Viola Martinez, California Paiute: Living in Two Worlds

by Diana Meyers Bahr

Overview

The life story of Viola Martinez, an Owens Valley Paiute Indian of eastern California, extends over nine decades of the twentieth century. Viola experienced forced assimilation in an Indian boarding school, overcame racial stereotypes to pursue a college degree, and spent several years working at a Japanese American internment camp during World War II. Finding herself poised uncertainly between Indian and white worlds, Viola was determined to turn her marginalized existence into an opportunity for personal empowerment. In Viola Martinez, California Paiute, Diana Meyers Bahr recounts Viola’s extraordinary life story and examines her strategies for dealing with acculturation.

Bahr allows Viola to tell her story in her own words, beginning with her early years in Owens Valley, where she learned traditional lifeways, such as gathering piñons, from her aunt. In the summers, she traveled by horse and buggy into the High Sierras where her aunt traded with Basque sheepherders. Viola was sent to the Sherman Institute, a federal boarding school with a mandate to assimilate American Indians into U.S. mainstream culture. Punished for speaking Paiute at the boarding school, Viola and her cousin climbed fifty-foot palm trees to speak their native language secretly.

Realizing that, despite her efforts, she was losing her language, Viola resolved not just to learn English but to master it. She earned a degree from Santa Barbara State College and pursued a career as social worker. During World War II, Viola worked as an employment counselor for Japanese American internees at the Manzanar War Relocation Authority camp. Later in life, she became a teacher and worked tirelessly as a founding member of the Los Angeles American Indian Education Commission.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806141596
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	10/01/2010
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Diana Meyers Bahr is the author of From Mission to Metropolis: Cupeño Indian Women in Los Angeles; Viola Martinez, California Paiute: Living in Two Worlds; and The Unquiet Nisei: An Oral History of the Life of Sue Kunitomi Embrey.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations VII

Acknowledgments IX

Introduction: The Marginal Person 3

Chapter 1 Facing the Sunrise: Owens Valley 17

Chapter 2 "A Mess of Uncles": Viola's Early Years 29

Chapter 3 Far from Home: Sherman Institute Boarding School 51

Chapter 4 The Creative Margin 67

Chapter 5 Return to Owens Valley 83

Chapter 6 Converging Paths: Native Americans, Euro-Americans, and Japanese Americans at Manzanar 93

Chapter 7 Expanded Margins: Urban Opportunities 105

Chapter 8 Education Advocate: Eighteen Years in the Los Angeles Unified School District 123

Chapter 9 The Trip Home 133

Conclusion: Culturally Enlarged Elder 155

Literature Review 159

Afterword 171

Notes 173

Bibliography 185

Index 195