gave me her drafting table and I was, I could, I think I was like in -- 11 years-old -- and she brought all her materials and stuff to my house and I was just like, whaaaat? It was like a whole new world. I was just like, wait... there's a table made just for drawing? That happens? You know, it was like one of those moments. And I used to dr-- I wanted to be a costume designer, so I used to draw dresses and fashion all the time on that table. And I had a whole setup. But I just remember just being this little kid who had my own little like, workspace and, and it was just for me to draw. And I was like, wow, there's a, there's... you could do this. Like, this is not a like day, you know, day drawing at home. This like, you could really do this as a, like, as an adult. So yeah, I was maybe like 11 and it was Carla from Fresh Bread Church. <laughter> Savo: That's awesome. So, you began this at age 11 and did you carry this through to your high school? Because I know you attended UC [University of California] Riverside and earned your Bachelor's in art history. Poellnitz: Yeah, I did. You know, like I was a kid that always made my own. Like I made my own. I designed dresses. I made my own prom dress. I sewed it, I wore it. I was heavily into -- It was the nineties in high school. And so, my parents, my dad retired, and then we moved outta Oceanside and moved to Vista for my high school years. And... it was hip-hop era, so I was like into dance and music. So that was all part of art and expression. But I remember wanting to be in the art clubs and I was just like, I can't if that, if art club's about realism and like drawing like things perfectly, I don't have time for that. That's real. I was just like, I don't even, I'm not even curious to learn that. I don't wanna do that. Cause that's what art club was defined as in high school for me. Savo: So would you say that your engagement was more self-disciplined? It was more geared towards how you wanted to engage with it, or more or less, how you could find avenues to apply it? Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 1 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 Poellnitz: Um, it was more intentional for me. You know, I like fashion, so I drew. I drew dresses and I designed a dress and I sewed a dress and I wore it. It was just, it was all intentional. It was like just being, it was an action, it was a language for me. It was... it was a skill, you know, I just thought very creatively all the time. Even when I was learning economics, I was thinking about it creatively so it can make sense for me. I think they say that artists are like divergent thinkers, you know? We always find or create and build and make an alternative solution to solve a problem in art. So that's kind of like that, that's a habit. Um, yeah, ‘cause in, in high school, I used to go dancing. I used to go to like, this is corny as hell: I used to skip school and go to the Soul Train and dance in Soul Train in High School. I was just expressive. It was a very creative, like moment as a kid for me being in high school in the nineties, like hip hop was like jazzy like baggy and like there was more Black designers like Dubbo jeans and FUBU and all that stuff came out. So it was kinda like a Renaissance era, even though I lived in, in a little North County and, you know, Blacks were a smaller percent of the community. There's like, that culture was just present when I was in high school. So me not wanting-- Me not wanting to join like the art club for high school and draw something perfectly was just like, eh, I can have fun. That feels like studying for economics. I don't wanna do that right now. I wanna enjoy creativity right now. I don't wanna study it. I was not in that mood. It was just a part of my life, you know? So... and then I used to go to LA every summer when I was in high school to get away from North County and stay with my cousins who worked at movie theaters. And that's when I was exposed to like museums and galleries and, you know, and I took a class at Santa Monica College and that's when I learned like, oh snap, you can learn art history? This is more interesting than like actually drawing the horse, you know? Um, I just learned that art had intentions all the time. Like I was, I was also like poor, you know? And I'm a, I come from a Black family, so to venture off into art, it's just like: you gotta make sure it makes money! My uncle in LA is like, what are you getting a degree in? Are you gonna be able to teach with that? I'm just like, hmm, I don't know, you know, and, but I enjoy it and I excelled at it. And like, I had a teacher, I took like Japanese art history at Santa Monica College, and I was just blown away by the history, like the political history, the social impact, just like everything that you see in art, like how it's a reflection of like moments of history or just moments of inequity. I thought that was very interesting how artists could use that as a language to communicate, to organize, to protest, to be expressive of what they don't like in society. So yeah, I loved art history and that was like perfect for me. Cause when I think about it, I was into dance and music, hiphop culture because it felt liberating. I designed and made my own prom dress because, you know, it gave me ownership. And those are like human right feelings. Savo: And speaking to that, about the ownership and the intentionality, your decision to do art history as a degree and as a major, was that a choice that you made? Was that a choice that you had made from Santa Monica to UC Riverside? Poellnitz: Mm-hmm Savo: OK- Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 2 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 Poellnitz: It was intentional. Yeah. So I, when I was at Santa Monica, it was cool. I had a lot of friends and they were like all into politics. I saw Amy Goodman when I went to Santa Monica College. And so I had a lot of friends who were into like, the political and social justice part of education. And I was like, I wanna do art history. <laughs> I like it. I like pictures, I like reading-- images, I love that. I love telling, retelling those stories or using it as a form of communication. But I was like, I think I wanna-- I remember telling myself in our junior college, I wanted to have a gallery space. It was intentional. And I applied to all the schools that had the double major art history and art administrative 'cause I wanted to learn the business side and the admin part. I didn't know what I was gonna do. I didn't know I was gonna get the gallery, but I was like, “Hey, if I wanna work in a gallery, I need to have these skills or just to better understand it.” ‘Cause I have to justify going to school for art history, not just to my family but to myself. Savo: And so you mentioned that you wanted this applicability, you know to translate the skills that you learned in your degree to, to real life and to getting a job. Poellnitz: Yeah to a job--. Savo: Could you tell me a little broadly about your experience with that community engagement and, and political activism and how that helped formulate what is now, you know, the Hill Street Country Club because it's a great gallery in Oceanside and you don't really think about Oceanside being, uh, very cultural. At least you know, the North County, South Bay, in terms of San Diego County in general. But how did that come about? Poellnitz: Um, well I finished school, lived in L.A. for quite a bit. Played assistant nanny manager, like these jobs separate from what I wanted to go to school for because I was living in L.A and I had to learn how to multitask. And I took on like a lot of assistant jobs and one day I was just like, I was working for lie celebrities and like producers and stuff and you know, I saw how things were operating behind the scene creatively for money. And then I also understood the realities of like creating for me and the possibilities. And so, you know, I always kept a job and one day I decided, like me, my husband, we split [up] and me and my little kid, we moved back to North County and I still had my L.A job. So, I was still commuting like three to four times a week from Vista to L.A for my job. Cause they paid me well. But I decided to start volunteering at the Oceanside Museum of Art and their education department, but they didn't have one yet. So, I ended up volunteering with the proprietors. I learned about installation at Oceanside Museum of Art and I was still, I still had my like feet in two different worlds. I was still in the L.A world, but also in my hometown world. I did work at Patricia Korea Gallery in Santa Monica, and that was a very eye-opening experience at the<inaudible>was in college. Just, she was like the only woman of color, like gallery owner. And she only represented brown artists at the time, which was very <inaudible> in Santa Monica. Well, but inequity in like the gallery world when I was in college with that job, I would apply to like the Getty and all types of museums when I lived in L.A. with my friends. But my friends would always get the job even though I had a better CV than them. You know you just accept it. And so I just went back to like doing assistant work and then I decided, I was like, you know what, like I'm gonna lean a little heavy. Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 3 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 Like now that I'm back in Vista, I'm gonna lean in a little bit more in North County and invest more of my time there. And so that's when I started volunteering at OMA [Oceanside Museum of Art]. Then I learned about the infrastructure of the museum world because, you know, I always wanted to work in a museum. I always thought museums were an amazing place to tell stories and educate. I never knew about the dark side of museums, you know, like how they get art and how they flip art and also like the politics of like hierarchy and institutions, you know, I learned-- I didn't know about that in school. No one ever talked about that in school. We only talked about art history. But once I started volunteering and then turned into a paid position at Oceanside Museum of Art, I learned about institutions really quickly, and I also learned not just about art institutions, but I also learned about like civic engagement and city planning because, I still had my, my foot in L.A so I was used to going to galleries and museums and seeing public art, having friends who got paid as full-time artists or had very creative jobs. I know what's possible. And so, you know, being back home, I just like, “okay, why don't we have public art again." And then I had to like learn beyond what school taught me through experiences. Like, oh, public art is political and it's not, political is a message, it's political because you have to politically know how to create a system so that there can be public arts, right? At the time OMA, no one knew Oceanside Museum of Art exists. You know, 12 years ago no one knew. I didn't even know. I like googled and like looked for art spaces and I somehow, and only because I was intentionally looking for art space in North County, close to home, I found it. But it wasn't like it was vibrant and it was attracting people like me and they should be attracting people like me for living in LA and loving art. I didn't know it exists out of Google art spaces in North County. And that's how Oceanside using a popped up. And I noticed that they didn't have an education department. They had Julia Fister who was volunteering for the education department that she created as a volunteer because she had a big grant with Target to make sure every fifth grader goes to the museum. But she didn't have a office space or studio room for education. It was like she just came and sat at a table and made it happen and fifth graders came. And me and my business partner, Margaret Hernandez, we just decided, you know, we were both in education and we did all the docent tours with the fifth graders and the, and the workshops with them. And we just like had a lot of community conversations with young people, people in middle school, so you learned about their like starting point to art, who in the, in the classroom who visit[ed] that day, who had more access to art than others. Who had materials, who been to museum. You know, you learn so much about the demographics and like, I'm sorry but the demographics were pretty like astounding when you see majority of the Brown/Black kids saying this is their first time. You know. Or you have students ask you if they could take home some of the like, crayons or pastels at home so they can keep drawing. You're just like, dang, kids don't have like crayons? Like how do you not have crayons? You know it-- Or kids asking like, or the one kid who's just like, who knows about art but like, how do artists even make money? Like kids would ask those questions all the time. How do artists even make money? Like what do art, what can artists do? You know? And those were conversations for me ’cause I was always intentional. I was just like artists designed your shirt, the artist probably designed like a machine that's in the hospital that you are using, artists design buildings. I'm like, art is involved in Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 4 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 literally your whole life. You just don't know it. And you probably could have more, but you just don't know it. Right? And so I just started asking questions about how do we get more murals? How do we get public art? How do we have art walk? And I learned that I had to like volunteer with like Main Street, like a commerce type of org, who had a relationship with the city to get extra funding for projects for the city. I had to learn about that dynamic. I learned about putting things on the docket. Like I learned how art was, wasn't just like creative, but it was also political and it was also like [it] required you to engage in the system to understand how to create public art opportunities. You know, it's just, we didn't, Oceanside didn't have an infrastructure for art. Like we've made a lot of improvement, but we didn't have an infrastructure, we had an arts commission, but it was it was in silo and they weren't funding anything and they were just meeting each other, talking about projects around town, you know? The museum wasn't engaged at the time. It was, it was treated more like a private gallery space than a public space. And it was, ‘cause you know, Oceanside Museum of Art is not owned by the city. It's owned by a group of retirees, you know, and there's a lot there. There's also the retirement culture that you have to deal with. Like when we started Hill Street, we were very engaged with our friends and our family and community members. And we worked with people who couldn't get a space or an exhibition. We worked with those artists and they brought their family and friends. Like, it was a gathering opportunity for people. It made sense. Savo: And how were you able to attract these different artists? Were these artists specifically located in Oceanside or were they spread out through across San Diego County? Poellnitz: No it started in Oceanside. It was our friends first. We grew like a concentric circle, if that makes any sense. It was, um, we fit Hill Street like artist, personal, communal, universal. And like this, if I think about how we grew as a concentric circle, it was very personal for me, Marj, to begin Hill Street Country Club because the museum was rejecting all our ideas and they were not being cool or like easily invested in education. They made it very hard for Oceanside Museum of Art to create an education department at the time. And so in support of an education department, because we, you know, we did those docents and we listened to young people. So I'm like, “you need an education department. It's necessary.” We supported Julia and her vision to make an education department for the museum. And we tried to throw our first fundraiser for that vision of hers. And the museum would say no to us. Like, we're like, “Hey, can we do a fundraiser for the education department?" And they're like, no. And then we're asked like, “Can we borrow some chairs and tables for a fundraiser?” “Uh, not right now. No.” And basically like we knew we need an education department like, Oceanside, if you're gonna have Oceanside Museum of Art and you're taking up the city's name and you're having fifth graders come in and you're getting grant money, you need to have an education department, right? And that's just common sense to us. And so we told all our friends the idea of having a fundraiser for the Oceanside Museum of Arts Education Department to support Julia. Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 5 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 And one day I was like driving home to dinner to meet Margaret and I saw that the Link-Soul building light was on and they were having a gallery show. And I walked in there and I was just like, this is the art space? And Jeff, who is the co-owner of Link-Soul was just like, yeah. And I was like, this is interesting. I was just so shocked to see a gallery that had a show. And the next day I went over there and met Jeff, someone got him, and I introduced myself and I pitched our fundraiser idea. He, like, he said yes to me, to like using this space for free. And so that was our first event that we organized, and it was called “Open to the Public” and it was about, you know, the need for art education. It was a fundraiser for OMA. And so, we just asked all our friends who were artists in North County and then like people who I went to school with, ‘cause I was taking classes at Miracosta for fun, for art and asking teachers to support it. We had a big turnout, and we were able to donate to the education department and purchase art materials and bags for every fifth grader of Oceanside for that year that visited the museum on that program. So that was like the first time where we were just like, wait, this was successful. People are thirsty. Like it's not just us who want [to] have more like community opportunities, you know, with art. So like I said, it's like we grew a concentric circle because we started off very, it was very personal for us to do that. And then once we had our first event, we understood the like community purpose. Like, oh this is not just us, this is a community issue too. We want, we want more opportunities to do stuff like this and we don't have it. It was like, “I want more of this. Like how do we, how do we keep doing this?” And so me, Margaret, just because we couldn't afford our own space and I still working back and forth in L.A, we just did pop-up art shows for like two solid years all over Oceanside. And then we went to community art events or like art events in San Diego because they had more of a presence of art for us back then, ‘cause we weren't really doing much as a city. So, we would go to events and openings in San Diego all the time. I don't know, it was this became very like, personal and communal. And then most of our artists are like working class, queer, young, old, um, more vulnerable, you know, and to like, to all kinds of things. And so, like most of them never had an opportunity to have an exhibition. They like paint it for themselves or put their art in a store, but no one's ever invited them to do an exhibition. And we would just invite artists for exhibition. But it was a curated experience, you know, and a lot of it was just, we choose artists that, that we shared messages with. I don't know, it just became a very organic growth. Savo: This is excellent to learn about. ‘Cause I didn't know that there's so much underneath, in terms of the layering, in terms of structuring, in terms of networking that's involved. Could you just clarify briefly who exactly Jeff and Julia are in relation to the Hill Street Country Club? Poellnitz: So Julia Fister at the time was the education director at the Oceanside Museum of Art. And she was one of my- me and Margaret's mentor. She now owns Studio Ace in Oceanside where it's focused on youth and like art education, which is really cool cause she's in the valley. Very much needed over there. And then Jeff, Jeff Cunningham is a artist but is the creative director for Link -Soul, which is a golf apparel company. Their design team is based in downtown San Diego. And we share, we co-op a space with them. That's where we have our gallery. And Jeff Cunningham is a phenomenal artist. Like I Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 6 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 curated him for a show for Oceanside Museum of Art. And our friendship, just like it grew from like me being a curator and an artist and him being an artist and us really like exchanging ideas about social impact and how do we create an art space that's different, that's more authentic and doesn't have all these pressures to over-perform, be productive. And so like, it's natural. It's interesting ‘cause he said yes to us having our first art show at his space and then he ended up giving us this space for Hill Street. Savo: That's awesome. And since Hill Street has been open and been around in the community, how has the gallery become that space where it's not just the ideas or expressions that are being presented, but how has that space become a platform really, sorry... How has that space become a platform for activism? Because, you know, you noted in a 2020 interview with KPBS that art is a functioning tool that should transition off the canvas. Poellnitz: Hmm-hmm. Savo: How has Hill Street Country Club played in that part? Poellnitz: You know, it's so funny cause every time I get asked like, “oh are you an artist too?” Like,” yeah, I'm an artist, I make work, but I don't make it anymore.” I was like, I make, I build art, you know, I can build stuff. But right now, my art is Hill Street Country Club, and you know, it's, it goes back to college and me like learning about all like the social impact and inequities in the world through art history. It goes back to that. And it goes back to like, you know, artists are some of the most vulnerable people because first of all, you're not respected with pay whatsoever, ’cause you have to remember like, I knew I had to get paid to do this or I shouldn’t be doing it. I should be like a teacher or an engineer or a therapist. Like, you went to school for art and people need to get paid for that. So we live, we live in North County where there's, we were spending like 10 cents per residence on art funding while like San Diego at the time was spending ten dollars. So, and then also trying to convince older peers in the art community that they had to pay for admin stuff that we organized. And then thinking that everyone had time to volunteer because at the end of the day, we had a large retirement class that was in charge of the art community in Oceanside and Vista. You know, they didn't see the value of paying younger people to help them with the arts, you know, there's uh cultural differences. And that being said, you know, to get paid is not just like, to get paid is the equity issue, right? And then not only to get, you know, to get paid is the equity issue. And if you're like Black and people don't even take you that, if you look at the museum stats and gallery stats for like, artists and like people who make it, you already know. You're like, you're dealing with so many microaggressions, you're dealing with some unresolved supremacy issues. Like I always tell folks like, hey, check this out. Like, um, it's okay if you're racist, I get it. You're not me. You don't have these experiences and you have to unlearn and I'm gonna give you grace to unlearn, but I'm always gonna speak up for what I-- what you Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 7 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 did. And I'm gonna not call you out, but I'm just gonna call you in and say like, “hey you know what you did was kind of racist could you not do that?” And I learned that was always like a threat to people when I was honest and like gave them grace at the same time. And I learned in the art community that they're not ready for those conversations at all. Or like, just to like unlearn and do better. So, but because I have ownership of my space and I don't work for anyone and I don't have a board that disagrees with my politics, I have a lot more autonomy than a lot of my artist friends or my art admins who work in museums and high-end gallery spaces. And so I get to embrace artists that are political, who are in the streets, who are organizing, who are building different collectives or opportunities for relief or whatever they believe in. I have a beautiful space. I also share my autonomy with them and I support their work. And because I believe in equity too. Cause I'm trying to get paid, I'm dealing with microaggressions. This is personal. Like what, what affects you is affecting me. And also, I'm like, I just don't like people being in pain. I'm an empathetic person. I, I don't know, I'm pretty radical politically, so I have to-- if I have my own autonomy, I'm gonna use it. I'm not gonna shy away from that. And the artists that I admire were doing that. It went that I was learning art history. They were telling a story, they was telling us how wrong this was and that was. Like, they're pointing out problems and they're doing it in the nuances of art. And I think it's very important for artists to tell those stories so people can gather and discuss and find solutions or to just build creative- what is it critical mass? No, I think it's critical mass is like valuable, once you learn it's not just yourself. It's like a Power in Numbers game. Savo: Would you say that speaking to it's a power in numbers game, do you think that that has changed your perspective on the, the personal communal and universal experience that Hill Street Country Club offers? Because obviously since it's opened, now since the pandemic 2020, do you think that it's become a situation where art more than ever needs to be more expressionist or more, um, as you say, it has to be more, you know--? Poellnitz: Yeah,- Savo: It has to be more- Poellnitz: It should be. It should be. You know I was just talking to my colleague Astrid Gonzalez, she is one of the Hill Street colleagues. She does all our audio-visual stuff. And she was reflecting the other day and she was like, “we really never stopped working during the pandemic.” I was like, we didn't, we couldn't afford to. We're vulnerable. We don't have board members with money. We don’t have-- like the reason why we can do all that we do is because we have people aligned with our principals who agree with us and who are not scared support what we're doing. But at the same time, to get paid in this art world, you gotta have some like, dirty person on your board. That's just reality. Like, you gotta think Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 8 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 money. And it's, that's just how it works. It's an institution. Like every institution in America has flaws, right? And during the pandemic, we stayed open. We were very creative of finding creative ways to stay open and accessible to our audience and to our artists. Cause a lot of my artists during the pandemic were dealing with poverty, food, needed food, like, mental health. The pandemic was messing people up in the first like two years. And a lot of my artists were affected by that. I worked with a lot of Brown and Queer and old artists, you know, and in this economy, they were suffering. And so, I had to figure out how to be a safe space and use my space for opportunities for people to get access to food or help folks get access to mental health services or even a distraction like coming, making art. I had to stay open for two and a half years during the pandemic, while a lot of big museums were closing and doing bare minimum because they didn't wanna get Covid. So, I don't know, my space has always evolved and adapt, because it has to. Savo: Speaking to- Poellnitz: Right now—Go ahead- Savo: Oh no, go ahead. Poellnitz: I forgot what I was going to say, go ahead. Savo: Speaking to the space having evolved, you mentioned that Hill Street became a space that allowed for those economic hardships of the pandemic, to kind of be alleviated for your artists. Could you speak about the political upheaval? Because we all lived through 2020 and we all know how painful it was during April, May, April through June of 2020. How did that come about? How was Hill Street a space for comfort, a space for expression? Poellnitz: Yeah, that was interesting. Cause like I'm the only like Black gallery owner in San Diego. And I've been doing this for so long that I, I belong to extended part of the San Diego art community that a lot of folks don't see in North County. Like I know a lot of people in museums and galleries and stuff like that. And I know a lot of people in City government and Federal government. And so, you know, during that time it was just like, this is when you make art. This is when you talk about these issues and you use art as a language and as a tool to have these community conversations. But also, this was also opportunity for us to do mutual aid. We went into care mode, like how do we care more about people? Like how do we care back? Like how do we take care of each other? Because during that time we know who's not taking care of us, we know who doesn't protect us. And it was more like being available to protect and provide care. Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 9 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 I kind of miss those days. Those were the days where we were talking about liberation and how to use resources to create safe, safer communities. We were talking about solutions for the first time out loud as a public. We were sharing empathy with each other. I thought it was a beautiful opportunity for us to build something new. But it was also beautiful to see that we could be in solidarity. I had people who knew me in the business community of Oceanside, but never went to our events. Always knew what I was doing if I went into their store or their restaurant or coffee shop or whatever. And that was the first time a lot of those folks came out and donated to us. <laughs> You know, like checked on us. And I was like, “Wow, this is the first-time people cared about what we are doing over here. Like, this is interesting.” And I think there was a fear for a lot of folks like “I hope this isn't discourage her.” Or maybe I'm just thinking that in my head, I don't know. But I did see a lot of people come out the woodworks who started supporting us. And it gave us funding to create more programming and we kept going. So, I don't know. I was just adapting. I think that's what you do when you're in survival mode all the time. Savo: And since the pandemic, obviously the adapting to the circumstance and situation, have there been any local projects or exhibits that you've, partaken in or helped organize that reflect those changing structures or those change in activism? Cause you mentioned a lot about talking about solutions and you mentioned how there's this real need for concern for one another, this care for one another. Has there been any of these projects that reflect that? Poellnitz: Yeah so we got really involved during the pandemic. We created like a mental health like group therapy program for young middle school kids, “The Social,” and it was just like, we had a license. We have a licensed therapist, one of our artists, and it's like a group therapy through art, but also peer on peer because a lot of young folks were isolated from each other during the pandemic. And they're still coping with, you know the environment they had to live in, to stay away from everyone and not getting us sick to die. That's kind of traumatic. And then we're asking them to like, go back to normal real quick so we can jumpstart our economy. So we created a program, “The Social,” with the therapist for young people. And now we're gonna be part of the Oceanside Unified School District programming for summer, fall, and winter, I mean summer, fall and spring now. So we're now like, we created a program that's gonna be in the school system that provides mental healthcare for young people who need it the most. And then we just recently had an exhibition with <inaudible> Roca Gonzalez, who lives in Oceanside, who's from Puerto Rico. And they're working about all these social issues and we're coming together and recognizing we are a product of gentrification and colonialism. We live through it every single day. Like we have all this architectural vernacular that reminds us that we're all living through this. It's not just Puerto Rico, you know, it's everywhere. We're all surviving. I've been able to sit on a lot of committees and boards and be part of more equitable decision making for artists that I'm excited about that's gonna be coming out soon with the city of San Diego, helping a lot of like artists get access to money. That was like one thing that I did during the pandemic, was I did sign up on committees and boards because I'm just like, “You guys are making this process way Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 10 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 too difficult for people who have to work full-time jobs and take care of family.” Not everyone's out here just being an artist on retirement mode and can fill out all these questions and type all these like, letters of intent. You gotta make this more equitable-like process for like poor people with very limited time, you know? So it was part of a San Diego artist project that raised like $150K for artists in San Diego. And we made the process so easy that a lot more like trans and BIPOC artists actually applied and received funding to be a artist over the pandemic. That was amazing. I mean once I decided I was committed to equity and inclusion for myself, everything I do affects everyone. As a Black woman, it just does naturally, like we're-- The stats prove it. If you improve my life or if you improve my life in your surrounding, you benefit from it. Like literally, like if Dinah says she wants more vacation days, I work too much and because I, and I don't normally give vacation day. Oh my God, imagine if you give it to me, you're gonna have to give it to my coworker. Not everything I want, everything I need because equity benefits everyone. So I understand a lot of my personal experience or communal experiences and has universal like means that needs <inaudible>. Savo: And I was just curious, because we were speaking about these different programs and different committees that were happening during the pandemic. Before we jump back to the equity portion that I'm really fascinated to know more about, how were these committees and how were these programs organized? Were they all organized remotely? Were these children or these group therapy sessions that you mentioned, where were they held remotely or was there a creative space for that? Poellnitz: We did it at the gallery space every Saturday. Every Saturday. And our therapist had a baby. So, they're coming, they're gonna go back in the summer. They're gonna start back in the summer and we're gonna be at Jefferson Middle School. Last year we had a four-week social camp with them, with community artists and the therapists as a camp. And it was four weeks of campers and we had four cohorts of students and we're returning to that program in the summer. And we'll be returning with like regular art programming with Oceanside Unified School District on top of providing the Saturday space for the students again for group therapy. Savo: And I'm also curious to know like what kind of activities were these students engaged in when it came to the group therapy sessions? Because obviously this is a period where, it's a lot of, where social distancing was a very key thing and masking was also very important. How are these exercises or how are these sessions organized? What were these specific activities? Poellnitz: Well, it's so interesting ‘cause we kept over going through the whole pandemic. We, Hill Street changed its whole operation system to be more appointment-based. And we created capacities. We were very highly sensitive about Covid, like people had to wear masks all the time. We provided, Dr. Bronner’s used to donate tons of like hand sanitizer. Like we used to give like little packets out to people who came visit the gallery space. If anyone wanted to see an exhibit, they make an appointment. They would have the space to themselves for 20 minutes to visit the exhibit. And we wouldn't be in the space with them. We'll be like upstairs above where, you know, the distance, like it basically were by themselves. And then with “The Social,” “The Social” was like every Saturday. We had a capacity, I believe of like eight students at a time. And so, we have the space for people to spread out. And then Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 11 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 everyone had materials. I mean, it was really easy to manage. I think when people care for each other and they care that they have a safe space, people make sure they don't show up sick. People made sure to wash their hands. People made sure to keep their masks on. We did have a lot of workshops on Zoom. We had a lot of artist’s talks on Zoom. We had like – what is it called? We had AR [augmented reality] gallery exhibitions. So if you couldn't see the work in person, we recreate gallery space online, and people can navigate and look at art online as if it was in a gallery space. Savo: That’s really interesting-- Poellnitz: Yeah, we did a mobile art workshop. We got a grant right before the pandemic hit and we were supposed to have all this programming in every community center in Oceanside, but it was Covid and so we had to adapt, and 'cause they already gave us the money for it. So, we created a mobile art kit and like a lunch bag and it was like all the materials to like the perfect measurement and quantity that you needed for that project. We had our exhibition artists create a project and give us a list of materials for that project. And we used to do like a whole visual, like YouTube recording of how to create the piece. And then we did like a live Zoom and Instagram workshop, but anyone with a library card was getting mailed a mobile art workshop kit from us. Yeah so, we did a lot of organizing through the pandemic to stay open. It wasn't just simply being open, like we had to reorganize like our operations. We created an appointment system, we created more QR codes for people instead of like, there was no reason for anyone to touch anything in this space. People were able to pull out their phones and QR code and read like the show statement. And then we had Zoom workshops and people will get their MOD kits and you know, we did a lot of cool things on Zoom. It was fun. I don't know, you just learn how to care for people! Savo: What do you think was the— <Poellnitz and Savo talking over each other> I’m sorry. Poellnitz: Go ahead, no you go ahead. Savo: What do you think was the reception towards all these different restructuring and different outreach? Were people positive? Poellnitz: People were positive. People were very positive. And not only just positive, but our audience grew. We were more accessible to people outside of Oceanside. Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 12 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 Savo: Do you think that broadened the scope of Hill Street? Do you think it helped? Do you think it helps sort of bring a lot of those ideas and those concepts from the North County down to the South Bay? Poellnitz: Oh for sure. When I moved to Normal Heights a year and a half ago and people were like, “oh, you're here now. I'm like, yes.” And then just we love everything that you're, like, people from the arts commission knows what we're doing. Like I see a lot of gallery spaces and museums who are working with artists I worked with now. Worked with like five years ago, two years ago. I see the influence of our work on visuals. I see a lot of art spaces in San Diego, like institutions with bigger budgets, now creating visuals about their space. And I know we influenced people over the pandemic. They tell me and sometimes their programs look like it. It's wild. And it's like, wow. We did a lot over the pandemic while they sat still and they just watched us. Jeff always tell me, he's like, “you can't be mad if people are copying. Isn't that what you want?” I was like, “Oh yeah, that's how that works, huh?” Like, you influence people and they do the things you want them to do. Like have more like Queer folks or Black people or do more of this type of art. Like, oh they are listening, that is an impact. I didn't think about it like that. And he's like, “Yeah you just keep doing what you're doing. If they wanna do what you're doing in, see how far you can teach them, see how far they're willing to go.” And you know, that's, that's been like the best advice I've ever had doing this work. Because it's true. When you have autonomy and you could do whatever you want or say whatever you want, or stand by what you believe in, you have a bigger impact than the person who's quiet and not doing anything ‘cause they're scared. Savo: And speaking to that, that wanting to take initiative and be expressive. How does that coincide with some of the challenges that you were mentioning earlier about equity and inclusion? How do those two sort of intertwine with one another? Poellnitz: Dude, it's because it hurts. Because a lot of like organizations, a lot of people who do fund the arts are scared. They just scared of change. People are scared of change. And so there's always gonna be resistance. There's always gonna be the folks with resources who can like, jump like pounce on your idea. And because they have money, they can do it sooner and faster and get more visibility. That's gonna happen. It is exhausting. It wears you down, it discourages. Makes it harder for you to get access to grants or, or donors. But then at the same time, I've just been thinking about this a lot lately. Cause you know, Hill Street, we're at a point where I'm kind of exhausted, but at the same time I know why I'm exhausted and I gotta do things differently and I have to be a little bit more strategic now, like where I wanna go because I notice that a lot of people are watching us. And then people have a lot of expectations for us. And there's also a lot of opportunities for us in the position that we're in because of the work that we've done over the last ten years, you know? And especially the work that got highlighted during the George Floyd protest era. So, like I'm hyper aware and I'm being a little bit more wise about who I partner with. I'm being a little bit more wise on how often I say no because I was a person that never said no before. And Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 13 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 because I never said no, I got burnt out and not paid a lot. And I'm learning that me as a Black woman, my rest is very important, but it's also important that I have equity so I can get paid to do this work. So, I've just been thinking about how to slow down and sometimes less is more like I don't have to be over the place. I just need to be effective where I have intentions. So, it's like pulling back to that personal space has been going on with us lately. Like this being more local, bringing it all in, focusing on what we're strong at, getting into contract with the Oceanside Unified School District. Like that's a healthy source of funding for us. Instead of chasing donors who don't share our principles, I think artists and art organizers need to ask themselves like “Why are you here? What vision do you have? What community you belong to? What are your principles?” I think those are questions that anyone in the arts needs to ask themselves. Just be honest with yourself and if you could be honest with yourself, you should always know the choices that you're making. For me, I realize I wanna be my own institution and there's gonna be some hardship ‘cause I won't be conforming to a lot of institutional like practices. I will be creating new practices. I'm highly aware of the up and down of this art world for me. For me. And I'm honest with myself. So it's easier for me to commit, but because I'm honest with myself, I create ways that can sustain me. Like, I do more like art consulting jobs. I collaborate more with non-art, institutional spaces, you know? I work a lot more with community members who are in the political scene. So I understand like the fluidity of art. And if you're heavily relying on the same funders that fund the problem, yeah I would have concerns for the equity. But if you are creative and you know your worth and you are honest with yourself about why you're here, you always can find a solution. And because that's what's worked for me. Savo: And speaking to equity and how Hill Street has evolved over the past ten years, what do you think are some of the things that you personally wanna see for the Hill Street Club? You mentioned that you prefer more local engagement. You prefer being with individuals that are more like-minded in terms of art expression, in terms of inclusion. What are some of the hopes that you have for Hill Street moving forward? Poellnitz: I would love to have a community school. I want a community school. I worked for a nonprofit in City Heights and we worked with community schools that worked with juvies. They call them JCCS like Juvenile and Correction Community Schools. And they're like directly tied to the unified school district and the court system. At one point when I was heavily involved in politics, I was working with a former city council member in hopes of becoming like a divergent program for youth in the arts. So like, if a kid got arrested for the first time, instead of like putting them on probation and sending them to jail, you send them to like a diversion program. And the city of Carlsbad Police Department is the only police department in San Diego County that has an actual diversion program for youth. And so, you know, you get to be an organization as a choice for, for young folks and teach 'em all the skills, like how to create programming, how to run programming, how to make art. It's like a six-month commitment. I wanna do something more like that. I wanna have a community school. I wanna teach art the way that I experience art, the way that artists experiencing art. I wanna create a new institutional space for art Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 14 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 practice. I don't know, I just really wanna grow as a bigger institution, as a choice, as an alternative choice to other places. Savo: And obviously you've given a lot of thought to the idea of this community school and obviously diversion programs as well, such as Carlsbad's. Do you see potentially a branching out of Hill Street? Moving forward within not just North County, but also San Diego County as a whole? Do you see elements of what you've been able to create and to adapt with? Do you see any of that being replicated any elsewhere in the County? Poellnitz: Um, not yet, but we partner with a lot of folks in San Diego so we are very unique because we have to adapt. One thing you learn about our institutions, old ones, they can't adapt. So, when they can't adapt, they move slow. They struggle with adapting. And one thing about us, because we don't, we don't follow institutional like, uh wisdom. A lot of us are taking in diverse knowledge from each other, practicing being inclusive. And once you do that as an action, you can make decisions a lot sooner than later. And so we've been doing a lot of like partnerships and pop-ups with a lot of orgs in San Diego. I just want a community school. I want a community school. I want studio spaces for artists. I would like to have a choice for young people to learn about art and not just learn about art but have creative access to like a space where they can learn about the world and express themselves. Like I would like to have a community school. I have no aspirations to be all over San Diego County. That sounds like a lot of work. <laughs> Savo: Oh, absolutely <laughs> Poellnitz: And I worked with a lot of people in San Diego County. I love you San Diego, but North County is so special. Like us North County people, we are so innovative 'cause we've had so little. And when we learn something new, we master it because we don't have all the museums in galleries and big budgets that San Diego has or L.A has. So we are very mom and pop and DIY in North County and we support each other. And so, I don't know, that's the civic identity for me. You know, that's part of my civic identity. Savo: And speaking to this, sort of bring it all back in identity, the personal, the communal, the universal that Hill Street represents. Do you think that a community school would be a perfect foster for that? And I'm just curious about the age groups. Something I'm actually quite interested about, would this be open to not just middle schools, the middle school age range that Oceanside education part has worked with, but would you extend that? Would you put a limited K through 12 per example? Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 15 2023-04-24 �DINAH POELLNITZ Transcript, Interview 2023/04/05 Poellnitz: I don't know. I don’t know. That’s a lot of years. <laughs> Savo: It's a lot of funding. Poellnitz: It's a lot of funding. I know that the folk at Link-Soul, they run the Goat Hill Golf course in Oceanside and it's already been promised to us that we will build some type of like, institution space for a community school one day. So, we're all dreaming like what we wanted to have. Savo: That's awesome. And just before we wrap up our interview here today, was there anything that we had previously discussed or discussed throughout the interview that you wanted a little bit more emphasis on or anything that you wanted to touch base with before we end today? Poellnitz: I don't think so. You're fine. Savo: Awesome. Again, thank you so much for this interview. It was really informative, and I think it's great to learn about how art has really grown in North County. Because I'm from the South Bay, so I wouldn't know too much. But I think this was a great experience and I thank you a lot for that. Poellnitz: Oh, thank you, I appreciate that. Transcribed by Riccardo V. Savo 16 2023-04-24 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcripts Description An account of the resource Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Poellnitz, Dinah. Interview transcript. April 5, 2023. Description An account of the resource Transcript of oral History Interview of Dinah Poellnitz on April 5, 2023. Interview discusses Dinah Poellnitz’s community engagement within the city of Oceanside through art. In particular, the interview focuses on Poellnitz's involvement in the founding of the Hill Street Country Club art gallery in Oceanside, CA. Poellnitz discusses how to navigate through the art community as a Black woman, emphasizing the importance of equity and inclusion. Poellnitz also discusses operating her gallery during the pandemic, and future aspirations. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dinah Poellnitz Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Riccardo Savo Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-04-05 Subject The topic of the resource Art -- Study and teaching Art galleries -- nonprofit Artists, Black Community Engagement COVID-19 (Disease) and the arts COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020- Hill Street Country Club -- California -- Oceanside Women artists Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Los Angeles (Calif.) Oceanside (Calif.) San Diego (Calif.) Vista (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Dinah Poellnitz License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives@csusm.edu if you need reproductions made. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. Persons wishing to quote, publish, perform, reproduce, or otherwise make use of an item in the Library’s collections must assume all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of the copyright holder. The researcher assumes full responsibility for use of the material and agrees to hold harmless the University Library, and California State University, against all claims, demands, costs, and expenses incurred by copyright infringement or any other legal or regulatory cause of action arising from the use of the Library's materials. In assuming full responsibility for use of the material, the researcher also understands that the materials they examine may contain Social Security numbers, other personal identifiers, and/or sensitive material on potentially living and identifiable individuals (e.g., medical, evaluative, or personally invasive information). The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-025 Activists and activism Art and artists Black experience Community history History Department internship Women's experience Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Riccardo Savo Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dinah Poellnitz OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PoellnitzDinah_SavoRiccardo_2023-04-05.