The Basques: A nation with a hijacked history, a people that does not know itself

This article was tranlated by Iustrans

In days like today, we have mixed feelings. On the one hand, we realize that we have large gaps in our knowledge of our Basque nation. At the same time, we learn of the vast and beautiful work by women and men who want to know about what is hidden away. What this small society actually is, and the significant contributions it has made to humanity.

As we discovered the work of American researcher Frank Roslyn May, we again felt those mixed feelings.

On the one hand, the negative ones:

• The shame of living in a country that studies the history of others. A history that hides or ignores what the Basques were and are. What Basques contributed and contribute to humanity.
• The embarrassment to see that things are not changing much. Our universities are controlled by a caste (yes, a caste, because our universities are institutions with a medieval power structure, where only those that fit in well with the ideology of those in power can thrive) committed to ignore and even ridicule anything that can help understand the authentic history of the Basques, not subordinated to the history of France or Spain.

On the other hand, the positive ones:

• The joy it gives us to know that there are people who are determined to uncover and bring to light what is hidden behind the story of the Basques. Some do so, with great effort, from our own country, fighting a university and a “scientific” system clearly weighted in favor of promoting the greater glory of Spain or France. Others do it from elsewhere in the world, bewitched by the magic of this country.
• The hope derived from knowing that, in many corners of our country and the world, these women and men have found in the history, culture, language and traditions of our people, something of sufficient interest and importance to devote their life to its study.

The ‘tip of the thread we pulled’ to discover the extraordinary contributions to the history of the Basques of this true friend of the Basques, is a work published in the late 90s of the last century titled:

The Remarkable Role of Women in 16th Century French Basque Law Codes

We have been surprised to find a professor within the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa interested in the role of women in the Iparralde Provincial civil regulation. So we started to do some research and we found a true goldmine.

We will not include here what was told so well in a Euskonews interview from 2009, which shows not only the interest of this researcher in Basque culture, but also what the Basques are, and what, were it not for people like her, would remain hidden or simply not investigated.

You can find the Euskonews  article here and an exciting collection of her works collected in the academy.edu repository, that left us breathless: linguistics, history, pre-history, law, religion, anthropology, mathematics and astronomy, …

A multifaceted vision of the Basque people which provides, at least for us, an exciting vision of what is and has made this extraordinary people we belong to.

Therefore, we must definitely include this extraordinary woman in our particular group of Friends of the Basques.

Euskonews- 26/6/2009 – Euskadi

Roslyn May Frank. Empecé a interesarme por la cultura vasca gracias a un personaje del Quijote

Roslyn M. Frank nace en California, pero ha transcurrido casi toda su vida en Iowa, en el medio oeste americano. Realizó sus estudios en la Universidad de dicho estado obteniendo la titulación de “Major in Spanish; Minor in English, Russian”, y donde también obtuvo el doctorado en español, “una mezcla entre filología y literatura”. Los temas de especialización e investigación abarcan áreas tan diversas como los estudios vascos, la etnografía europea, las etnomatemáticas, la literatura latinoamericana o el feminismo… Roslyn M. Frank es una mujer muy agradable, y tiene tanto que contar, que podríamos haber estado horas charlando. Lo hacemos en español, aunque se le escapan frases en un euskara fluidísimo que lleva 5 años sin practicar.

(Continue) (automatic translation)

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Works by Roslyn Frank in Academia .edu

Last Updated on Dec 20, 2020 by About Basque Country