Publication Type: Oral Presentation
Abstract: On September 19, 1933, 75 years before this meeting of theSoil and Water Conservation Society, Hugh Hammond Bennett entered duty as the director of the Soil Erosion Service (SES). The SES was one of many New Deal programs funded by the National Industrial Recovery Act Less than two years later, April 27, 1935, the work of the SES had proved popular that Congress made soil conservation a permanent part of public policy with passage of the act creating the Soil Conservation Service.

The establishment of the Soil Erosion Service was a critical stage in the development of the modern soil and water conservation movement. Its creation was contingent upon several factors. The economic emergency of the great depression provided opportunities for reformers to implement new ideas for conservation that had been gestating for a decade or more. In the area of soil conservation, no one was more prepared than Bennett. He joined the Bureau of Soils in 1903 and his field work in the soil survey convinced him of the need for soil conservation. His personal energy, passion, writing ability and public speaking skills prepared him for the opportunity presented by the emergency of the Great Depression.

Bennett's view that soil conservation was an interdisciplinary pursuit provided the philosophy that allowed the movement to survive beyond the New Deal and become permanent public policy. Bennett succeeded where others failed to elevate soil erosion in the public consciousness

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Authors Rufus and Lela Waltrip ended their 1964 children’s book, Indian Women: Thirteen Who Played a Part in the History of America From the Earliest Days Until Now, with a chapter about artist Pablita Velarde from Santa Clara Pueblo. Velarde (1918-2006) popularized Pueblo life for non-Indians through her painted and written depictions of both everyday life and folklore. The Waltrips asserted in the book’s conclusion that Velarde’s achievement could be the goal for all American Indian women: “She has bent her bow and shot her star, and in so doing she has truly helped to bridge a gap between two varied cultures and has herself become that living symbol of transition.”

This paper will examine the life experiences and work of Velarde and Kay Bennett (1920?-1997), a Navajo writer and politician, to examine why people like the Waltrips felt their expectations for transnational identity for American Indian Women were fulfilled by these two women—and how Bennett’s and Velarde’s actual experiences in “two varied cultures” show a frustrating pattern of conflicting expectations for their lives and work. Specifically, both women attempted, in specifically gendered ways, to create visual and literary forms of memoir through which they could share their home communities with the larger, non-Indian American culture that published and bought their work. Velarde earned praise for her depictions of women’s lives, while Bennett’s popular writings focused on the experiences of herself, her mother, and her grandmother. Each spoke of her efforts to “preserve tradition,” conforming to non-Indian desires to gain a window into American Indian culture through the memories of those whom they presumed to be most responsible for maintaining it: women.

To a great extent, however, the transnational community that Waltrips and other non-Indians perceived in their work was what Benedict Anderson would term an “imagined community.” Velarde and Bennett both became alienated from their communities of origin. For Velarde, the mere act of painting, a skill she learned at the Santa Fe Indian School, violated Santa Clara gender expectations. Eventually, her career, her marriage to an Anglo, and her desire to tell community stories considered sacred by some led to her exclusion from the Pueblo. In Bennett’s case, trying to transform her success as a cultural intermediary from writing to politics created controversy: when she campaigned to become the leader of the Navajo Nation in 1986 and 1990, she endured criticism for being female as well as for having married an Anglo and lived off-reservation.

For Bennett and Velarde, articulating gendered memory in an effort to create transnational community meant deconstructing national memories that excluded women such as themselves. It is perhaps for this reason that using their experiences as bicultural women to create a transnational community proved stronger in theory than experience. By examining their efforts to use women’s memories as a bridge between the “Indian” and “White” worlds, this paper will illustrate how forces of gender and ethnicity can lead to the desire for transnational communities—even as they also threaten to fracture them.