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 5.4 SC027 Poellnitz, Dinah. Interview April 5, 2023. SC027-025 1:06:11 SC027 California State University San Marcos Library Special Collections Oral History Collection CSUSM This oral history was made possible with the generous funding of the Ellie Johns Scholarship Fund at Rancho Santa Fe Foundation and the Library Guild of Rancho Santa Fe. Art -- Study and teaching Art galleries -- nonprofit Artists, Black Community Engagement Hill Street Country Club -- California -- Oceanside Los Angeles (Calif.) Oceanside (Calif.) Vista (Calif.) Dinah Poellnitz Riccardo Savo Audio PoellnitzDinah_SavoRiccardo_2023-04-05 1:|12(18)|22(4)|33(2)|44(5)|57(13)|67(4)|77(15)|88(4)|102(14)|114(6)|130(6)|140(4)|150(11)|161(15)|173(4)|183(11)|196(7)|209(3)|220(15)|233(1)|245(3)|255(12)|265(16)|277(11)|287(10)|298(7)|310(4)|320(3)|333(12)|343(18)|354(1)|366(9)|376(1)|386(1)|397(2)|407(17)|424(2)|432(13)|442(5)|454(1)|463(7)|474(1)|485(3)|497(13)|508(2)|518(4)|531(5)|542(11)|553(12)|567(11)|578(4)|595(10)|605(12)|616(9)|627(5)|638(15)|648(10)|660(4)|668(10)|680(5)|690(5)|701(13)|710(8)|722(3)|736(6)|750(8) 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/4344d88bc2e671e3ad4b1f4ea85cfba8.wav Other audio English 40 Interest in Art and How Art Relates to Community Engagement Poellnitz discusses how she initially was exposed to art at the age of 11, where she began to take up drawing through a family friend. drafting material ; drawing ; North County ; Oceanside 216 High School and the 1990s Dinah Poellnitz describes how her interest in art coincided with the development and mainstreaming of hip-hip during the 1990s. She mentions how she was drawn to the expressionist element that art represented. dance ; hip-hop ; Oceanside,CA ; Vista,CA 246 Self-Engagement with Art Dinah Poellnitz elaborates on how her interest in fashion and making her own dresses instilled her creativity in making art with intention. She mentions her time at Santa Monica College where she got to see firsthand how art could be used as a language to communicate, organize, and protest. art intentionality ; fashion ; Santa Monica College ; Soul Train 508 Art History and University of California, Riverside Dinah Poellnitz discusses how her networking in college at both Santa Monica College and UC Riverside helped to expose her to the business part of art. Poellnitz decided to double major in art history and art administration to learn what it means to operate a studio gallery and exhibit. Amy Goodman ; Intentionality ; Politics ; Santa Monica College 606 Getting a Job in the Art Industry Dinah Poellnitz discusses more broadly how she transitioned from her initial job positions in Los Angeles, CA to San Diego's North County. Beginning with the Oceanside Museum of Art, Poellnitz's experience in volunteering with youth led to learning about civic engagement and city planning. Primarily, she focuses on the challenges and inequities that she observed amongst Black children who had no prior engagement with art materials and what it means to be an artist. Hill Street Country Club ; inequity ; Los Angeles ; North County ; Oceanside Museum of Art ; Vista, CA 1196 Artist Networking in San Diego and Oceanside Dinah Poellnitz mentions how her idea to create the Hill Street Country Club came from the contacts that she developed with other local artists in Oceanside. In particular, she recalls an instance she met the owner of the Link-Soul art space, Jeff Cunningham, who provided her with the opportunity to create a space of her own. Art Exhibitions ; Link-Soul ; Oceanside Education Department ; Oceanside Museum of Art 1546 The Networking and Structuring of the Hill Street Country Club Dinah Poellnitz elaborate on the two primary contacts that assisted in her founding of the Hill Street County Club. Jeff Cunningham ; Julia Fister ; Studio Ace Art Gallery 1652 Hill Street Country Club Art Exhibit and Activism Dinah Poellnitz discusses the challenges in funding that came in comparison to other local exhibits in the North County. Specifically, Poellnitz elaborates on how the Hill Street Country Club's artists all share similar outlooks on the art industry and how their work is a critique of social inequities. autonomy ; inequity ; microaggression ; social impact 2017 Hill Street Country Club and the Pandemic Dinah Poellnitz provides insight to how Hill Street Country Club had to adapt to the changes brought on by the 2020 pandemic and remain open despite other exhibits closing their doors. 2020 pandemic ; mental health 2222 The Economic Hardships of the Pandemic within the Art Community Dinah Poellnitz offers an insight on the effects that the traumatic events of police brutality had on those within the Black art community. Poellnitz reflects on the general mood and tone of the Oceanside community during the initial months of the pandemic. community conversations ; empathy ; liberation ; resources ; solidarity 2448 Changes in both Activism and Structure Dinah Poellnitz briefly mentions how Hill Street had to evolve over the course of the pandemic, providing the creative space to assist in the mental health crisis that developed over the course of 2020. group therapy ; Oceanside Unified School District ; The Social 2724 Oceanside Unified School District and Group Therapy for Middle School Children Dinah Poellnitz goes into detail discussing how Hill Street offered children from Jefferson Middle School group therapy sessions to handle with the stress from the pandemic. She elaborates on the lengths that Hill Street had to change to adhere to COVID protocols with social distancing and interaction. cohorts ; COVID-19 ; Jefferson Middle School ; social camp 3065 The Community Reception to Hill Street's Restructuring and Outreach Dinah Poellnitz describes how Hill Street became a model of inspiration during the pandemic for other exhibits to follow. She offers the reception that Hill Street received from the local community for their initiatives with the Oceanside Unified School District. budget ; gallery space ; impact ; influence 3512 The Future of the Hill Street County Club Dinah Poellnitz provides the vision that she hopes for the Hill Street Country Club, primarily the creation of a Community School. While much of this vision has not been enacted, Poellnitz offers some of the challenges that would come in the face of creating a K-12 community school. bigger institution ; community school ; organizations ; partnerships wav Oral History Interview of Dinah Poellnitz on April 5, 2023. Video briefly discusses Dinah Poellnitz’s community engagement within the city of Oceanside through art. In particular, the interview focuses on Poellnitz's involvement in the founding of the Hill Street Country Club art gallery in Oceanside, CA. Poellnitz discusses how to navigate through the art community as a Black woman, emphasizing the importance of equity and inclusion. Riccardo Savo: Awesome. Alright, so today is April 5th, 2023. I am Riccardo Savo, a graduate student at California State University of San Marcos. I&#039 ; m interviewing Dinah Poellnitz for the University Library Special Collections Oral Project. Thank you so much for being here with me today. Unfortunately, you&#039 ; re not able to have the video, so we&#039 ; ll just rely on audio today, which is perfectly fine. And I would like to begin quite broadly if we can, if you could tell me how you became interested in art and how you initially related it to the community or to community engagement. Dinah Poellnitz: Um, then that&#039 ; s like a childhood memory question for me. I&#039 ; m from North County. My dad came to Oceanside Camp Pendleton in the seventies. I was born in [19]76. I think my dad came out here in [19]78 and we lived on base and if you know anything about North County during that time, it was like, you go to church, you watch sports... and that was it, you know? And my mom&#039 ; s from the South. She&#039 ; s from Louisiana and you know, my mom&#039 ; s about church and we used to go to church all the time. And my mom had a friend named Carla. She was like a wacky woman too. She was just elusive, like all over the place. She used to be an architect and she saw that I loved to draw. And so one day she just gave me her drafting table and I was, I could, I think I was like in -- 11 years-old -- and she brought all her materials and stuff to my house and I was just like, whaaaat? It was like a whole new world. I was just like, wait... there&#039 ; s a table made just for drawing? That happens? You know, it was like one of those moments. And I used to dr-- I wanted to be a costume designer, so I used to draw dresses and fashion all the time on that table. And I had a whole setup. But I just remember just being this little kid who had my own little like, workspace and, and it was just for me to draw. And I was like, wow, there&#039 ; s a, there&#039 ; s... you could do this. Like, this is not a like day, you know, day drawing at home. This like, you could really do this as a, like, as an adult. So yeah, I was maybe like 11 and it was Carla from Fresh Bread Church. &lt ; laughter&gt ; Savo: That&#039 ; s awesome. So, you began this at age 11 and did you carry this through to your high school? Because I know you attended UC [University of California] Riverside and earned your Bachelor&#039 ; s in art history. Poellnitz: Yeah, I did. You know, like I was a kid that always made my own. Like I made my own. I designed dresses. I made my own prom dress. I sewed it, I wore it. I was heavily into -- It was the nineties in high school. And so, my parents, my dad retired, and then we moved outta Oceanside and moved to Vista for my high school years. And... it was hip-hop era, so I was like into dance and music. So that was all part of art and expression. But I remember wanting to be in the art clubs and I was just like, I can&#039 ; t if that, if art club&#039 ; s about realism and like drawing like things perfectly, I don&#039 ; t have time for that. That&#039 ; s real. I was just like, I don&#039 ; t even, I&#039 ; m not even curious to learn that. I don&#039 ; t wanna do that. Cause that&#039 ; s what art club was defined as in high school for me. Savo: So would you say that your engagement was more self-disciplined? It was more geared towards how you wanted to engage with it, or more or less, how you could find avenues to apply it? Poellnitz: Um, it was more intentional for me. You know, I like fashion, so I drew. I drew dresses and I designed a dress and I sewed a dress and I wore it. It was just, it was all intentional. It was like just being, it was an action, it was a language for me. It was... it was a skill, you know, I just thought very creatively all the time. Even when I was learning economics, I was thinking about it creatively so it can make sense for me. I think they say that artists are like divergent thinkers, you know? We always find or create and build and make an alternative solution to solve a problem in art. So that&#039 ; s kind of like that, that&#039 ; s a habit. Um, yeah, &#039 ; cause in, in high school, I used to go dancing. I used to go to like, this is corny as hell: I used to skip school and go to the Soul Train and dance in Soul Train in High School. I was just expressive. It was a very creative, like moment as a kid for me being in high school in the nineties, like hip hop was like jazzy like baggy and like there was more Black designers like Dubbo jeans and FUBU and all that stuff came out. So it was kinda like a Renaissance era, even though I lived in, in a little North County and, you know, Blacks were a smaller percent of the community. There&#039 ; s like, that culture was just present when I was in high school. So me not wanting-- Me not wanting to join like the art club for high school and draw something perfectly was just like, eh, I can have fun. That feels like studying for economics. I don&#039 ; t wanna do that right now. I wanna enjoy creativity right now. I don&#039 ; t wanna study it. I was not in that mood. It was just a part of my life, you know? So... and then I used to go to LA every summer when I was in high school to get away from North County and stay with my cousins who worked at movie theaters. And that&#039 ; s when I was exposed to like museums and galleries and, you know, and I took a class at Santa Monica College and that&#039 ; s when I learned like, oh snap, you can learn art history? This is more interesting than like actually drawing the horse, you know? Um, I just learned that art had intentions all the time. Like I was, I was also like poor, you know? And I&#039 ; m a, I come from a Black family, so to venture off into art, it&#039 ; s just like: you gotta make sure it makes money! My uncle in LA is like, what are you getting a degree in? Are you gonna be able to teach with that? I&#039 ; m just like, hmm, I don&#039 ; t know, you know, and, but I enjoy it and I excelled at it. And like, I had a teacher, I took like Japanese art history at Santa Monica College, and I was just blown away by the history, like the political history, the social impact, just like everything that you see in art, like how it&#039 ; s a reflection of like moments of history or just moments of inequity. I thought that was very interesting how artists could use that as a language to communicate, to organize, to protest, to be expressive of what they don&#039 ; t like in society. So yeah, I loved art history and that was like perfect for me. Cause when I think about it, I was into dance and music, hip-hop culture because it felt liberating. I designed and made my own prom dress because, you know, it gave me ownership. And those are like human right feelings. Savo: And speaking to that, about the ownership and the intentionality, your decision to do art history as a degree and as a major, was that a choice that you made? Was that a choice that you had made from Santa Monica to UC Riverside? Poellnitz: Mm-hmm Savo: OK- Poellnitz: It was intentional. Yeah. So I, when I was at Santa Monica, it was cool. I had a lot of friends and they were like all into politics. I saw Amy Goodman when I went to Santa Monica College. And so I had a lot of friends who were into like, the political and social justice part of education. And I was like, I wanna do art history. &lt ; laughs&gt ; I like it. I like pictures, I like reading-- images, I love that. I love telling, retelling those stories or using it as a form of communication. But I was like, I think I wanna-- I remember telling myself in our junior college, I wanted to have a gallery space. It was intentional. And I applied to all the schools that had the double major art history and art administrative &#039 ; cause I wanted to learn the business side and the admin part. I didn&#039 ; t know what I was gonna do. I didn&#039 ; t know I was gonna get the gallery, but I was like, &quot ; Hey, if I wanna work in a gallery, I need to have these skills or just to better understand it.&quot ; &#039 ; Cause I have to justify going to school for art history, not just to my family but to myself. Savo: And so you mentioned that you wanted this applicability, you know to translate the skills that you learned in your degree to, to real life and to getting a job. Poellnitz: Yeah to a job--. Savo: Could you tell me a little broadly about your experience with that community engagement and, and political activism and how that helped formulate what is now, you know, the Hill Street Country Club because it&#039 ; s a great gallery in Oceanside and you don&#039 ; t really think about Oceanside being, uh, very cultural. At least you know, the North County, South Bay, in terms of San Diego County in general. But how did that come about? Poellnitz: Um, well I finished school, lived in L.A. for quite a bit. Played assistant nanny manager, like these jobs separate from what I wanted to go to school for because I was living in L.A and I had to learn how to multitask. And I took on like a lot of assistant jobs and one day I was just like, I was working for lie celebrities and like producers and stuff and you know, I saw how things were operating behind the scene creatively for money. And then I also understood the realities of like creating for me and the possibilities. And so, you know, I always kept a job and one day I decided, like me, my husband, we split [up] and me and my little kid, we moved back to North County and I still had my L.A job. So, I was still commuting like three to four times a week from Vista to L.A for my job. Cause they paid me well. But I decided to start volunteering at the Oceanside Museum of Art and their education department, but they didn&#039 ; t have one yet. So, I ended up volunteering with the proprietors. I learned about installation at Oceanside Museum of Art and I was still, I still had my like feet in two different worlds. I was still in the L.A world, but also in my hometown world. I did work at Patricia Korea Gallery in Santa Monica, and that was a very eye-opening experience at the&lt ; inaudible&gt ; was in college. Just, she was like the only woman of color, like gallery owner. And she only represented brown artists at the time, which was very &lt ; inaudible&gt ; in Santa Monica. Well, but inequity in like the gallery world when I was in college with that job, I would apply to like the Getty and all types of museums when I lived in L.A. with my friends. But my friends would always get the job even though I had a better CV than them. You know you just accept it. And so I just went back to like doing assistant work and then I decided, I was like, you know what, like I&#039 ; m gonna lean a little heavy. Like now that I&#039 ; m back in Vista, I&#039 ; m gonna lean in a little bit more in North County and invest more of my time there. And so that&#039 ; s when I started volunteering at OMA [Oceanside Museum of Art]. Then I learned about the infrastructure of the museum world because, you know, I always wanted to work in a museum. I always thought museums were an amazing place to tell stories and educate. I never knew about the dark side of museums, you know, like how they get art and how they flip art and also like the politics of like hierarchy and institutions, you know, I learned-- I didn&#039 ; t know about that in school. No one ever talked about that in school. We only talked about art history. But once I started volunteering and then turned into a paid position at Oceanside Museum of Art, I learned about institutions really quickly, and I also learned not just about art institutions, but I also learned about like civic engagement and city planning because, I still had my, my foot in L.A so I was used to going to galleries and museums and seeing public art, having friends who got paid as full-time artists or had very creative jobs. I know what&#039 ; s possible. And so, you know, being back home, I just like, &quot ; okay, why don&#039 ; t we have public art again.&quot ; And then I had to like learn beyond what school taught me through experiences. Like, oh, public art is political and it&#039 ; s not, political is a message, it&#039 ; s political because you have to politically know how to create a system so that there can be public arts, right? At the time OMA, no one knew Oceanside Museum of Art exists. You know, 12 years ago no one knew. I didn&#039 ; t even know. I like googled and like looked for art spaces and I somehow, and only because I was intentionally looking for art space in North County, close to home, I found it. But it wasn&#039 ; t like it was vibrant and it was attracting people like me and they should be attracting people like me for living in LA and loving art. I didn&#039 ; t know it exists out of Google art spaces in North County. And that&#039 ; s how Oceanside using a popped up. And I noticed that they didn&#039 ; t have an education department. They had Julia Fister who was volunteering for the education department that she created as a volunteer because she had a big grant with Target to make sure every fifth grader goes to the museum. But she didn&#039 ; t have a office space or studio room for education. It was like she just came and sat at a table and made it happen and fifth graders came. And me and my business partner, Margaret Hernandez, we just decided, you know, we were both in education and we did all the docent tours with the fifth graders and the, and the workshops with them. And we just like had a lot of community conversations with young people, people in middle school, so you learned about their like starting point to art, who in the, in the classroom who visit[ed] that day, who had more access to art than others. Who had materials, who been to museum. You know, you learn so much about the demographics and like, I&#039 ; m sorry but the demographics were pretty like astounding when you see majority of the Brown/Black kids saying this is their first time. You know. Or you have students ask you if they could take home some of the like, crayons or pastels at home so they can keep drawing. You&#039 ; re just like, dang, kids don&#039 ; t have like crayons? Like how do you not have crayons? You know it-- Or kids asking like, or the one kid who&#039 ; s just like, who knows about art but like, how do artists even make money? Like kids would ask those questions all the time. How do artists even make money? Like what do art, what can artists do? You know? And those were conversations for me &#039 ; cause I was always intentional. I was just like artists designed your shirt, the artist probably designed like a machine that&#039 ; s in the hospital that you are using, artists design buildings. I&#039 ; m like, art is involved in literally your whole life. You just don&#039 ; t know it. And you probably could have more, but you just don&#039 ; t know it. Right? And so I just started asking questions about how do we get more murals? How do we get public art? How do we have art walk? And I learned that I had to like volunteer with like Main Street, like a commerce type of org, who had a relationship with the city to get extra funding for projects for the city. I had to learn about that dynamic. I learned about putting things on the docket. Like I learned how art was, wasn&#039 ; t just like creative, but it was also political and it was also like [it] required you to engage in the system to understand how to create public art opportunities. You know, it&#039 ; s just, we didn&#039 ; t, Oceanside didn&#039 ; t have an infrastructure for art. Like we&#039 ; ve made a lot of improvement, but we didn&#039 ; t have an infrastructure, we had an arts commission, but it was it was in silo and they weren&#039 ; t funding anything and they were just meeting each other, talking about projects around town, you know? The museum wasn&#039 ; t engaged at the time. It was, it was treated more like a private gallery space than a public space. And it was, &#039 ; cause you know, Oceanside Museum of Art is not owned by the city. It&#039 ; s owned by a group of retirees, you know, and there&#039 ; s a lot there. There&#039 ; s also the retirement culture that you have to deal with. Like when we started Hill Street, we were very engaged with our friends and our family and community members. And we worked with people who couldn&#039 ; t get a space or an exhibition. We worked with those artists and they brought their family and friends. Like, it was a gathering opportunity for people. It made sense. Savo: And how were you able to attract these different artists? Were these artists specifically located in Oceanside or were they spread out through across San Diego County? Poellnitz: No it started in Oceanside. It was our friends first. We grew like a concentric circle, if that makes any sense. It was, um, we fit Hill Street like artist, personal, communal, universal. And like this, if I think about how we grew as a concentric circle, it was very personal for me, Marj, to begin Hill Street Country Club because the museum was rejecting all our ideas and they were not being cool or like easily invested in education. They made it very hard for Oceanside Museum of Art to create an education department at the time. And so in support of an education department, because we, you know, we did those docents and we listened to young people. So I&#039 ; m like, &quot ; you need an education department. It&#039 ; s necessary.&quot ; We supported Julia and her vision to make an education department for the museum. And we tried to throw our first fundraiser for that vision of hers. And the museum would say no to us. Like, we&#039 ; re like, &quot ; Hey, can we do a fundraiser for the education department?&quot ; And they&#039 ; re like, no. And then we&#039 ; re asked like, &quot ; Can we borrow some chairs and tables for a fundraiser?&quot ; &quot ; Uh, not right now. No.&quot ; And basically like we knew we need an education department like, Oceanside, if you&#039 ; re gonna have Oceanside Museum of Art and you&#039 ; re taking up the city&#039 ; s name and you&#039 ; re having fifth graders come in and you&#039 ; re getting grant money, you need to have an education department, right? And that&#039 ; s just common sense to us. And so we told all our friends the idea of having a fundraiser for the Oceanside Museum of Arts Education Department to support Julia. And one day I was like driving home to dinner to meet Margaret and I saw that the Link-Soul building light was on and they were having a gallery show. And I walked in there and I was just like, this is the art space? And Jeff, who is the co-owner of Link-Soul was just like, yeah. And I was like, this is interesting. I was just so shocked to see a gallery that had a show. And the next day I went over there and met Jeff, someone got him, and I introduced myself and I pitched our fundraiser idea. He, like, he said yes to me, to like using this space for free. And so that was our first event that we organized, and it was called &quot ; Open to the Public&quot ; and it was about, you know, the need for art education. It was a fundraiser for OMA. And so, we just asked all our friends who were artists in North County and then like people who I went to school with, &#039 ; cause I was taking classes at Miracosta for fun, for art and asking teachers to support it. We had a big turnout, and we were able to donate to the education department and purchase art materials and bags for every fifth grader of Oceanside for that year that visited the museum on that program. So that was like the first time where we were just like, wait, this was successful. People are thirsty. Like it&#039 ; s not just us who want [to] have more like community opportunities, you know, with art. So like I said, it&#039 ; s like we grew a concentric circle because we started off very, it was very personal for us to do that. And then once we had our first event, we understood the like community purpose. Like, oh this is not just us, this is a community issue too. We want, we want more opportunities to do stuff like this and we don&#039 ; t have it. It was like, &quot ; I want more of this. Like how do we, how do we keep doing this?&quot ; And so me, Margaret, just because we couldn&#039 ; t afford our own space and I still working back and forth in L.A, we just did pop-up art shows for like two solid years all over Oceanside. And then we went to community art events or like art events in San Diego because they had more of a presence of art for us back then, &#039 ; cause we weren&#039 ; t really doing much as a city. So, we would go to events and openings in San Diego all the time. I don&#039 ; t know, it was this became very like, personal and communal. And then most of our artists are like working class, queer, young, old, um, more vulnerable, you know, and to like, to all kinds of things. And so, like most of them never had an opportunity to have an exhibition. They like paint it for themselves or put their art in a store, but no one&#039 ; s ever invited them to do an exhibition. And we would just invite artists for exhibition. But it was a curated experience, you know, and a lot of it was just, we choose artists that, that we shared messages with. I don&#039 ; t know, it just became a very organic growth. Savo: This is excellent to learn about. &#039 ; Cause I didn&#039 ; t know that there&#039 ; s so much underneath, in terms of the layering, in terms of structuring, in terms of networking that&#039 ; s involved. Could you just clarify briefly who exactly Jeff and Julia are in relation to the Hill Street Country Club? Poellnitz: So Julia Fister at the time was the education director at the Oceanside Museum of Art. And she was one of my- me and Margaret&#039 ; s mentor. She now owns Studio Ace in Oceanside where it&#039 ; s focused on youth and like art education, which is really cool cause she&#039 ; s in the valley. Very much needed over there. And then Jeff, Jeff Cunningham is a artist but is the creative director for Link -Soul, which is a golf apparel company. Their design team is based in downtown San Diego. And we share, we co-op a space with them. That&#039 ; s where we have our gallery. And Jeff Cunningham is a phenomenal artist. Like I curated him for a show for Oceanside Museum of Art. And our friendship, just like it grew from like me being a curator and an artist and him being an artist and us really like exchanging ideas about social impact and how do we create an art space that&#039 ; s different, that&#039 ; s more authentic and doesn&#039 ; t have all these pressures to over-perform, be productive. And so like, it&#039 ; s natural. It&#039 ; s interesting &#039 ; cause he said yes to us having our first art show at his space and then he ended up giving us this space for Hill Street. Savo: That&#039 ; s awesome. And since Hill Street has been open and been around in the community, how has the gallery become that space where it&#039 ; s not just the ideas or expressions that are being presented, but how has that space become a platform really, sorry... How has that space become a platform for activism? Because, you know, you noted in a 2020 interview with KPBS that art is a functioning tool that should transition off the canvas. Poellnitz: Hmm-hmm. Savo: How has Hill Street Country Club played in that part? Poellnitz: You know, it&#039 ; s so funny cause every time I get asked like, &quot ; oh are you an artist too?&quot ; Like,&quot ; yeah, I&#039 ; m an artist, I make work, but I don&#039 ; t make it anymore.&quot ; I was like, I make, I build art, you know, I can build stuff. But right now, my art is Hill Street Country Club, and you know, it&#039 ; s, it goes back to college and me like learning about all like the social impact and inequities in the world through art history. It goes back to that. And it goes back to like, you know, artists are some of the most vulnerable people because first of all, you&#039 ; re not respected with pay whatsoever, &#039 ; cause you have to remember like, I knew I had to get paid to do this or I shouldn&#039 ; t be doing it. I should be like a teacher or an engineer or a therapist. Like, you went to school for art and people need to get paid for that. So we live, we live in North County where there&#039 ; s, we were spending like 10 cents per residence on art funding while like San Diego at the time was spending ten dollars. So, and then also trying to convince older peers in the art community that they had to pay for admin stuff that we organized. And then thinking that everyone had time to volunteer because at the end of the day, we had a large retirement class that was in charge of the art community in Oceanside and Vista. You know, they didn&#039 ; t see the value of paying younger people to help them with the arts, you know, there&#039 ; s uh cultural differences. And that being said, you know, to get paid is not just like, to get paid is the equity issue, right? And then not only to get, you know, to get paid is the equity issue. And if you&#039 ; re like Black and people don&#039 ; t even take you that, if you look at the museum stats and gallery stats for like, artists and like people who make it, you already know. You&#039 ; re like, you&#039 ; re dealing with so many microaggressions, you&#039 ; re dealing with some unresolved supremacy issues. Like I always tell folks like, hey, check this out. Like, um, it&#039 ; s okay if you&#039 ; re racist, I get it. You&#039 ; re not me. You don&#039 ; t have these experiences and you have to unlearn and I&#039 ; m gonna give you grace to unlearn, but I&#039 ; m always gonna speak up for what I-- what you did. And I&#039 ; m gonna not call you out, but I&#039 ; m just gonna call you in and say like, &quot ; hey you know what you did was kind of racist could you not do that?&quot ; And I learned that was always like a threat to people when I was honest and like gave them grace at the same time. And I learned in the art community that they&#039 ; re not ready for those conversations at all. Or like, just to like unlearn and do better. So, but because I have ownership of my space and I don&#039 ; t work for anyone and I don&#039 ; t have a board that disagrees with my politics, I have a lot more autonomy than a lot of my artist friends or my art admins who work in museums and high-end gallery spaces. And so I get to embrace artists that are political, who are in the streets, who are organizing, who are building different collectives or opportunities for relief or whatever they believe in. I have a beautiful space. I also share my autonomy with them and I support their work. And because I believe in equity too. Cause I&#039 ; m trying to get paid, I&#039 ; m dealing with microaggressions. This is personal. Like what, what affects you is affecting me. And also, I&#039 ; m like, I just don&#039 ; t like people being in pain. I&#039 ; m an empathetic person. I, I don&#039 ; t know, I&#039 ; m pretty radical politically, so I have to-- if I have my own autonomy, I&#039 ; m gonna use it. I&#039 ; m not gonna shy away from that. And the artists that I admire were doing that. It went that I was learning art history. They were telling a story, they was telling us how wrong this was and that was. Like, they&#039 ; re pointing out problems and they&#039 ; re doing it in the nuances of art. And I think it&#039 ; s very important for artists to tell those stories so people can gather and discuss and find solutions or to just build creative- what is it critical mass? No, I think it&#039 ; s critical mass is like valuable, once you learn it&#039 ; s not just yourself. It&#039 ; s like a Power in Numbers game. Savo: Would you say that speaking to it&#039 ; s a power in numbers game, do you think that that has changed your perspective on the, the personal communal and universal experience that Hill Street Country Club offers? Because obviously since it&#039 ; s opened, now since the pandemic 2020, do you think that it&#039 ; s become a situation where art more than ever needs to be more expressionist or more, um, as you say, it has to be more, you know--? Poellnitz: Yeah,-Savo: It has to be more- Poellnitz: It should be. It should be. You know I was just talking to my colleague Astrid Gonzalez, she is one of the Hill Street colleagues. She does all our audio-visual stuff. And she was reflecting the other day and she was like, &quot ; we really never stopped working during the pandemic.&quot ; I was like, we didn&#039 ; t, we couldn&#039 ; t afford to. We&#039 ; re vulnerable. We don&#039 ; t have board members with money. We don&#039 ; t have-- like the reason why we can do all that we do is because we have people aligned with our principals who agree with us and who are not scared support what we&#039 ; re doing. But at the same time, to get paid in this art world, you gotta have some like, dirty person on your board. That&#039 ; s just reality. Like, you gotta think money. And it&#039 ; s, that&#039 ; s just how it works. It&#039 ; s an institution. Like every institution in America has flaws, right? And during the pandemic, we stayed open. We were very creative of finding creative ways to stay open and accessible to our audience and to our artists. Cause a lot of my artists during the pandemic were dealing with poverty, food, needed food, like, mental health. The pandemic was messing people up in the first like two years. And a lot of my artists were affected by that. I worked with a lot of Brown and Queer and old artists, you know, and in this economy, they were suffering. And so, I had to figure out how to be a safe space and use my space for opportunities for people to get access to food or help folks get access to mental health services or even a distraction like coming, making art. I had to stay open for two and a half years during the pandemic, while a lot of big museums were closing and doing bare minimum because they didn&#039 ; t wanna get Covid. So, I don&#039 ; t know, my space has always evolved and adapt, because it has to. Savo: Speaking to- Poellnitz: Right now--Go ahead- Savo: Oh no, go ahead. Poellnitz: I forgot what I was going to say, go ahead. Savo: Speaking to the space having evolved, you mentioned that Hill Street became a space that allowed for those economic hardships of the pandemic, to kind of be alleviated for your artists. Could you speak about the political upheaval? Because we all lived through 2020 and we all know how painful it was during April, May, April through June of 2020. How did that come about? How was Hill Street a space for comfort, a space for expression? Poellnitz: Yeah, that was interesting. Cause like I&#039 ; m the only like Black gallery owner in San Diego. And I&#039 ; ve been doing this for so long that I, I belong to extended part of the San Diego art community that a lot of folks don&#039 ; t see in North County. Like I know a lot of people in museums and galleries and stuff like that. And I know a lot of people in City government and Federal government. And so, you know, during that time it was just like, this is when you make art. This is when you talk about these issues and you use art as a language and as a tool to have these community conversations. But also, this was also opportunity for us to do mutual aid. We went into care mode, like how do we care more about people? Like how do we care back? Like how do we take care of each other? Because during that time we know who&#039 ; s not taking care of us, we know who doesn&#039 ; t protect us. And it was more like being available to protect and provide care. I kind of miss those days. Those were the days where we were talking about liberation and how to use resources to create safe, safer communities. We were talking about solutions for the first time out loud as a public. We were sharing empathy with each other. I thought it was a beautiful opportunity for us to build something new. But it was also beautiful to see that we could be in solidarity. I had people who knew me in the business community of Oceanside, but never went to our events. Always knew what I was doing if I went into their store or their restaurant or coffee shop or whatever. And that was the first time a lot of those folks came out and donated to us. &lt ; laughs&gt ; You know, like checked on us. And I was like, &quot ; Wow, this is the first-time people cared about what we are doing over here. Like, this is interesting.&quot ; And I think there was a fear for a lot of folks like &quot ; I hope this isn&#039 ; t discourage her.&quot ; Or maybe I&#039 ; m just thinking that in my head, I don&#039 ; t know. But I did see a lot of people come out the woodworks who started supporting us. And it gave us funding to create more programming and we kept going. So, I don&#039 ; t know. I was just adapting. I think that&#039 ; s what you do when you&#039 ; re in survival mode all the time. Savo: And since the pandemic, obviously the adapting to the circumstance and situation, have there been any local projects or exhibits that you&#039 ; ve, partaken in or helped organize that reflect those changing structures or those change in activism? Cause you mentioned a lot about talking about solutions and you mentioned how there&#039 ; s this real need for concern for one another, this care for one another. Has there been any of these projects that reflect that? Poellnitz: Yeah so we got really involved during the pandemic. We created like a mental health like group therapy program for young middle school kids, &quot ; The Social,&quot ; and it was just like, we had a license. We have a licensed therapist, one of our artists, and it&#039 ; s like a group therapy through art, but also peer on peer because a lot of young folks were isolated from each other during the pandemic. And they&#039 ; re still coping with, you know the environment they had to live in, to stay away from everyone and not getting us sick to die. That&#039 ; s kind of traumatic. And then we&#039 ; re asking them to like, go back to normal real quick so we can jumpstart our economy. So we created a program, &quot ; The Social,&quot ; with the therapist for young people. And now we&#039 ; re gonna be part of the Oceanside Unified School District programming for summer, fall, and winter, I mean summer, fall and spring now. So we&#039 ; re now like, we created a program that&#039 ; s gonna be in the school system that provides mental healthcare for young people who need it the most. And then we just recently had an exhibition with &lt ; inaudible&gt ; Roca Gonzalez, who lives in Oceanside, who&#039 ; s from Puerto Rico. And they&#039 ; re working about all these social issues and we&#039 ; re coming together and recognizing we are a product of gentrification and colonialism. We live through it every single day. Like we have all this architectural vernacular that reminds us that we&#039 ; re all living through this. It&#039 ; s not just Puerto Rico, you know, it&#039 ; s everywhere. We&#039 ; re all surviving. I&#039 ; ve been able to sit on a lot of committees and boards and be part of more equitable decision making for artists that I&#039 ; m excited about that&#039 ; s gonna be coming out soon with the city of San Diego, helping a lot of like artists get access to money. That was like one thing that I did during the pandemic, was I did sign up on committees and boards because I&#039 ; m just like, &quot ; You guys are making this process way too difficult for people who have to work full-time jobs and take care of family.&quot ; Not everyone&#039 ; s out here just being an artist on retirement mode and can fill out all these questions and type all these like, letters of intent. You gotta make this more equitable-like process for like poor people with very limited time, you know? So it was part of a San Diego artist project that raised like $150K for artists in San Diego. And we made the process so easy that a lot more like trans and BIPOC artists actually applied and received funding to be a artist over the pandemic. That was amazing. I mean once I decided I was committed to equity and inclusion for myself, everything I do affects everyone. As a Black woman, it just does naturally, like we&#039 ; re-- The stats prove it. If you improve my life or if you improve my life in your surrounding, you benefit from it. Like literally, like if Dinah says she wants more vacation days, I work too much and because I, and I don&#039 ; t normally give vacation day. Oh my God, imagine if you give it to me, you&#039 ; re gonna have to give it to my coworker. Not everything I want, everything I need because equity benefits everyone. So I understand a lot of my personal experience or communal experiences and has universal like means that needs &lt ; inaudible&gt ; . Savo: And I was just curious, because we were speaking about these different programs and different committees that were happening during the pandemic. Before we jump back to the equity portion that I&#039 ; m really fascinated to know more about, how were these committees and how were these programs organized? Were they all organized remotely? Were these children or these group therapy sessions that you mentioned, where were they held remotely or was there a creative space for that? Poellnitz: We did it at the gallery space every Saturday. Every Saturday. And our therapist had a baby. So, they&#039 ; re coming, they&#039 ; re gonna go back in the summer. They&#039 ; re gonna start back in the summer and we&#039 ; re gonna be at Jefferson Middle School. Last year we had a four-week social camp with them, with community artists and the therapists as a camp. And it was four weeks of campers and we had four cohorts of students and we&#039 ; re returning to that program in the summer. And we&#039 ; ll be returning with like regular art programming with Oceanside Unified School District on top of providing the Saturday space for the students again for group therapy. Savo: And I&#039 ; m also curious to know like what kind of activities were these students engaged in when it came to the group therapy sessions? Because obviously this is a period where, it&#039 ; s a lot of, where social distancing was a very key thing and masking was also very important. How are these exercises or how are these sessions organized? What were these specific activities? Poellnitz: Well, it&#039 ; s so interesting &#039 ; cause we kept over going through the whole pandemic. We, Hill Street changed its whole operation system to be more appointment-based. And we created capacities. We were very highly sensitive about Covid, like people had to wear masks all the time. We provided, Dr. Bronner&#039 ; s used to donate tons of like hand sanitizer. Like we used to give like little packets out to people who came visit the gallery space. If anyone wanted to see an exhibit, they make an appointment. They would have the space to themselves for 20 minutes to visit the exhibit. And we wouldn&#039 ; t be in the space with them. We&#039 ; ll be like upstairs above where, you know, the distance, like it basically were by themselves. And then with &quot ; The Social,&quot ; &quot ; The Social&quot ; was like every Saturday. We had a capacity, I believe of like eight students at a time. And so, we have the space for people to spread out. And then everyone had materials. I mean, it was really easy to manage. I think when people care for each other and they care that they have a safe space, people make sure they don&#039 ; t show up sick. People made sure to wash their hands. People made sure to keep their masks on. We did have a lot of workshops on Zoom. We had a lot of artist&#039 ; s talks on Zoom. We had like -- what is it called? We had AR [augmented reality] gallery exhibitions. So if you couldn&#039 ; t see the work in person, we recreate gallery space online, and people can navigate and look at art online as if it was in a gallery space. Savo: That&#039 ; s really interesting-- Poellnitz: Yeah, we did a mobile art workshop. We got a grant right before the pandemic hit and we were supposed to have all this programming in every community center in Oceanside, but it was Covid and so we had to adapt, and &#039 ; cause they already gave us the money for it. So, we created a mobile art kit and like a lunch bag and it was like all the materials to like the perfect measurement and quantity that you needed for that project. We had our exhibition artists create a project and give us a list of materials for that project. And we used to do like a whole visual, like YouTube recording of how to create the piece. And then we did like a live Zoom and Instagram workshop, but anyone with a library card was getting mailed a mobile art workshop kit from us. Yeah so, we did a lot of organizing through the pandemic to stay open. It wasn&#039 ; t just simply being open, like we had to reorganize like our operations. We created an appointment system, we created more QR codes for people instead of like, there was no reason for anyone to touch anything in this space. People were able to pull out their phones and QR code and read like the show statement. And then we had Zoom workshops and people will get their MOD kits and you know, we did a lot of cool things on Zoom. It was fun. I don&#039 ; t know, you just learn how to care for people! Savo: What do you think was the-- &lt ; Poellnitz and Savo talking over each other&gt ; I&#039 ; m sorry. Poellnitz: Go ahead, no you go ahead. Savo: What do you think was the reception towards all these different restructuring and different outreach? Were people positive? Poellnitz: People were positive. People were very positive. And not only just positive, but our audience grew. We were more accessible to people outside of Oceanside. Savo: Do you think that broadened the scope of Hill Street? Do you think it helped? Do you think it helps sort of bring a lot of those ideas and those concepts from the North County down to the South Bay? Poellnitz: Oh for sure. When I moved to Normal Heights a year and a half ago and people were like, &quot ; oh, you&#039 ; re here now. I&#039 ; m like, yes.&quot ; And then just we love everything that you&#039 ; re, like, people from the arts commission knows what we&#039 ; re doing. Like I see a lot of gallery spaces and museums who are working with artists I worked with now. Worked with like five years ago, two years ago. I see the influence of our work on visuals. I see a lot of art spaces in San Diego, like institutions with bigger budgets, now creating visuals about their space. And I know we influenced people over the pandemic. They tell me and sometimes their programs look like it. It&#039 ; s wild. And it&#039 ; s like, wow. We did a lot over the pandemic while they sat still and they just watched us. Jeff always tell me, he&#039 ; s like, &quot ; you can&#039 ; t be mad if people are copying. Isn&#039 ; t that what you want?&quot ; I was like, &quot ; Oh yeah, that&#039 ; s how that works, huh?&quot ; Like, you influence people and they do the things you want them to do. Like have more like Queer folks or Black people or do more of this type of art. Like, oh they are listening, that is an impact. I didn&#039 ; t think about it like that. And he&#039 ; s like, &quot ; Yeah you just keep doing what you&#039 ; re doing. If they wanna do what you&#039 ; re doing in, see how far you can teach them, see how far they&#039 ; re willing to go.&quot ; And you know, that&#039 ; s, that&#039 ; s been like the best advice I&#039 ; ve ever had doing this work. Because it&#039 ; s true. When you have autonomy and you could do whatever you want or say whatever you want, or stand by what you believe in, you have a bigger impact than the person who&#039 ; s quiet and not doing anything &#039 ; cause they&#039 ; re scared. Savo: And speaking to that, that wanting to take initiative and be expressive. How does that coincide with some of the challenges that you were mentioning earlier about equity and inclusion? How do those two sort of intertwine with one another? Poellnitz: Dude, it&#039 ; s because it hurts. Because a lot of like organizations, a lot of people who do fund the arts are scared. They just scared of change. People are scared of change. And so there&#039 ; s always gonna be resistance. There&#039 ; s always gonna be the folks with resources who can like, jump like pounce on your idea. And because they have money, they can do it sooner and faster and get more visibility. That&#039 ; s gonna happen. It is exhausting. It wears you down, it discourages. Makes it harder for you to get access to grants or, or donors. But then at the same time, I&#039 ; ve just been thinking about this a lot lately. Cause you know, Hill Street, we&#039 ; re at a point where I&#039 ; m kind of exhausted, but at the same time I know why I&#039 ; m exhausted and I gotta do things differently and I have to be a little bit more strategic now, like where I wanna go because I notice that a lot of people are watching us. And then people have a lot of expectations for us. And there&#039 ; s also a lot of opportunities for us in the position that we&#039 ; re in because of the work that we&#039 ; ve done over the last ten years, you know? And especially the work that got highlighted during the George Floyd protest era. So, like I&#039 ; m hyper aware and I&#039 ; m being a little bit more wise about who I partner with. I&#039 ; m being a little bit more wise on how often I say no because I was a person that never said no before. And because I never said no, I got burnt out and not paid a lot. And I&#039 ; m learning that me as a Black woman, my rest is very important, but it&#039 ; s also important that I have equity so I can get paid to do this work. So, I&#039 ; ve just been thinking about how to slow down and sometimes less is more like I don&#039 ; t have to be over the place. I just need to be effective where I have intentions. So, it&#039 ; s like pulling back to that personal space has been going on with us lately. Like this being more local, bringing it all in, focusing on what we&#039 ; re strong at, getting into contract with the Oceanside Unified School District. Like that&#039 ; s a healthy source of funding for us. Instead of chasing donors who don&#039 ; t share our principles, I think artists and art organizers need to ask themselves like &quot ; Why are you here? What vision do you have? What community you belong to? What are your principles?&quot ; I think those are questions that anyone in the arts needs to ask themselves. Just be honest with yourself and if you could be honest with yourself, you should always know the choices that you&#039 ; re making. For me, I realize I wanna be my own institution and there&#039 ; s gonna be some hardship &#039 ; cause I won&#039 ; t be conforming to a lot of institutional like practices. I will be creating new practices. I&#039 ; m highly aware of the up and down of this art world for me. For me. And I&#039 ; m honest with myself. So it&#039 ; s easier for me to commit, but because I&#039 ; m honest with myself, I create ways that can sustain me. Like, I do more like art consulting jobs. I collaborate more with non-art, institutional spaces, you know? I work a lot more with community members who are in the political scene. So I understand like the fluidity of art. And if you&#039 ; re heavily relying on the same funders that fund the problem, yeah I would have concerns for the equity. But if you are creative and you know your worth and you are honest with yourself about why you&#039 ; re here, you always can find a solution. And because that&#039 ; s what&#039 ; s worked for me. Savo: And speaking to equity and how Hill Street has evolved over the past ten years, what do you think are some of the things that you personally wanna see for the Hill Street Club? You mentioned that you prefer more local engagement. You prefer being with individuals that are more like-minded in terms of art expression, in terms of inclusion. What are some of the hopes that you have for Hill Street moving forward? Poellnitz: I would love to have a community school. I want a community school. I worked for a nonprofit in City Heights and we worked with community schools that worked with juvies. They call them JCCS like Juvenile and Correction Community Schools. And they&#039 ; re like directly tied to the unified school district and the court system. At one point when I was heavily involved in politics, I was working with a former city council member in hopes of becoming like a divergent program for youth in the arts. So like, if a kid got arrested for the first time, instead of like putting them on probation and sending them to jail, you send them to like a diversion program. And the city of Carlsbad Police Department is the only police department in San Diego County that has an actual diversion program for youth. And so, you know, you get to be an organization as a choice for, for young folks and teach &#039 ; em all the skills, like how to create programming, how to run programming, how to make art. It&#039 ; s like a six-month commitment. I wanna do something more like that. I wanna have a community school. I wanna teach art the way that I experience art, the way that artists experiencing art. I wanna create a new institutional space for art practice. I don&#039 ; t know, I just really wanna grow as a bigger institution, as a choice, as an alternative choice to other places. Savo: And obviously you&#039 ; ve given a lot of thought to the idea of this community school and obviously diversion programs as well, such as Carlsbad&#039 ; s. Do you see potentially a branching out of Hill Street? Moving forward within not just North County, but also San Diego County as a whole? Do you see elements of what you&#039 ; ve been able to create and to adapt with? Do you see any of that being replicated any elsewhere in the County? Poellnitz: Um, not yet, but we partner with a lot of folks in San Diego so we are very unique because we have to adapt. One thing you learn about our institutions, old ones, they can&#039 ; t adapt. So, when they can&#039 ; t adapt, they move slow. They struggle with adapting. And one thing about us, because we don&#039 ; t, we don&#039 ; t follow institutional like, uh wisdom. A lot of us are taking in diverse knowledge from each other, practicing being inclusive. And once you do that as an action, you can make decisions a lot sooner than later. And so we&#039 ; ve been doing a lot of like partnerships and pop-ups with a lot of orgs in San Diego. I just want a community school. I want a community school. I want studio spaces for artists. I would like to have a choice for young people to learn about art and not just learn about art but have creative access to like a space where they can learn about the world and express themselves. Like I would like to have a community school. I have no aspirations to be all over San Diego County. That sounds like a lot of work. &lt ; laughs&gt ; Savo: Oh, absolutely &lt ; laughs&gt ; Poellnitz: And I worked with a lot of people in San Diego County. I love you San Diego, but North County is so special. Like us North County people, we are so innovative &#039 ; cause we&#039 ; ve had so little. And when we learn something new, we master it because we don&#039 ; t have all the museums in galleries and big budgets that San Diego has or L.A has. So we are very mom and pop and DIY in North County and we support each other. And so, I don&#039 ; t know, that&#039 ; s the civic identity for me. You know, that&#039 ; s part of my civic identity. Savo: And speaking to this, sort of bring it all back in identity, the personal, the communal, the universal that Hill Street represents. Do you think that a community school would be a perfect foster for that? And I&#039 ; m just curious about the age groups. Something I&#039 ; m actually quite interested about, would this be open to not just middle schools, the middle school age range that Oceanside education part has worked with, but would you extend that? Would you put a limited K through 12 per example? Poellnitz: I don&#039 ; t know. I don&#039 ; t know. That&#039 ; s a lot of years. &lt ; laughs&gt ; Savo: It&#039 ; s a lot of funding. Poellnitz: It&#039 ; s a lot of funding. I know that the folk at Link-Soul, they run the Goat Hill Golf course in Oceanside and it&#039 ; s already been promised to us that we will build some type of like, institution space for a community school one day. So, we&#039 ; re all dreaming like what we wanted to have. Savo: That&#039 ; s awesome. And just before we wrap up our interview here today, was there anything that we had previously discussed or discussed throughout the interview that you wanted a little bit more emphasis on or anything that you wanted to touch base with before we end today? Poellnitz: I don&#039 ; t think so. You&#039 ; re fine. Savo: Awesome. Again, thank you so much for this interview. It was really informative, and I think it&#039 ; s great to learn about how art has really grown in North County. Because I&#039 ; m from the South Bay, so I wouldn&#039 ; t know too much. But I think this was a great experience and I thank you a lot for that. Poellnitz: Oh, thank you, I appreciate that. https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en audio Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives csusm.edu if you need reproductions made. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. Persons wishing to quote, publish, perform, reproduce, or otherwise make use of an item in the Library’s collections must assume all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of the copyright holder. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PoellnitzDinah_SavoRiccardo_2023-04-05.xml PoellnitzDinah_SavoRiccardo_2023-04-05.xml Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Poellnitz, Dinah. Interview April 5, 2023. Description An account of the resource Oral History Interview of Dinah Poellnitz on April 5, 2023. Interview discusses Dinah Poellnitz’s community engagement within the city of Oceanside through art. In particular, the interview focuses on Poellnitz's involvement in the founding of the Hill Street Country Club art gallery in Oceanside, CA. Poellnitz discusses how to navigate through the art community as a Black woman, emphasizing the importance of equity and inclusion. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-025 Subject The topic of the resource Art -- Study and teaching Art galleries -- nonprofit Artists, Black Community engagement COVID-19 (Disease) and the arts COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020- Hill Street Country Club -- California -- Oceanside Women artists Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-04-05 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dinah Poellnitz Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Riccardo Savo Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Los Angeles (Calif.) Oceanside (Calif.) Vista (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos Language A language of the resource English Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Dinah Poellnitz Activists and activism Art and artists Black experience Community history History Department internship Women's experience https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/26d44f71fcba52e03810de0ccdac364f.pdf 3052071ffeb2f8d5a19b70fb1ec49221 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcripts Description An account of the resource Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Beacham, Dora. Interview Transcript, November 1, 2024. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dora Beacham Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jason Beyer Adel Bautista Marilyn Huerta Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024-11-01 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Dora Beacham License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BeachamDora_BeyerJason_2024-11-01_transcript Description An account of the resource Master Sergeant Dora Beacham served in the U.S. Marine Corps during Operation Enduring Freedom. Beacham was part of Combat Service Support Group 1 and the 11th Marine Regiment. She was deployed to Camp Fallujah, Iraq from January to August of 2004. As a Hispanic woman from a small town, Beacham reflected on how military service shaped her life and provided important opportunities. In this oral history interview, she described her family, education, and life lessons from military service. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Marine Corps United States. Marine Corps—Non-commissioned officers Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001-2014 Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island United States. Marine Corps—Military occupational specialties Victim advocates United States. Marine Corps. Advanced Infantry Training Battalion Educational benefits—United States Women soldiers United States. Department of Veterans Affairs Molly Marine (Symbolic figure) Hispanic Americans Camp Pendleton (Calif.) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Hondo (Tex.) South Carolina Norfolk (Va.) Twentynine Palms (Calif.) Iraq California Texas Idaho New York San Marcos (Calif.) Fallujah (Iraq) Community history San Diego Veterans History Initiative Veteran experience Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Jason Beyer Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dora Beacham OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=BeachamDora_BeyerJason_2024-11-01_access.xml Interview Keyword This filed adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the "keywords" field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record. Veteran;California State University San Marcos;United States Marine Corps;Master Sergeant;Operation Enduring Freedom;Camp Fallujah;Iraq OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 6.0 Beacham, Dora. Interview November 1st, 2024 SC027-069 00:00:00 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library oral history collection CSUSM csusm Veteran ; California State University San Marcos ; United States Marine Corps ; Master Sergeant ; Operation Enduring Freedom ; Camp Fallujah ; Iraq Dora Beacham Jason Beyer Moving image BeachamDora_BeyerJason_2024-11-01_access.mp4 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/45e2396211b4ed28f7ed29a6dc245346.mp4 Other video English 0 Interview Introduction 0 66 Personal Background Dora Ann Beacham served in the U.S. Marine Corps during Operation Enduring Freedom and reached her highest rank of Master Sergeant E8. She was born in Hondo, Texas. United States Marine Corps ; Master Sergeant ; E8 ; Operation Enduring Freedom ; Hondo (Tex.) ; Army ; babysitting 0 120 Military Enlistment Beacham says she chose to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps because she was impressed by the uniforms of the service members’ who visited her junior high school. United States Marine Corps ; G.I. Joe ; school ; uniform ; junior high 0 169 Basic Training and First Assignment Beacham completed her basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina. She then went to Norfolk, Virginia for MOS 0411 logistics. She recalls excelling at the male obstacle course during field training. One of her least favorite experiences was taking off her flak jacket after hikes. Her first assignment was Combat Service Support Group 1 at Twentynine Palms, California. There she spent lots of time training in the desert with weapons, vehicles, and equipment. basic training ; Parris Island ; South Carolina ; MOS ; Military Occupational Specialty ; logistics ; Norfolk (Va.) ; bootcamp ; O course ; obstacle course ; field training ; hike ; flak jacket ; Twentynine Palms (Calif.) ; SAW ; M249 Squad Automatic Weapon ; 50 cal. ; M203 grenade launcher ; drill instructor ; Humvee ; grenade ; uniformed victim advocate ; sexual assault 0 412 Promotions Beacham was promoted to Corporal meritoriously. She then picked up Gunnery Sergeant while on recruiting as a Staff Sergeant. She finally reached Master Sergeant while at the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion. promotion ; Master Sergeant ; Corporal ; meritorious ; Staff Sergeant ; Gunnery Sergeant ; Advanced Infantry Training Battalion ; Marine Corps 0 467 Adapting to Military Life Although many people say bootcamp was the hardest part of adapting to the military lifestyle, Beacham says it was harder after bootcamp because you have to make your own decisions. She says being away from home became easy after a while. bootcamp ; Marine Corps ; home 0 514 Interactions with People During Stateside Service People often made comments about Beacham’s short height of 4’11” and were surprised to learn that she was a Marine. She says that most people showed her respect and thanked her for her service. Marine ; service 0 546 Wartime Service in Iraq for Operation Enduring Freedom Beacham was stationed in Camp Fallujah, Iraq, from January to August of 2004 as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. She worked tireless hours to provide support to individuals and Marines. Operation Enduring Freedom ; Camp Fallujah ; Iraq ; support ; Marines 0 601 Interactions with Local Cultures While Deployed Beacham says she learned a lot and had positive interactions with local cultures during her deployment. cultures ; music ; traditions ; values ; career 0 633 Combat Service Support Beacham was part of Combat Service Support Group 1 and the 11th Marine Regiment. She says her field training helped prepare her for Iraq. Combat Service Support Group 1 ; training ; deploying ; 11th Marine Regiment ; single ; desert ; Iraq 0 693 Friendships and Comradery Beacham formed many strong relationships. Working logistics helped her make connections with people in different roles. One of her most valuable experiences was with the Marines at the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion, where there were few women there. Beacham had to learn what they did and do all their logistics. friendship ; comradery ; relationship ; logistics ; supply ; inspection ; MOS ; Marines ; Advanced Infantry Training Battalion ; infantry ; females ; training 0 760 Communication with Family and Friends While Deployed in Iraq Beacham kept in touch with family and friends through email and phone calls. She communicated often with her husband and mother. family ; friends ; communication ; emails ; phone calls ; married ; son ; husband ; mother 0 796 Recreation in the Service While off-duty, Beacham would take walks around the perimeter to make sure everyone stayed safe. For recreation, she watched recorded DVDs, including lots of CSI. She also recalls being at the gym. She says it was funny watching people teach each other how to work out. recreation ; walking ; daylight ; evening ; DVDs ; CSI ; humorous ; Iraq ; runners ; gym ; working out 0 878 About Good Luck Beacham says everything happens for a reason, so she would not have any good luck if she did not have bad luck. luck ; good luck ; bad luck 0 912 End of Military Service Beacham recalls the ceremony held at Camp Pendleton to celebrate her end of military service. She reflected on the significance of her retirement given her personal background. end of service ; Camp Pendleton ; California ; Marine Corps ; retire 0 964 Living in California Beacham and her husband decided to stay in California where her son was already in school. She still visits her family often. home ; husband ; son ; school ; California ; family 0 994 Family, Community, School, and Readjusting to Civilian Life Beacham’s family respects her and often turns to her for support. After retirement, she has spent much of her time doing school and traveling for her son’s athletics. She says the community and lack of structure helped her decompress after years of military service. Her time in school helped her pursue a career as a social worker supporting veterans. family ; community ; Marine Corps ; respectful ; civilian life ; son ; teenage ; boys ; soccer ; mom ; school ; traveling ; Marines ; mindfulness ; empathy ; psychology ; social worker 0 1096 Experience with the G.I. Bill The G.I. Bill was important for Beacham because it gave her an opportunity to get an education and decide who she wanted to be. G.I. Bill ; school ; psychology ; social work ; opportunities ; military 0 1160 Keeping Friendships After Military Service and Joining Veterans Organizations Beacham still keeps friendships. She stays connected mostly through email and phone calls because many people returned home after service. friendships ; Texas ; Idaho ; New York ; Cal State ; California ; email ; phone calls ; veterans organization ; San Marcos (Calif.) 0 1210 How Military Service Changed Beacham's Life As a Hispanic woman from a small town, Beacham reflects on the limited opportunities she had. Her military service helped her get an education, achieve financial security, and build wealth for future generations. Beacham thinks the values she learned as a Marine have guided her in life, and she has passed those values onto younger family members. reflection ; service ; life ; community ; faith ; family ; Hispanic ; female ; opportunities ; education ; financial security ; pension ; generational wealth ; children ; Marine Corps ; school ; Chapter 35 ; ID card ; commissary ; nieces 0 1355 Life Lessons from Military Service Military service taught Beacham about the powerful impact that an individual can have on somebody else. She saw how the people she influenced would influence others. life lessons ; military service ; Marine Corps ; deployment 0 1451 Message for Future Generations Beacham reflects on how her gender, ethnicity, and race have shaped her identity and who she represents. She wants future generations to know that they can be successful. She believes that her experience in the Marine Corps made her an all-around better person. message ; future generations ; gender ; ethnicity ; race ; background ; Marine Corps ; successful ; family ; children ; grandchildren ; determination ; cultures ; male ; diversity ; mother ; student ; instructor 0 1586 Association with the Campus Community of CSU San Marcos Beacham became associated with the CSUSM campus community through the interviewer, Jason Beyer. She met veterans who help other veterans, which inspired her career as a social worker supporting veterans. CSUSM ; campus community ; community ; service members ; veterans ; Veterans Affairs ; VA ; benefits 0 1661 Bootcamp Story Beacham shares a story from bootcamp. She was nominated “Molly Marine” by her platoon for being the most engaged, supportive, and motivated. bootcamp ; Marine Corps ; awards ; PFT ; Physical Fitness Test ; sharpshooter ; highest shooter ; Molly Marine ; vote ; platoon ; chow hall ; drill instructor ; recruit 0 1772 What More People Should Know About Veterans Beacham wishes more people knew that veterans need assistance, even if sometimes they do not seek it. Veterans may be strong and independent, but they are also vulnerable. veterans ; vulnerable ; assistance ; support ; independent 0 1809 Lesson Learned from Military Experience—Keep a Journal Beacham wishes she had kept a journal while in the service. Although she has plenty of photos and folders, there are many experiences she never wrote down. lessons ; journal ; military experience ; photos ; pictures ; folders ; SPIE rigging ; Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction ; helicopter ; infantrymen ; boat 0 Oral history Master Sergeant Dora Beacham served in the U.S. Marine Corps during Operation Enduring Freedom. Beacham was part of Combat Service Support Group 1 and the 11th Marine Regiment. She was deployed to Camp Fallujah, Iraq from January to August of 2004. As a Hispanic woman from a small town, Beacham reflected on how military service shaped her life and provided important opportunities. In this oral history interview, she described her family, education, and life lessons from military service. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:01.084 --> 00:01:06.594 My name is Jason Beyer. I'm a graduate of California State University of San Marcos. Today I will be doing an oral history and interviewing Dora Ann Beacham. Today's date is November 1, 2024. We are located in the Kellogg Library of CSUSM at 333 South Twin Oaks Valley Road, San Marcos, California 92069. I am a Marine Corps veteran and graduate of Cal State San Marcos, along with the interviewee, Dora Beacham. Today there are people attending—myself, the interviewee, Adel Bautista is the camera operator, and Marilyn Huerta. The purpose of this interview is to conduct an oral history. Please state your first, middle, and last name, branch of service, highest rank attained, and the war or conflict you served in. 00:01:06.594 --> 00:01:23.594 Good morning, Jason. My name is Dora Ann Beacham. (Redacted.) I served in the United States Marine Corps. My highest rank was Master Sergeant E8, and I served in the Operation Enduring Freedom. 00:01:23.594 --> 00:01:30.465 Thank you, Dora. So we'll begin with some biographical details. Where were you born? 00:01:30.465 --> 00:01:33.344 I was born in Hondo, Texas. 00:01:33.344 --> 00:01:37.355 Does your family have any past military affiliations with the military? 00:01:37.355 --> 00:01:48.015 I had two uncles at the time that were in the Marine Corps—well, one of 'em was in the Marine Corps, the other one was in the Army. And those were the only people that served or family members that served at the time. 00:01:48.015 --> 00:01:53.064 Did you hold any jobs before entering the military? 00:01:53.064 --> 00:02:00.545 I held jobs as far as like babysitting, but no actual formal employments. 00:02:00.545 --> 00:02:08.495 When and why did you choose to join the military? And where were you—were you drafted or did you enlist? 00:02:08.495 --> 00:02:30.115 I actually enlisted in the Marine Corps, and the reason that I've always said that I joined the Marine Corps was since I was in junior high, I used to like to play with the G.I. Joe, little miniature (laughs) toys that I had. And that's the reason I joined. But also once I went to talk to a recruiter, it was more about getting an education. 00:02:30.115 --> 00:02:31.835 And which branch did you enter? 00:02:31.835 --> 00:02:33.194 It was the United States Marine Corps. 00:02:33.194 --> 00:02:35.715 And why did you choose that branch? 00:02:35.715 --> 00:02:49.835 The reason I chose it—I have to honestly say when they came into the school, it was the uniform. I mean, I think everybody says that it's the uniform looked so crisp and clean and that was my main reason. 00:02:49.835 --> 00:02:56.664 So for your early days of service, what type of training or school did you have? 00:02:56.664 --> 00:02:59.004 So prior to the Marine Corps, you're asking? 00:02:59.004 --> 00:03:04.645 Once you went to basic training—well, let's start off. Where did you go to basic training at? 00:03:04.645 --> 00:03:07.465 I went to South Carolina, Parris Island. 00:03:07.465 --> 00:03:13.164 And from Paris Island, what MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) school or training did you have after that? 00:03:13.164 --> 00:03:19.485 I had—my MOS was 0411 logistics, and I was in Norfolk, Virginia. 00:03:19.485 --> 00:03:27.185 What is the most vivid memory, both best and worst parts of your time training or in school? 00:03:27.185 --> 00:04:25.845 Let's see. So I remember it was probably—I would say it is my best. The bootcamp one stands out to me only because I'm, you know, four-foot 11'' and we had to go do the O course (obstacle course), but we did the male's O course 'cause it was during our field training. And I remember the drill instructors telling us, "Hey, so this is how you're gonna do it." So they'd put a recruit on the bottom and you'd step on their back and you'd try to jump up. And of course it was my turn. So I was just being me and determined. So I just hit the wall and jumped over and I didn't need nobody. So after that they took it away. So it was actually the best moment for me, but probably not the girls behind me. So, that was probably my best. As far as the worst, I would have to say, even though I finished my hikes, those are probably the worst 'cause you'd end up at the very end taking off your flak jacket. And once you take off your flak jacket, your back is just like crumbling. But that would probably be the worst. It's just at the very end. 00:04:25.845 --> 00:04:29.035 What was your first assignment after basic training? 00:04:29.035 --> 00:05:11.035 My first duty station—and I say it tricked me because I went to Twentynine Palms. It was Combat Service Support Group 1. And during that timeframe, coming straight from bootcamp and doing all that training, going straight to Twentynine Palms, we spent a lot of time in the desert, right in the field. And I was able to—I wouldn't say play with dynamite, but we were able to use dynamite, right? And the M203 grenade launcher, the SAW (M249 Squad Automatic Weapon), the 50 cal.—and this is all we did when we were there in Twentynine Palms is the field time, field time, field time. So, it kind of tricked me because I thought that's all I was gonna do the rest of the time, but it wasn't (laughs). 00:05:11.035 --> 00:05:17.334 Did you recall your instructors while you were at Twentynine Palms? If so, what were they like? 00:05:17.334 --> 00:05:35.925 I don't recall my instructors from Twentynine Palms. I do remember my drill instructors that were there, and that was Sergeant Wilson was our senior, Sergeant Rackey, and then Sergeant Shepherd. 00:05:35.925 --> 00:05:48.014 Do you qualify—did you qualify with equipment such as vehicles, aircraft, radios, weapons? If yes, what was training with that equipment like? 00:05:48.014 --> 00:06:52.675 I think one of the trainings I got was driving a Humvee. That was interesting, being short, but I was able to do that. Obviously I trained with a lot of different weapons when I was in Twentynine Palms. The one that stands out to me the most was the M203 grenade launcher, simply because you put it on your shoulder and the first time it goes off, you're like, Oh my God, that hurt. The second time is worse. So I remember that. I remember training with grenades and having the instructors—if it was too close, they'd like, tackle you and throw you on the ground once you threw it. So I remember those incidents. Other than that, the trainings I went to, instructors training were—I was trained on giving classes and I was also trained on uniformed victim advocate, which was actually servicing service members who were sexually assaulted or any type of victims in that manner for military members. Those are the ones that I recall off the top of my head. 00:06:52.675 --> 00:06:57.524 Did you receive any promotions and could you tell me about them? 00:06:57.524 --> 00:07:47.485 Yes. I received promotions all the way up to Master Sergeant. The one that stands out to me the most at the beginning was Corporal because I got that meritoriously. So to me that was pretty awesome. After that, I got promoted. The other one that stands out to me as being on recruiting as a Staff Sergeant, and I picked up Gunny (Gunnery Sergeant) when I was out there. And the joke was, wow, as soon as the message board came out—my certificate was right after that—is they'd make a joke 'cause I was getting promoted first. And then of course Master Sergeant, that was my favorite promotion and that was because I received it when I was at the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion. And that was by far the most probably fun but also learning experience that I had in my Marine Corps career. 00:07:47.485 --> 00:07:56.105 What was the hardest part of the military lifestyle for you to adapt to? Why do you think it was? 00:07:56.105 --> 00:08:34.784 I would have to go back to—not bootcamp. Bootcamp wasn't the hardest, that's what I always heard—but I would have to say that after bootcamp was probably the hardest, when you first start. 'Cause you're so used to getting instructions on what to do. And once you join the Marine Corps, it's like nobody's telling you what to do. You have to make your own decisions. So whether you fall or you succeed, it's on you. So that would probably be the hardest. As far as the easiest, I think being away from home started off being hard, but the more time I served it was probably the easiest part is being away from home. 00:08:34.784 --> 00:08:41.075 What were your interactions like with people you encountered during your stateside service? 00:08:41.075 --> 00:09:06.183 One of the most popular or most eventful I guess one I'd hear was I'd tell somebody I was a Marine and they would kind of like, "You're a Marine?" I'm four-foot 11,'' so being—and petite—so people would always think like, "You're a Marine?" They couldn't believe it. But I think majority of the people that did see me, they always showed me respect and thanked me for my service. That was greatly appreciated. Those were the most common remarks. 00:09:06.183 --> 00:09:14.683 So now we're going to get into wartime service if it's applicable. What wartime conflicts were you a part of? 00:09:14.683 --> 00:09:23.125 I served under Operation Enduring Freedom. I was stationed in Camp Fallujah. 00:09:23.125 --> 00:09:25.174 And that's where, Camp Fallujah? 00:09:25.174 --> 00:09:26.815 Iraq. 00:09:26.815 --> 00:09:29.000 What are your recollections of that experience? 00:09:29.000 --> 00:10:01.195 It was from January 2004 to August of 2004. I would say that it was a lot of hours of working, and we provided a lot of support to the people that—to the individuals and Marines that were out there. A lot of needed support. And so even though we worked tireless hours, I believe it was worth it to make sure that it was for the safety of the Marines that were out there. 00:10:01.195 --> 00:10:07.445 What were your interactions like with local cultures and the people you encountered during deployment? 00:10:07.445 --> 00:10:33.154 The different cultures that I encountered, I think were all positive. I learned a lot, whether it was foods or different music that everybody listened to. Maybe different traditions—and of course values. So I think it was just something positive that I learned throughout my career, interacting and engaging with people of different cultures. 00:10:33.154 --> 00:10:42.565 Were you in combat, combat support, or combat service support roles? Or did the war zone make that designation irrelevant for you? 00:10:42.565 --> 00:11:33.475 No, I—like I said at the beginning, I was at Combat Service Support Group 1 and we did a lot of training out in the field. It was all about deploying and being in the field and preparing me. I also was with the 11th Marine Regiment. We were always in the field then, too. I was the lucky one. I think I was single till I was 29. And so I was—people might think it was a bad thing, but I thought it was a great thing that I was always picked first because I was single, so it was easier to send me. So I spent a lot of time learning a lot of the idea of being or actually training in the field in the desert, which prepared me, I think for Iraq—being out there in the heat and being away from everybody and living in tents and just transitioning from tent to building if necessary. So I think a lot of that prepared me for being out there. 00:11:33.475 --> 00:11:42.485 What kinds of friendships and comradery did you form while serving and with whom? 00:11:42.485 --> 00:12:40.044 I gained a lot of relationships, not only with the peers that were in my job but also that were connected to my job. Since I did logistics, I worked a lot with supply. I had a lot of relationships there. Different inspection teams would come out and inspect us, so I gained relationships, and I was taught a lot about our own MOS. One of the most valuable experiences and teachings that I learned—and interactions—was with—having relationships with Marines that were at the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion. It was mainly infantry, and there was just a few females there that you could probably count on one hand that were there. And I learned a lot as far as what they do, what they train, and what's needed. I did it—I did all their logistics for them. So it was important to know that they need all those supplies in order to train before they can even deploy it. 00:12:40.044 --> 00:12:47.683 How did you stay in touch with your family and friends? Did you choose to keep communication with them while deployed in Iraq? 00:12:47.683 --> 00:13:16.644 So I did a lot of interactions through the computer. I sent a lot of emails. We were able to make phone calls, so every so often I would be able to make a phone call home. I—at the time I was married and my son was only nine months old, so I was able to communicate with my husband a lot—not with him so much 'cause, you know, he really didn't talk—and with my mother. I think I communicated with her at least once a week to make sure she knew that I was safe. 00:13:16.644 --> 00:13:21.924 What did you do for recreation or when you were off duty in Iraq? 00:13:21.924 --> 00:13:55.575 I would say the few times that I was off—well, we were off probably daily for a little bit, whether it was lunch or in the evening before we walked back to our quarters. And I did walking, like, within the wall to make sure that we stayed safe, unless they otherwise stated not to. And it was usually during daylight. During the evening it was a little bit more difficult. So, I would say walking. And I watched a lot of DVDs—recorded DVDs—at night, of CSI (laughs). 00:13:55.575 --> 00:14:01.914 Do you recall any particularly humorous or unusual events while deployed in Iraq? 00:14:01.914 --> 00:14:38.315 Um, humorous—I would say being at the gym was probably the most humorous because you had everybody that used to run and stuff like that that wasn't able to would be in the gym working out. So you—the interesting and the funny part is watching everybody that wasn't used to and not knowing how were in there, learning how to work out. 'Cause you know, there were more runners but the gym people actually knew what they were doing and they would show us—Hey, this is how you work this body part. So I would think that was probably the funniest. 00:14:38.315 --> 00:14:45.034 Was there something that you did personally for good luck while deployed in Iraq? 00:14:45.034 --> 00:15:12.445 I wouldn't say that it has to do with Iraq, I would think general in my life, I've always said if it wasn't for bad luck, I would have no luck. So I've always believed in turning my bad luck into something. I believe things happen for a reason. So to me, if it looked like bad luck, it wasn't. It was meant to be and it's gonna turn out later on as something good. There's a reason why that occurred. So even though it could be considered bad luck, it was always my good luck. 00:15:12.445 --> 00:15:24.085 Now we're moving towards the end of service. Do you recall the day your service ended? Where were you, and when was your service ended? 00:15:24.085 --> 00:16:04.894 Well, on my last day—I say physical because the actual last day was at home because you take vacation. But on my last physical date, I had my big ceremony, something that I had been waiting for for years. I was on Camp Pendleton, California, on the green grassy lawn that's out there. I had the band come out and play. And I would tell you it—what I remember, it was a day full of gratitude and proud moments of being able to accomplish it. You know, I wasn't—I didn't just join the Marine Corps. I was able to retire, which says a lot for myself and where my background of where I came from. 00:16:04.894 --> 00:16:11.495 Did you return home after service or were you—where were you and where did you go? 00:16:11.495 --> 00:16:34.075 So, we had actually established a home, my husband and I, in California. My son was in school so we decided to stay. However, I did return home and visit family. And I still do—I still return and see them. But we thought it was important to keep our family here in California and have my son continue in the school he was in. 00:16:34.075 --> 00:16:41.174 How were you received by your family and community once you completed your time in the Marine Corps? 00:16:41.174 --> 00:17:07.605 I would say what I've noticed as far—with my family—is they're very accepting, respectful of me, my time and service. In fact, if ever they need something, I'm the person they call. They believe that I'm the person that is gonna find the answer. "She'll find it, she'll figure it out." They have so much confidence that anything they need that I can just look it up or read or learn about it and it'll be there (laughs). 00:17:07.605 --> 00:17:15.845 How did you readjust to civilian life? Did you work or did you go back to school? 00:17:15.845 --> 00:18:16.993 I took a month off is probably what I recall—I don't think I've stopped since then—to join—basically my son played soccer and I was the soccer traveling mom for a bunch of boys age seven to 17 basically. And I traveled all around the states and a couple of countries. I actually joined—started school in August after I retired, which is just a few months afterwards. And I believe that doing that—traveling and meeting different people and having a different type of non-structured life—helped me adjust into the community area, which I think all Marines need, right? We need to like decompress a little bit. And it actually helped, you know, running around with a bunch of teenage boys playing soccer and helping them out. And also I learned a lot at school. You know, I learned mindfulness. I learned empathy and stuff, and psychology, and as far as being a social worker, and I think that helped me a lot—readjust to the community. 00:18:16.993 --> 00:18:20.115 Did the G.I. Bill affect you? 00:18:20.115 --> 00:19:20.394 Oh wow. The G.I. Bill has had like an enormous—it played an enormous amount in my life. Not only was I able to go to school. I think that the G.I. Bill helped me by going to school and learning the different psychology parts and social work parts. It helped me align with the fact of what I wanted to be. Growing up I didn't have that many opportunities. So the option was the military, right? 'Cause we didn't have money to go to school or other things—any type of professional career. So it kind of linked with, you know, what I learned at school to what I wanted to become. And what it taught me was, Hey, I didn't have opportunities, but I took what was available. And there's individuals that may not join the military, but they don't have—they're not aware of other opportunities. And I think the G.I. Bill helped me learn that I wanna help others have other opportunities in whichever manner or whichever path they wanna take. 00:19:20.394 --> 00:19:26.125 Did you continue any friendships after service? And if so, for how long? 00:19:26.125 --> 00:19:54.875 Well, I have plenty of friendships that I keep. They're mainly online because, like you asked, did I go back home? No. But a lot of other individuals that were my friends and colleagues, they did go home. They did go back to Texas or Idaho or New York or wherever it was that they were originally from. And I stayed up in Cal State and California. And there are a few here that I still are in communication with, but mainly through like email and phone calls. 00:19:54.875 --> 00:19:57.434 Did you join any veteran organizations? 00:19:57.434 --> 00:20:10.025 Yes, I did. I joined the veterans organization here in San Marcos. And I think that was it. I think that's the only organizations that I've joined so far. 00:20:10.025 --> 00:20:21.855 How was—so now we're moving on to reflections. How has your service impacted your life, your community, your faith, and your family? 00:20:21.855 --> 00:22:35.944 I would have to say, if I start with me being a Hispanic female from a small town who didn't, like I said, didn't have many opportunities, I'm able to have better opportunities for education, financial security. I could tell you that the—my pension that I get actually helped me establish a foundation for the next generation. You know, we talk about generational wealth, and I think it starts with me. And, you know, I'm able to provide that for my son and then hope for his children, right? So I think that's the financial security. But not only that, the Marine Corps brought a lot of structure and values and stuff that you take in and you utilize not only in service but afterwards, whether it is education or whether it is a career path. And I think it provided a lot of value that has made me who I am, who I've become. As far as from my family, like I said, it's—my son has more opportunities than I had. He's able to attend school, he's able to use Chapter 35, what we have for his education. He used his ID card for many years going to the commissary when we were enlisted. And I believe the values and what I learned in the Marine Corps I was able to push onto him. And he has a lot of respect for others, and he doesn't take stuff for granted. I think it's based off what I learned in the service. And as far as for my family outside of that, I think it showed in the fact that I have two nieces that followed my footsteps into the Marine Corps. And I think what I showed them that they saw when they came to visit me and who I was and what I represented, it helped them say, "Hey, that's what I wanna be, that's what I wanna do." And the same thing for my son. My son didn't take the Marine Corps path, but he's like, "No, I need to be successful like my mom and my father"—'cause we're both military. So I think that's the impact that it had in my life, as far as my family. 00:22:35.944 --> 00:22:40.275 What are some of the life lessons you've learned from your military service? 00:22:40.275 --> 00:24:11.214 Hmm, life lessons. I've thought about this a lot, and I would say the most important life lesson that I got from the Marine Corps was how powerful an impact that an individual can have on somebody else. And in the Marine Corps, I recall so many times that I worked with my Marines—young Marines or even my peers—and, you know, we'd be doing a simple task or doing something to help one of the other companies or anything that we were doing, and I'd always have to tell 'em to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Look at what else is occurring. And they were able to do that, and they would even pass it on to somebody else. "You gotta look at the bigger picture." And I think sometimes they knew what that meant and what I was getting at. But the basis of it is that what you're doing now, the task you're doing now, affects the mission, what we're doing, maybe a deployment, but it also affects what you do in the future, right? Like what you're doing now, whether it's a goal, whether it's school, whether it's a task, learning discipline, right? Grit, right? You know, facing adversity? You take that along with you and it's gonna impact the rest of your life, whether it's in the service, out of service—and who you are, what you become, and how will people look at you. And I would say that that was my biggest learning lesson is that the impact that you have on somebody else could affect, you know, them down the road. 00:24:11.214 --> 00:24:20.025 What message would you like to leave for future generations who will view or hear this interview? 00:24:20.025 --> 00:26:26.075 So I'd have to start off with who I am, who I represent. And it has to be with, you know, gender, ethnicity, race, my background, right? And I would have to say that for someone who's looking at joining the service—I say Marine Corps, but you can join any service—and you are gonna gain so many opportunities to not only be successful, but to be accomplished, right? And I will reiterate, it's not just in service, it's afterwards. You know, how successful you can be in the future. How successful your family can be, your children, your grandchildren, right? So I would tell 'em that when you're thinking about this is, you can do it. Like, it's possible. So stay focused and look at, you know, if I can do it and being, you know, four-foot 11'', I think anybody else can do it with a little bit of hard work and determination. And the other part of the legacy—'cause I can't exclude my counterparts—I have to include everybody else that were male—diversity from gender, race, different ethnicities, different cultures—is that the value you gain from the Marine Corps is important for you to be, as far as a citizen of the United States, what you learn here, the values you gain, the friendships that you learn and engage in, is gonna make you that better person, that better citizen, a better father, a better mother, a better student, a better instructor, right? Because I think we teach people throughout our lifetimes, whether we're in a classroom or not. And I would say to everybody else that it's worth it. So the legacy I would like to leave is that for everybody else is that, "Hey, if you're determined and if you set your mind to do something, you can. You just, you know, gotta push through all the adversity sometimes, and the struggles, but it's doable." 00:26:26.075 --> 00:26:30.894 How did you become associated with the CSUSM campus community? 00:26:30.894 --> 00:27:41.704 I would say, the community that we're working with now, how I normally got associated with is through you, Jason. Like a lot of times, you would bring to light that, Hey, this is going on. And it was awesome to hear that there was somebody that was that dedicated to, you know, bringing some light into other service members with events and opportunities that were out there for them to engage with other veterans, right? And I would say a lot of it was through word of mouth. I mean, you weren't the only one. I mean, you for sure were one of the most important ones in my last two years, but I ran into a lot of veterans that were doing some good work and supporting other veterans, and I think that's why I picked also the career path I'm working with is social work and I am gonna work with the VA (Veterans Affairs) here in a couple of days. And I think working with a lot of veterans at CSUSM, I learned that, hey, service members need support no matter which branch of service it is. And it's important for us to be there for them and provide them with—whether we have more knowledge of the benefits that might be beneficial to them. 00:27:41.704 --> 00:27:56.000 So in conclusion, I'd like to say thank you for taking the time to share your recollections of military service. Is there anything you've always wanted to share about your service or veteran experience that you never have? 00:27:56.000 --> 00:29:32.644 Okay, I would say that one of the things that stands out to me was I remember being in bootcamp, and there's a lot of awards you get throughout the Marine Corps and bootcamp. You could get like first class PFT (Physical Fitness Test) or sharpshooter, highest shooter, right? And, one of the things that I recall the most is being a Molly Marine. You get voted by your peers on who was the most motivated and who was the one that was most engaged and supportive. And, by my peers and my platoon, I was chosen that—and the reason I bring that up is 'cause I remember this story and it was like funny. We were at the chow hall, and if anybody can remember being in the Marine Corps and leaving the chow hall, you always had the drill instructors yelling at you and like, "Hurry up, eat," you know? "You're done," you know, "You're done recruit." And I was always pushed on by my drill instructor to go in there and get everybody outta the chow hall. We're done, we need to be finished. So I did, right? You know, here I am yelling, and I'm a recruit. And being little, right? And this drill instructor—male drill instructor—came up to me and was like, got in my face, and of course he looked down, right? 'Cause I'm short. He's like, "What are you doing?" And like, just stopped me. And my drill instructor of course jumped in because you know, he didn't realize that I was doing what she had asked. But it was probably, one of the things that I like never told anybody as far as that's concerned. But I think that was one of the events that led me to being nominated as and picked as Molly Marine because of always being out there yelling, motivating, always being engaged and never like backing down from, you know, a task that was there. 00:29:32.644 --> 00:29:37.134 What do you wish more people knew about veterans? 00:29:37.134 --> 00:30:09.315 I would say that, as much as we've gained a lot of physical and mental toughness, that veterans are vulnerable. Veterans do need assistance and sometimes they may not seek it. Sometimes they will refuse to seek assistance. And it's important to continue to engage and look out for them and interact with them because a lot of them won't seek support because we're so used to being independent and strong—strong-minded, strong-willed. 00:30:09.315 --> 00:30:18.815 So last question. In your unveiling of the journey, what are the lessons learned from your military experience? 00:30:18.815 --> 00:31:32.154 I think one of the lessons learned—and if I could tell somebody who's just starting off right now—is get a journal. I have plenty of photos of things I did, but as I was going through this and looking at pictures and going through folders—oh my god, I did a lot. There was so many things that I experienced that I didn't write down. And, you know, 15, 20, 30 years from now—hopefully I'm still alive—I won't be able to recall those, and it would've been nice to know that, hey, yeah, you know what? You were out there SPIE (Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction) rigging at the bottom of a rope on a helicopter, right? With a unit of infantrymen because they're like, "Hey, you wanna join us?" Sure, let's go. Or I was on a raft platoon boat out in the middle of the ocean that isn't usually offered, but because I was ordering specific parts for them and I got them the parts at a certain timely manner they needed it, they asked me to join in. And those are just a couple of the instances that I remember of things that I was able to do. And I probably—well, I wish now that I would've recorded them somewhere so I could recall them later and maybe share those stories. 00:31:32.154 --> 00:31:37.654 Thank you for your time today. This concludes our oral history. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END ]]> https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives csusm.edu if you need reproductions made. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=BeachamDora_BeyerJason_2024-11-01_access.xml BeachamDora_BeyerJason_2024-11-01_access.xml https://archivesearch.csusm.edu/repositories/3/resources/19 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Beacham, Dora. Interview November 1st, 2024 Description An account of the resource Master Sergeant Dora Beacham served in the U.S. Marine Corps during Operation Enduring Freedom. Beacham was part of Combat Service Support Group 1 and the 11th Marine Regiment. She was deployed to Camp Fallujah, Iraq from January to August of 2004. As a Hispanic woman from a small town, Beacham reflected on how military service shaped her life and provided important opportunities. In this oral history interview, she described her family, education, and life lessons from military service. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-069 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024-11-01 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dora Beacham Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jason Beyer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Dora Beacham License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. <div id="dublin-core-license" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <p><a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span>https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/</span></a></p> </div> </div> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. San Diego Veterans History Initiative Subject The topic of the resource United States. Marine Corps United States. Marine Corps—Non-commissioned officers Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001-2014 Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island United States. Marine Corps—Military occupational specialties Victim advocates United States. Marine Corps. Advanced Infantry Training Battalion Educational benefits—United States Women soldiers United States. Department of Veterans Affairs Molly Marine (Symbolic figure) Hispanic Americans Camp Pendleton (Calif.) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Hondo (Tex.) South Carolina Norfolk (Va.) Twentynine Palms (Calif.) Iraq California Texas Idaho New York San Marcos (Calif.) Fallujah (Iraq) Community history San Diego Veterans History Initiative Women's experience https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/9f2c03d328b7a2764ecb18b7c98c5ba1.pdf 45257bd03df6b4dc94d0da8b823f204f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcripts Description An account of the resource Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Luevano, Dora. Interview transcript, November 6, 2025. Description An account of the resource Dora Luevano served as a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps. She was stationed at Camp Pendleton during the Vietnam War. Luevano worked in a warehouse and office, processing deceased servicemembers, collecting their personal effects, and writing letters to their family and loved ones. Luevano described her strict upbringing, immigration to the U.S. as a child from El Salvador, and decision to enlist in the Marine Corps. Luevano was forced out of military service for getting married and having a child, and she reflected on the harsh expectations and regulations that affected women in military service. She spoke about her 60-year marriage to her husband, whom she met in the Marine Corps, and their life together after military service. Luevano described how her civilian life was shaped by her upbringing, religion, military service, education, professional career, business ownership, and husband’s recent passing. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dora Luevano Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jason Beyer Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-11-06 Subject The topic of the resource United States. Marine Corps Pacific Bell Telephone Company Camp Pendleton (Calif.) Camp Lejeune (N.C.) California State University, San Bernardino Palomar College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Vietnam San Salvador (El Salvador) El Salvador United States San Francisco (Calif.) South Carolina New York Fallbrook (Calif.) Las Vegas (Nev.) California Palm Desert (Calif.) Indio (Calif.) Palm Springs (Calif.) Philippines Vista (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Dora Luevano License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LuevanoDora_BeyerJason_2025-11-6_transcript Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. San Diego Veterans History Initiative Community history San Diego Veterans History Initiative Veteran experience Women's experience Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Jason Beyer Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dora Luevano OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LuevanoDora_BeyerJason_2025-11-6.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 6.0 Luevano, Dora. Interview November 6th, 2025 00:00:00 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library oral history collection CSUSM csusm Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Veteran U.S. Marine Corps Corporal San Francisco (Calif.) San Salvador (El Salvador) Camp Pendleton (Calif.) Fallbrook (Calif.) Dora Luevano Jason Beyer Moving Image LuevanoDora_BeyerJason_2025-11-6.mp4 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/f521e4bb2ad98141aead0a88138f8bc3.mp4 Other video English 0 Introduction and Military Background Dora Luevano was a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. United States Marine Corps ; corporal ; Vietnam 0 54 Childhood and Immigration to the United States Luevano was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, where she lived in poverty and was raised by her grandmother. Her father immigrated to the U.S. and worked on shipyards. At age nine, Luevano was sent to live with her father and later was joined by her grandmother, who continued to help raise her. Luevano became a U.S. citizen and spent the rest of her childhood in San Francisco. She described her father as “extremely strict,” which motivated her to enlist in the Marine Corps after graduating from high school. San Salvador (El Salvador) ; United States ; San Francisco (Calif.) ; mesón ; mesones ; El Salvador ; school ; children ; sister ; grandmother ; father 0 271 Work, School, Family Life, and Military Enlistment Luevano described working multiple jobs after graduating from high school, yet she could not afford college tuition. Her father refused to sign required forms for her enlistment in the Marine Corps, so her grandmother signed the forms as her guardian. high school ; college ; tuition ; job ; Pacific Bell Telephone Company ; long distance operator ; Market Street (San Francisco) ; Marine Corps 0 439 Early Military Experience and Training Unlike most of her peers, Luevano enjoyed bootcamp and adapted to military life easily. She enjoyed marches and military training. Many of her peers went AWOL or struggled to complete tasks. Luevano was proud when she completed her training and believes she “made something” of herself despite the challenges of her upbringing. Her first assignment after basic training was in the 24 Area at Camp Pendleton, where she processed deceased servicemembers, collected their personal effects, and wrote letters to their family and loved ones. Most of the deceased were young Marines serving in the Vietnam War. Luevano met her husband at the warehouse she worked at. Her husband served in the Marines for 16 years, and the two of them were together for 60 years until his recent passing. According to Luevano, she would have happily continued a career in the Marine Corps, but contemporary rules forced her out of military service when she got married and had a child. bootcamp ; AWOL ; Absent Without Leave ; Reveille ; South Carolina ; drill instructor ; commanding officer ; San Salvador ; military ; Camp Pendleton (Calif.) ; 24 Area (Camp Pendleton) ; office ; deceased ; letter ; warehouse ; Vietnam ; husband ; Camp Lejeune (N.C.) ; Marine Corps ; corporal 0 914 Adapting to Military Life and Social Experiences Luevano adapted easily to taking orders in the military because of her strict upbringing. She says she loved her military service and “got along with everyone” at Camp Pendleton. Male Marines flirted with her, and female Marines teased her and called her “Boot.” Luevano says she made lots of friends, and her social skills helped her professional career. strict ; Camp Pendleton (Calif.) ; Navy ; Marine ; New York (United States) ; mess hall ; cancer 0 1137 Military Service During the Vietnam War Luevano described processing deceased servicemembers, many of whom were deployed to Vietnam and younger than 20 years old. She handled the deceased’s personal belongings to ensure that family members and loved ones would not be upset by anything they received. By the time Luevano was forced out of military service, the warehouse she worked in was filled with boxes of the deceased’s belongings. Vietnam ; California (United States) ; letters ; 24 Area ; warehouse ; office ; deceased 0 1266 End of Military Service and Transition to Civilian Life Luevano was forced out of the Marine Corps when she got married and had her first child. Her husband continued his military service, so she always felt close to military life. Her most difficult experience was living with her father and two children in San Francisco while pregnant with her third child and away from her husband, who deployed in Vietnam for 14 months. She was always worried that her husband would not return. Luevano described how she was received by friends and family after her military service. Her father was proud of her accomplishments as a Marine, mother, and business owner. Luevano is grateful to God and her military training for her success. married ; Fallbrook (Calif.) ; Las Vegas (Nev.) ; apartment ; pregnant ; child ; daughter ; Camp Pendleton (Calif.) ; San Francisco (Calif.) ; Vietnam ; husband ; family ; community ; barracks ; business ; Marine Corps ; gunnery sergeant ; gunny ; California (United States) 0 1739 Civilian Education and Work Experience Luevano used her G.I. Bill to graduate from CSU San Bernardino, and her husband graduated from the same university while serving in the Marine Corps. Luevano used her degree to find work as a rehab counselor. She eventually bought the company that she worked for and became financially successful. Later in life, Luevano and her husband sold their real estate and became missionaries in the Philippines for three years. They loved the Philippines but returned back to the U.S. when her husband’s health declined. husband ; college ; G.I. Bill ; Marine Corps ; California State University San Bernardino ; rehab counselor ; Palm Desert (Calif.) ; Indio (Calif.) ; Palm Springs (Calif.) ; real estate ; Philippines ; missionaries ; faith ; Vietnam 0 1956 Military Friendships and the Veteran Community The Luevanos maintained some military friendships. Her husband’s close friend, who was a Vietnam War veteran, recently committed suicide. Luevano says her husband stayed connected with his friends, but she was too busy with other responsibilities. Luevano is not a member of any veterans' organizations, but she is recognized by her church on Veterans Day. Marine Corps ; Vietnam ; suicide ; mental issues ; Las Vegas (Nev.) ; church ; Veterans Day ; Navy ; Army 0 2108 How Military Service Shaped Luevano's Life and Worldview Luevano says that military service disciplined her and taught her to finish any task that she started. She always worked hard to achieve her goals and support her family. Luevano also spoke about her husband who recently passed away, her grief, and how his passing has shaped her life today. Marine Corps ; AWOL ; Camp Lejeune (N.C.) ; training ; college ; waitress ; Navy ; school ; Camp Pendleton (Calif.) ; Starbucks 0 2323 Message for Future Generations Luevano wants future generations to know that they must join the military with good intentions, because the Marine Corps will not be an “escape hatch.” Military service requires discipline and commitment. She shared some experiences she has had mentoring children, including a neighbor and a young girl from her church. Luevano notes that some young people feel academically entitled to excellent grades that they do not merit. She wants to see young people work hard and be successful. apartment ; church ; boy ; girl ; military ; Marine Corps ; college ; Palomar College (Calif.) ; United States ; volunteer 0 2595 Life Lessons from Military Service Luevano reflects on war movies and how servicemembers sacrifice their lives for a cause. She thinks many young people do not know the cost of freedom and what veterans have sacrificed. Luevano says, “And people lay their lives down for what they believe in in order to keep that to the next generation.” Veterans Day ; movie ; Band of Brothers ; World War I ; World War II ; Vietnam ; Vice President ; JD Vance ; Camp Pendleton 0 2824 Experience with the Veterans History Project Luevano connected with the Veterans History Project at CSUSM through a friend who invited her to an event. North San Diego County ; Vista (Calif.) 0 Oral history Dora Luevano served as a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps. She was stationed at Camp Pendleton during the Vietnam War. Luevano worked in a warehouse and office, processing deceased servicemembers, collecting their personal effects, and writing letters to their family and loved ones. Luevano described her strict upbringing, immigration to the U.S. as a child from El Salvador, and decision to enlist in the Marine Corps. Luevano was forced out of military service for getting married and having a child, and she reflected on the harsh expectations and regulations that affected women in military service. She spoke about her 60-year marriage to her husband, whom she met in the Marine Corps, and their life together after military service. Luevano described how her civilian life was shaped by her upbringing, religion, military service, education, professional career, business ownership, and husband’s recent passing. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:02.544 --> 00:00:33.195 My name is Jason Beyer, and I'm a graduate of CSUSM (California State University San Marcos). Today is Thursday, November 6th, 2025, and we're conducting this interview in Vista, California with veteran Dora Luevano. Also present is photographer Vyanh Vo. This oral history will help preserve the lived experiences of United States military veterans. Please state your full name. 00:00:33.195 --> 00:00:37.353 Dora Lydia Luevano. 00:00:37.353 --> 00:00:39.064 Your branch of service. 00:00:39.064 --> 00:00:41.265 United States Marine Corps. 00:00:41.265 --> 00:00:43.725 The highest rank that you attained. 00:00:43.725 --> 00:00:47.265 Ah, I hate to say this. Corporal (laughs). 00:00:47.265 --> 00:00:52.125 Please state the war that was happening during your time in service. 00:00:52.125 --> 00:00:54.524 Vietnam. 00:00:54.524 --> 00:01:01.645 Alright, so now we're gonna begin with the introduction portion of the interview. Where were you born? 00:01:01.645 --> 00:01:23.155 I was born in San Salvador, Central America. I came to the United States when I was nine years old. My dad worked for the shipyards in San Francisco, and he arranged it legally for me to come and live here and go to school here. 00:01:23.155 --> 00:01:29.004 What was life like for you when you were in El Salvador? 00:01:29.004 --> 00:03:20.405 Oh, goodness. I was extremely poor. I was raised by my grandmother, and we lived in a section of the country that was—they call 'em "el mesón"—mesones—which is like government housing only nothing like a government—they're mud huts and with a little barbecue pit on the outside for her to cook. A lot of times we didn't have any money for food. That's why my father decided to come to the United States was to take care of me. And so it was—I never went back to El Salvador. I made my life here and I became a US citizen. And I am a patriot through and through. I absolutely love, love the United States. It's been so good to me. It's been good to my whole family. I have six children—not six children—I have three daughters, six grandkids. And they know nothing what poverty is. They're very successful. They have careers. They have degrees. Everything that my husband and I wanted for them, they have become. They're awesome children, daughters. And that wouldn't have happened if I would've lived in El Salvador. You know, I had a sister and I'm pretty sure she's dead by now in El Salvador. So—I could go on, but then it's depressing. Let's go to the good stuff (laughs). 00:03:20.405 --> 00:03:27.145 What was it a hard transition for you when you were in El Salvador and then you came to the United States? Was it a really hard transition for you? 00:03:27.145 --> 00:04:31.004 It was, because I left my grandmother behind, and I came to live alone with my dad who had married. And I didn't know—I met my dad for the first time when I came here when I was nine, 'cause he left me when I was one or two years old. And so I—it was difficult. So my dad sent for my grandmother and brought her over so that she could help to continue to raise me. And I lived in San Francisco all my life. So, San Francisco is divided into sections—my dad did well financially, so he had a nice home. But I had to learn how to be his daughter, because I didn't know him, and my dad was extremely strict, which is why eventually I joined the Marine Corps (laughs) because too much strictness. I graduated from high school and it was—I just wanted to fly. 00:04:31.004 --> 00:04:37.000 What were you doing before you joined the Marine Corps? Like, did you have a job in school or— 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:38.264 —Yeah— 00:04:38.264 --> 00:04:41.000 —were you—was it family life or what was your job like in school—high school? 00:04:41.000 --> 00:07:19.144 When I finished high school, my father said that he would pay for me to go to college. He would give me a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars don't pay no tuition. So I decided I would look for a job. So I worked in a jewelry store. I worked as—in the beginning of computers where they used to have cards with punch holes in them—and I did that. But I couldn't find my place in life. I couldn't—I didn't have a mother, and my grandmother was too old. So I didn't know what to do with myself. So my last job was for Pacific Bell (Pacific Bell Telephone Company) as a long distance operator. They hired me and I worked the night shift, and I still was not happy. I kept thinking, I know I can do better than this. So one day I was coming down Market Street, getting off my shift and going home. And I saw the sign that says, "Join the Marines and see the world." So I thought, I'm gonna do that. So I went the next day, and I said, "I wanna join the Marine Corps." And I said, how soon can I leave? (Luevano laughs.) And they laughed and they said, "Well, as soon as you get your papers for permission from—'cause I was 18—not quite 18, but they wanted the signature from my father. So I gave the form to my dad to sign it, and my father took it and tore it up and said, "I will never approve of this." So I said, "Okay." So I went back to the recruiter and I said, "You know, I am sorry, my dad feels this way. Can I have another form?" (Luevano laughs.) And he goes, "Do you have another guardian?" I said, "My grandma." And I had taught my grandmother how to write, because my grandmother was totally illiterate. She didn't know how to write in those days. She came from the 1800s. So she didn't—she died when she was 101. So my grandmother—I explained to her my desire, and I wanna join the military. And my grandmother said, "Whatever makes you happy, mija." So she's—I held her hand while she wrote her name on the form. I took it over there, and within a month I was gone. And I never looked back. It was the most awesome experience for me. I loved bootcamp! (Luevano laughs.) 00:07:19.144 --> 00:07:28.884 So let's talk about that—your early military experience. What do you remember about your first days in the military in bootcamp? 00:07:28.884 --> 00:11:02.595 In bootcamp. Well, I saw a lot of them go AWOL (Absent Without Leave). I would wake up in the morning at four—whatever the bugler he—I can't remember what hour, but it was extremely—it was still dark outside the—and Reveille would start—and I would look to my right or my left sometimes, and the bunk would be empty. And they had told us when we joined, when we went to bootcamp, that a lot of people try to go AWOL. And there was alligators. This is South Carolina, but they'd try to scare me. It didn't scare me—no. I used to love it. I loved the Marine Corps. One time I was marching, I—you know there was—we were out in the field and marching, and I kept smiling the whole time. And the D.I. (drill instructor) got mad at me and said, "Are you making fun of me?" I said, "No, sir. I love this. You know, I love the marching." (Luevano laughs.) I didn't know military talk or whatever. So he made me—I made him so mad that he sent me to the CO (Commanding Officer). And I went before the CO. And he said, "I hear you're always smiling. Why is that? Are you making fun of the military?" I said, "Ma'am, I'm smiling because I'm so happy to be here." She couldn't believe it. She told me, "Get outta here." And I went back and I finished. I was determined that I had found my niche. A lot of them went AWOL. Even when we graduated—a lot of them—I remember it was so hot. South Carolina was very hot. And, I saw a lot of—some of the girls fainted. I could hear them "plop, plop, plop," you know? And I thought, I will never faint. I'm going to get my wings or whatever, you know. I'm gonna officially be in. And I did. I remember when she put my insignia on the—and I was so happy that I had made something of myself when I had no mom, literally no dad, and a old grandma who said, "Do whatever makes you happy." And, I just, I fit. I found out later that my dad had joined the military when he was a young man in San Salvador. So I figured I'd carry the genes in my veins that made me wanna love it. And if the rules, the regulations, and the laws that weren't in effect then, I would've reenlisted. I was doing really good. I was already a corporal and I—but in those days, if you got married and you had a baby, you had to get out. So they forced me out, you know, out of the military. And I often thought I had to go back and knock on the door and say, "I hear your laws have changed. Can I join?" (Luevano laughs.) I called them. I told them I wanted to work as a counselor, and they told me I was too old. So it's a pleasure and honor to tell somebody my life, you know? 'Cause I am getting a little old—(Luevano laughs)—as you can tell. But I don't feel old. I can still do a couple of miles every day, you know. So. 00:11:02.595 --> 00:11:06.725 What was your first assignment after basic training? Where did you go after basic training? 00:11:06.725 --> 00:13:43.683 They sent me to Camp Pendleton in the 24 Area. And it's still there. I went and looked through the window one day. Everything's still the same. They put me to work there in the office. And I processed all the deceased that were the young men that were killed in the war. I did the letters to the parents, to the boyfriends, or whatever the letter needed to go. It was my responsibility along with two other Marines—(unintelligible) Marines—that we handle all that. And we would go in the warehouse and look at the personal effects of all these young men. We would go through them and make sure that everything was well. That the parent or the wife wasn't gonna receive something that was be embarrassing to the soldier. So we would—and make sure that their—the person of their wedding bands and their—whatever they had on them when they were killed—that it would be properly processed so that the parents would not have further grief because of something they received. Yeah. So it was us who were responsible for that. And I did that for the two years that I worked there. And that's—well my husband was coming back from Vietnam. He wasn't my husband then. He was nothing. He was just a young man that was coming to work in the warehouse. He had just come back from Vietnam, and that's where he was assigned. And I looked at him and I thought, what a handsome man. And there's a question in your questionnaire that says, "Did you make any lasting relationships out of your time in the service?" And he was lasting. We lasted 60 years together. He went on to stay in the Marine Corps. He was in for 16 years. So I felt like I was still part of that, because wherever he got orders—we got orders to go to Camp Lejeune—of course, I went with him. So his life—I lived my life through him, and he passed away last year. (Luevano's voice becomes shaky.) My best friend is the army of heaven now. (Luevano pauses and her eyes tear up.) 00:13:43.683 --> 00:13:58.000 Do you recall—like, backing up to your time in bootcamp—do you recall any of your instructors? Or, while you were at Camp Pendleton, do you recall any leaders who had a lasting impact on you? 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:48.565 I loved the instructor in bootcamp. His name is Sergeant Ortiz. Yeah. He had big front teeth. And, I loved marching. And even after we got out, my husband would line up my daughters—our three daughters—and we'd go marching (laughs). And that's stupid. But when you join the military, it's almost like it becomes a part of your life, you know? So Sergeant Ortiz was someone I never forgot. And then there was a sergeant—sergeant—he was a lieutenant—Lieutenant Bowling—at the 24 area. He was very fair, and he was easy and very nice to work with. Yeah, I never forgot his name. Lieutenant Bowling. 00:14:48.565 --> 00:14:54.250 What—so you said you reached the rank of corporal before you got out— 00:14:54.250 --> 00:14:55.000 —Yeah. 00:14:55.000 --> 00:14:59.225 Was that a big milestone for you? 00:14:59.225 --> 00:15:14.115 For me it was because I knew I was gonna be getting out. And I felt like with each rank that I was proving to myself—yes, you are good at this. You know? 00:15:14.115 --> 00:15:26.424 What part of military life came naturally or felt easiest for you? 00:15:26.424 --> 00:16:14.784 (Luevano pauses for thought.) Taking orders, I guess, because my father was so totalitarian and strict in his mannerism. He never abused me or anything, he just was very cold and he was always trying to make a living so hard. He worked in—the shipyards is hard work. I understand now that he did love me, you know. But he was full of rules and regulations. Never any love, just rules and regulations. And I think it prepared me for the Marine Corps because when they gave me orders, I received them. I took 'em. I didn't see no reason why I shouldn't do that, you know. Because they know what's best. And so that would answer that, I think. (Luevano chuckles.) 00:16:14.784 --> 00:16:25.000 How did you interact with others while stationed stateside? Like either at Camp Pendleton or previous bootcamp. Like how were you—how was your interactions? What were they like? 00:16:25.000 --> 00:17:05.204 I loved it. I love to dance. My grandson yesterday—he was in the Navy—a traitor, he joined the Navy! But he sent me an oldie-but-goodie song on my phone yesterday. And he said, "This is for your birthday, grandma. Your birthday is coming up." And he said—he doesn't let me get depressed because he says, "The Marines don't get depressed." So, yeah—but what was the question? I forgot. 00:17:05.204 --> 00:17:11.164 It was asking how—what were your interactions like when you were at Camp Pendleton? 00:17:11.164 --> 00:18:57.144 Oh! I got along with everyone. I used to love (laughs)—I loved the male Marines, because they had cars and they would let me—and I was—I guess I was kind of cute when I was young (smiles), so a lot of them wanted to get married. One said, "I'll take you to New York. My parents live in New York, let's—" you know. And I said, "I don't wanna get married. I just wanna be where I'm at, you know." But in those days we were a little bit more strict with our morals. So it was always—it was for the—just being a way to laugh. And I would make friends with a cook at the mess hall. And we had a young Marine—a female marine—who discovered she had cancer. And she—they sent her home to die. And there was another—they used to call me "Boot." The women Marines would call me "Boot." And I loved the mess hall. I loved their food (laughs). So they would always ask me, "Bring me something, Boot." And after a while I got tired of doing that. But I made a lot of friends. I love people. And that's why I did very well in my professional career later on in life, because I sincerely love and care for people, you know? And so I never left with anybody being angry with me, or I just assumed you're a human being. You make mistakes like everybody else does, you know? 00:18:57.144 --> 00:19:04.000 So now we're getting on to wartime. I know you said you never deployed and you never went to Vietnam— 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:05.265 —No— 00:19:05.265 --> 00:19:33.404 —But you served in the Marine Corps while the conflict in Vietnam was happening. You said that your role in the Marine Corps was, as service members that had passed away from the war were coming back to California and like in caskets, your role was to make sure that they were received by their family members with nothing that would upset the family. Did that take a toll on you over the long run? 00:19:33.404 --> 00:20:48.904 I think it did, because their personal effects that came in the box represented who that individual was. And by the things that they own—and it also told me how old they were. They were just kids. Now when I look back, they were just 18-year-old boys—or 19, 20—and they were gone, you know? And so I would read their letters to their wives—which we were required to do that—to go through their stuff and make sure that the wife didn't get a letter from a girlfriend somewhere else. So we would read their letters and stuff. And so it is almost like I was reading the life of each individual soldier that came through that office. When I first got stationed there, at the 24 Area, we worked in a huge warehouse. And the warehouse was empty when I started. And by the time I left, within the two years, that warehouse was full to the top with boxes. 00:20:48.904 --> 00:20:50.000 Of deceased? 00:20:50.000 --> 00:21:06.983 (Luevano nods affirmatively.) Deceased. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They hadn't yet caught up to ship them to their parents—they were behind. And so the warehouse was packed with boxes. Yeah. 00:21:06.983 --> 00:21:19.664 So let's begin to talk about your transition out of service. Do you remember the day your service ended? And please describe what that was like. 00:21:19.664 --> 00:23:17.644 You know, I don't remember it at all because I was newly married. I was newly married and we had just found our first apartment in Fallbrook. And we found an apartment—a duplex, they were called then. And I moved in there. My husband and I got married in Las Vegas, and we moved to Fallbrook 'cause it was the cheapest place to live. And so I don't remember anything but the fact that I was starting another new life, you know? Which is being—living in an apartment. And then I found out I was pregnant. And I had my first child while we were living in Fallbrook. My daughters were all born—except for the last one—were born in Camp Pendleton at the hospital. My last one was born in San Francisco, 'cause my husband was in Vietnam again, and I was by myself. And so I—that was extremely hard for me. To be pregnant with two other children and my husband being gone. And he drove me to San Francisco at my father's house, and I stayed there and I cried and cried because it was too hard. I felt I couldn't raise my daughters by myself. He was gonna be gone 14 months, and didn't know if he would've come back, you know? So those were difficult years. That's why when people say to me, "Thank you for your service," I receive it because I felt I deserve that. (Luevano's voice gets shaky.) You know, so— 00:23:17.644 --> 00:23:31.000 It's interesting hearing your story as a corporal in the Marine Corps and then the wife's perspective after you got out while your husband was on his second deployment in Vietnam. 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:32.000 Yeah. 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:34.000 And you had three kids at that time, you said? 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:34.539 Yeah. 00:23:34.539 --> 00:23:37.775 And how long was he deployed for? 00:23:37.775 --> 00:23:39.733 14 months. 00:23:39.733 --> 00:23:42.934 And so you just stayed in San Francisco that whole time? 00:23:42.934 --> 00:23:49.644 The last one, yes, I stayed there. The other two, where was I? 00:23:49.644 --> 00:23:49.962 Camp Pendleton? 00:23:49.962 --> 00:24:25.825 Oh! I stayed with one of his best friends. His wife was also pregnant. And so, I stayed there until I had went into labor, you know? And then the other one—uh, Maria, where was she? Oh, she was born in the hospital in Camp Pendleton. I get my days a little bit mixed up with that, 'cause the three of them are a year apart. He would come home and get me pregnant and then he'd leave. But he told me he planned it that way. (Luevano chuckles.) 00:24:25.825 --> 00:24:35.545 How were you received by your family or your community after you got out? Like, was your dad there to receive you and celebrate with you after getting out? 00:24:35.545 --> 00:27:10.505 My dad regretted it, because he saw me do everything to be good as a Marine. And he was proud of me. He became proud of me. And one day I was—toward the end of my tour—I was at the barracks. And they told me I had a visitor, and it was my dad. And my dad brought me a gift. To this day, I can't figure out what made him do that. He brought me a sewing machine (laughs). And he said, "In case you have to sew your uniforms, I brought you a sewing machine." And he was proud of me that I was able to be a mom, a Marine, and also work—and eventually work and own a business, you know? The Lord—God has been very good to me. I have—at my age have accomplished a lot more than people realize. I've been everywhere. I've done quite a number of things. And I attribute that, first, to God for him being so faithful to me. And second, to the Marine Corps. I think they made me not be a quitter. Their training helped me a lot, you know? Even though Sergeant Ortiz might have thought he wasn't teaching me much by marching, I can still pivot (laughs). So he taught me a lot by the discipline. And when he would yell at me—and he would, 'cause they all—seemed like they all know how to yell and scream at my ear. "Did you hear what I said, Boot?" You know (Luevano chuckles). But they taught me a lot. Taught me things that I want my grandkids to do in their lives. To handle life that way as well. And they've pretty much done that. 'Cause my grandkids have done well, you know? All of them. They've done very well. You know, it takes discipline to do that. I said, "I never wanna see you—visit you in prison. I wanna go to your graduation." And they've done that. They've done— 00:27:10.505 --> 00:27:16.825 Was it—what was it like adjusting back to civilian life for you? Was it a hard transition? 00:27:16.825 --> 00:28:59.625 No, because then my husband was still in the military. He was still a Marine. So I'd never really made that transition. The transition that was hard is when he got out. Because he was a gunny (gunnery sergeant), and now he was—he got a job at General Dynamics sweeping the floors. And he kept his uniform in the closet in case he changed his mind and wanted to go back in. But he had to learn how to mop the floor as good as when he was a gunnery sergeant. He was a good marine. And but it was difficult. That transition, I think, was the hardest for the both of us, because he got out and by the time we reached California we only had $50 between us. And we went to live temporarily with his mom and dad while he figured out, "Where do I find a job?" 'Cause he joined when he was a kid too. He was 18 years old, I think, when he joined the Marine Corps. So he was just a young man. And now he was an older man and had family to support and no assistance from anyone. His parents were not very helpful. And it was hard. Even now, I didn't realize how hard that was, but it was extremely difficult for the two of us to adjust to. Because there was nobody there to cheer you on. Nobody there to help you, you know? And I'm sure they don't do that anymore. They have a lot more to offer the young Marines when they get out. 00:28:59.625 --> 00:29:08.234 Did you go receive a higher education after you got out? Or did you go straight into the workforce? Or did you—were you— 00:29:08.234 --> 00:32:36.744 When my husband—while still in the Marine Corps—he enrolled in a program that the Marine Corps allowed him to go to college, and they would pay for it. And as long as he kept a B average. So while he was there, I decided, well, if he's gonna go to college, I am too. So I got my GI Bill. He was still in the Marine Corps, but I was out so I used my GI Bill to go back, and I graduated from Cal State San Bernardino (California State University San Bernardino). Both of us graduated at the same time. And then he went back into the service because he was still in the service. He just didn't wear a uniform. But, we both got our degrees, and it really—the degree that I received—helped me a lot because it got me to the next step, which is to work. I got a degree in liberal arts and minor in psychology. And so I was able to work as a rehab counselor. And if I didn't have a degree, I wouldn't have gotten that job. Eventually I bought that company, and I changed it from Genesis to New Beginnings. In my office—I had three offices—in Palm Desert, Indio, and Palm Springs. And I loved it. My husband eventually, by that time we were out of the Marine Corps—out of any associations with them at all—just being civilians, you know. And then after that, I worked—sold real estate, and then finally I became a—my husband and I became missionaries, and we went to live in the Philippines. And we lived there for three years, but we had been visiting the Philippines for eight years before that. And we sold everything. And we sold our—we had horses. We had financially done well, But we laid it down because our commitment was to God first and then our own lives. And it was lovely. It was as hard as the Marine Corps. It was hard as bootcamp. And but my faith just said it. This is what I like to do. And my husband loved it. He absolutely—I guess he thought he was in Vietnam again, because Philippines is all jungle. And so I guess it was no difference between that and him being in Vietnam. And he loved it. You know, I have pictures of him going across a river. Just until eventually he got sick—he started getting, not feeling well. And eventually we came back to the States. And then I just saw his life slowly deteriorate. His health—it's been a good life. 00:32:36.744 --> 00:32:43.744 Did you maintain any of your friendships from the time you were in service after you got out of service? 00:32:43.744 --> 00:32:44.785 Did we, what? 00:32:44.785 --> 00:32:47.025 Did you maintain any of the friendships you made? 00:32:47.025 --> 00:34:18.355 We had one. His name was Lieutenant Daniel Boone. That was his real name. And my husband and him were high school buddies. And when Gus joined the Marine Corps, Danny joined the Marine Corps as well and became a lieutenant. Unfortunately, about four years ago, he committed suicide. He started having a lot of mental issues. He was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam as well. So he became depressed. And my husband—I was afraid that that idea that his best friend was now dead would give him ideas. But he said he was too chicken to take his life. So but we had another friend, Larry Talend, and he moved to Las Vegas in that area, and that's why we got married over there. And he was my husband's best man. And we kept those friendships. And Gus used to love—we went—some of them, he went to look 'em up and touch base with them once, but then people get busy with their lives. And I never did. I was too busy being all those other roles that I was playing. So no, that was about it. Yeah. 00:34:18.355 --> 00:34:25.684 Have you joined any veteran organizations or stayed involved in the veteran community? 00:34:25.684 --> 00:35:08.664 Only through church. On Veteran's Day or whatever, they make me stand up (laughs). And I never wanna stand up because I always—I'm embarrassed that I'm—that an old lady—that they would see me as a Marine. But inside I am. I think Marines are gutsy. I think that they're a different type of breed than your regular—no offense if you're in the Navy or Army or whatever—but Marine Corps's different. Yeah. 00:35:08.664 --> 00:35:17.664 So let's move on to reflections. How has your military service shaped who you are today? 00:35:17.664 --> 00:38:43.394 Oh, goodness. I could shout and yell at that question because absolutely! Next to my faith in God, the Marine Corps did what my dad was trying to instill in me without the anger, you know? It disciplined me. It—too many people quit when it gets tough. They either commit suicide or they take the easy way out. And I never did. And I know it was because the Marine Corps taught me that. When I said, "I'm not going AWOL. I'm going to make it through the ceremony." And when they sent me to Camp Lejeune for some further training, I went. And I finished—I was a good—I did what I was supposed to do. And so the Marine Corps shaped me that when I went to college and I was working as a waitress at the same time that I'm going to college to make extra money to raise my family. And I finished it. It taught me to start and finish. And I say that to my grandkids. He couldn't find—my grandson—he was unemployed for almost a year. And I said, "Jeremiah, don't you quit. We don't quit." And that, "You were in the Navy. That's your problem, but you need to finish what you start." And he did. He's in college, but he went back to school. (A dog is whimpering and can be heard in the background.) He got a job. He's computer literate. I mean—he's an awesome—Jeremiah's an awesome kid. But it's that principle. Too many young people, when the going gets tough, they want somebody to give them an A when they haven't earned an A, you know? And I'm not saying everyone's like that, but I believe that (Luevano looks down and speaks to her dog)—no Gunny. He was—don't start, don't throw it (Luevano laughs). Thank you. (Luevano looks back up. The dog stops whimpering.) He wants attention. So it's that—it's that thing. Even now I feel like quitting because now I'm alone and the love of my life is gone. I'll see him again. But sometimes I think, why don't I just go home? Why don't I just die? When I sit here by myself, instead of him being there saying, "Let's go for a drive, honey." You know what his concept of going for a drive was? Go to Camp Pendleton (laughs). He would drive to Camp Pendleton. We used to go to the Camp Pendleton at least once a week to go shopping. We just walk around and go to Starbucks there and have a cup of coffee. And he would park in the handicap section, and he would watch—One day he got mad 'cause the grounds by one of the office buildings was full of weeds. (Dog whimpering starts again, louder.) And he said, "I wish they would let me go in there and trim all those weeds. You know, it doesn't look good for the Marine Corps to have weeds like that." But it affected us. And I really believe that when I get to heaven, I'm gonna wear a uniform (laughs). And I wanna ride a horse (laughs). 00:38:43.394 --> 00:38:54.945 What message would you want to leave for future generations who may watch or hear this interview? 00:38:54.945 --> 00:41:36.594 (Dog barks.) Excuse me. Gunny! Here. (Luevano reaches down, takes a ball from the dog, and puts the ball on the table next to her.) No. Yesterday I had a young man that is getting ready to move out of this apartment. They're, I think, buying a home or they're moving out of the area. He's 12 years old. And I've made an impression on him in some way because he comes to visit. He's as big as you are. He's tall! Young boy. He's got the sweetest heart. And he was telling me he was moving and that he was sorry he wasn't gonna be able to come and see me as often. And I told him, it's perfectly okay. But that I gave him basically what I'm telling you right now, "You're gonna do well in life, son. You're gonna do well because you have such a kind heart." But he wants to lift weights 'cause he said, "I need to lose some weight." I said, "Just be disciplined. Just start something and finish it. You know?" And it's the same thing I told my grandkid. Just finish it. Start something and finish it unless you have something good to replace it with. So it—I think for the next generation, for the way that—I seem to attract them, I guess, 'cause I look like a sweet grandma or something (laughs). I like to—they are so sweet! And I love imparting something of what I know to them. There was a young girl that had run away from home. She was at church and she was thinking of joining the military. I said, "You do that, but you go in with the right motives. If you go into the service with the wrong motive as an escape hatch, it won't work 'cause Marine Corps will not be escape hatch for you in a good way. You can make it a good thing by having the right motives and the right frame of mind. And to be disciplined enough that when it's going gets tough, you get going and you finish it. You know?" And she decided to go back home and not join the military, which I was glad 'cause she wasn't military material. But she needed to go home and make things right with her parents. So I don't know if all that is what you want. 00:41:36.594 --> 00:41:43.105 What do you wish more people understood about veterans? 00:41:43.105 --> 00:43:15.704 You know, there was a—when I took my economics class in college, there's a thing—this is—there's no such thing as free lunch. And I think for a lot of them, they think it's free lunch. I have a very good friend. She's a professor and she teaches at Palomar College. And she was telling me that a lot of her students, when they don't work for it. And they demand an A, but yet they don't show up for class and they don't do their homework. And it scares me for the United States. I love this country. And, with that kinda attitude, I wouldn't want them in my foxhole because they don't wanna work. You know? And I'm not saying all of them, because that's all inclusive. It's not all like that. There's still a lot of people out there that, like you, are being successful in your life with your family, with the things that you volunteer for. You know? So I think that's—if I could impart that to them, finish your homework. You know, that old thing? (Luevano laughs.) "Mommy, I finish my homework." "Did you finish your homework?" "I don't think so." "Go back and finish your homework." 00:43:15.704 --> 00:43:23.554 If you were to reflect on the journey of your service, what themes or life lessons emerge? 00:43:23.554 --> 00:43:24.704 Tell me again. 00:43:24.704 --> 00:43:32.954 If you were to reflect on your journey and your time in the Marine Corps, what themes or life lessons emerge? 00:43:32.954 --> 00:43:33.875 What themes? 00:43:33.875 --> 00:43:50.000 Yeah. Or life lessons. 00:43:50.000 --> 00:47:04.385 You know, I love watching war movies. My husband and I loved when there's Veterans Day and they show around the clock war movies, and we would watch 'em all. And the thing that I liked the best is when they're marching—like the Band of Brothers movies. You know, the series of them? We watch those movies a number of times. And the one thing I saw in the Band of Brothers is that, as they're going through a particular area that's jungle or whatever, and they're on their way to a spot where they will see maybe the end of life or they're gonna see a war episode in their lives that is scary. They're running through the jungle. They're running—they're gonna go and die. And yet they're running to it. They, you know what I mean? They're running to it. They're not afraid of it. They know they have to. Maybe they're gonna give their lives in that destination where they're going, but they're doing it because there's a reason why they're doing it. And it's for our country. It's for the people. It's for what we will stand for. And a lot of young people don't know the—that's the question you asked. They don't know that freedom costs. They have no idea. They don't know what World War I, II is or Vietnam. And they don't even know where Vietnam is. And they don't know that we didn't acquire all of this. My husband used to call it "the Big PX." They don't know that all that we have, people lay their lives for it. You see them—they're without legs or they were—a bomb went off where they were at and they lost their limbs. And you just switch the channel. Like, and they did it for you and I, you know? And people lay their lives down for what they believe in in order to keep that to the next generation. And I wanna leave a legacy to my grandchildren. "My grandmother was a tough marine," they say. I wanna leave that for them because that's what life requires of us, is to put our boots on and run that trail. Or I saw a picture of Vice President Vance (JD Vance) marching with the Marines. I wanted to cut it out and put it in a frame, because he's running with all the Marines up this trail. And Camp Pendleton is known for those hills. And my husband used to say, "See those hills, honey? I ran those hills." Every time we go by there, he would tell me the same thing. I said, "Honey, how many times do you have to tell me you ran those hills." But that's what life is. Isn't it a race to finish? To finish well? Yeah. 00:47:04.385 --> 00:47:11.715 How did you become connected with the North San Diego County community, like here in Vista? 00:47:11.715 --> 00:47:51.295 Through a friend. You and I have a mutual friend that works at the college. And she invited me last year, and I literally lit up when I saw what it was. 'Cause she didn't—she didn't fully understand what it was that we were all all gonna be doing. And so when I went to the event last year, that's the first I ever heard of it, you know? And it thrilled my heart. It was like water to a dying flower, you know? So that's how I knew about it. Otherwise I wouldn't have known. 00:47:51.295 --> 00:47:56.885 Thank you again for sharing your story. It's an honor to help preserve it. 00:47:56.885 --> 00:47:59.000 It's an honor for me to share it. Yeah. 00:47:59.000 --> 00:48:00.000 Thank you. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LuevanoDora_BeyerJason_2025-11-6.xml LuevanoDora_BeyerJason_2025-11-6.xml https://archivesearch.csusm.edu/repositories/3/resources/19 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Luevano, Dora. Interview November 6th, 2025 Description An account of the resource Dora Luevano served as a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps. She was stationed at Camp Pendleton during the Vietnam War. Luevano worked in a warehouse and office, processing deceased servicemembers, collecting their personal effects, and writing letters to their family and loved ones. Luevano described her strict upbringing, immigration to the U.S. as a child from El Salvador, and decision to enlist in the Marine Corps. Luevano was forced out of military service for getting married and having a child, and she reflected on the harsh expectations and regulations that affected women in military service. She spoke about her 60-year marriage to her husband, whom she met in the Marine Corps, and their life together after military service. Luevano described how her civilian life was shaped by her upbringing, religion, military service, education, professional career, business ownership, and husband’s recent passing. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Marine Corps Pacific Bell Telephone Company Camp Pendleton (Calif.) Camp Lejeune (N.C.) California State University, San Bernardino Palomar College Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-11-06 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dora Luevano Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jason Beyer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Dora Luevano Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-102 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Vietnam San Salvador (El Salvador) El Salvador United States San Francisco (Calif.) South Carolina New York (United States) Fallbrook (Calif.) Las Vegas (Nev.) California Palm Desert (Calif.) Indio (Calif.) Palm Springs (Calif.) Philippines Vista (Calif.) Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. San Diego Veterans History Initiative Community history San Diego Veterans History Initiative Veteran experience Women's experience