Category Archives: Reflections

At last, we have made it to Falfurrias! We gathered at the Indianapolis International Airport at 6:00 am this morning, where we began our long journey to South Texas. Our first flight brought us to Dallas swiftly and safely, with everything going impressively smoothly thus far. However, as any member of my immediate family would tell you, the Cantor curse ensures that no trip is complete without at least a few hiccups. So perhaps I am to blame for the longer-than-expected day of travel that was to follow. After a delayed flight in Dallas, we arrived in San Antonio a couple of hours behind schedule. Fortunately, all of our luggage arrived with us, which is something I think we were all very grateful for. However, difficulties with the rental car company delayed us even further and so at about 3:30 pm we finally set out with our 3-car caravan on the 3-hour drive to Falfurrias, Texas.

We arrived at our hotel at about 6:30 pm, just over 12 hours after our journey began. Needless to say, it was a long day of travel but our work for the day was not yet complete. We briefly settled in our hotel rooms before our stomachs got the best of us, so we picked up pizza from across the street and hunkered down to plan our first day out in the field. After plans had been made, several of us traveled to the only grocery store in town to grab supplies for lunch, as well as to pick up any personal items that may have been forgotten (lets be honest, no matter how many lists one may write, odds are that something will be left behind). At last, we had fulfilled all of our duties for our first day in South Texas and I know that by the end of the night, everyone was ready to begin our work in the field the following morning.

Something that surprised me through all of the setbacks and complications that we experienced today was that everyone on our team remained in remarkably high spirits. After two flights and waiting outside the rental company for at least an hour, the daunting 3-hour drive seemed to fly by and was actually quite enjoyable. I rode shotgun in a car with my fellow graduate students, Justin, Leann, and Jessica. We jammed to some good old AC/DC Pandora radio and watched the gorgeous sunset over the vast Texan expanse. Justin educated us all on several native bird species and we discussed our thoughts on the work and days to come. I think our persistent good spirits and optimism throughout our 12-hour journey reflects each of our excitement for what is to come. I think we are all more than ready to begin doing what we can to help and I can honestly say that I am incredibly proud to be a member of such a driven and determined team.

Erica

I have to admit that between the craziness of semester’s end and my dedication to being wholly present for my family at the holidays, I’ve scarcely had a moment to contemplate our upcoming trip. I sat for a few minutes today and thought about what I needed to do in order to be prepared. I pulled my backpack out of the closet, looked over my packing list, and jotted some notes for the field supplies I would need for myself and the undergraduate students who will assist me in participant observation activities this season. This, of course, is the easy part. For me, preparing myself to be the outsider working within a community is the harder part. The awkward position of insider-outsider is, for me, more daunting than considering how to pack or anticipating what the trip will entail.
Cultural anthropologists are fairly practiced at following the lead of the community members with whom they work. So, the idea of not knowing exactly where we’ll be or exactly what we’ll do is for me familiar terrain. While I know this season I’ll spend time at the cemetery, with the South Texas Human Rights Center, and at the Sacred Heart respite center, much of the trip is to be determined. The thought of this type of improvisation can be more or less exciting to consider of course, but it’s fairly commonplace in the work of a participant observer who is still new to a community and unable to veer far from key participants. What’s harder to prepare for, from my perspective, are the subtle disconnections between my particular expert knowledge base, analytical perspective, and positionality with the team and those of team members.
For example, I don’t share the same scientific expertise or the same situated knowledge of migrant identification as this group of humanitarian scientists. While I believe we all share a common commitment to raising awareness of the crisis, I don’t necessarily share the same sense of the meanings and realities of this facet of the work. For me, everything I do, experience, and observe in South Texas is filtered through the lenses of cultural anthropology and my objectives as a participant observer interested in teasing out social and political complexities of this work. So, before I leave for Texas, I take some time to remind myself of my research goals and questions. Within that, I take some time to remind myself that those awkward moments when the appropriate feelings or responses to a set of circumstances aren’t readily apparent to me can be profoundly illuminating. And, I take some time to consider how the two students who will join me as insider-outsiders in this work might experience the awkward tension of participant observation.

AO

For many of us, 2016 was a tough year. We witnessed widespread human rights violations across the globe,  terrorism, mass shootings, hate crimes, racism, political turmoil, and said goodbye to many influential people.  All this in addition to our own personal struggles.  At times we cried, we were enraged, we were heartbroken and we were empty. Some of us protested, some volunteered and some donated resources to do our small part to bring peace, love and acceptance to all.  We are looking for a way to be the hope/peace/love/joy we want to see in the world, and a way to right the injustices we see all around us.

I understand that my privilege allows me to volunteer my time and my resources to social justice initiatives even though my lived experience prohibits me from truly understanding. I will be starting 2017 in Brooks County at Sacred Heart Cemetery continuing the exhumations we started in 2013 and 2014.  We worked with Baylor University to remove over 100 unidentified migrants from the ground so they could begin their journey towards identification and repatriation.  Volunteering to bring awareness to this humanitarian crisis, to bring closure to family members and to give a voice to a marginalized population feels like the most appropriate way to start the new year and put the  trials of 2016 in the past.

This trip will be different than previous seasons in several ways. This year we will be joined by faculty and students from Texas State University.  We have worked with them the last two years in the lab and are eager to work with them in the field as well.  Our previous trips have occurred in May or June, so a January trip should be more comfortable for the manual labor we will be conducting at the cemetery.  In addition to the UIndy forensics team, we will also be joined by a group of cultural anthropologists from UIndy. Supervised by Dr. Alyson O’Daniel, they will be conducting participant observation at the cemetery and community outreach at the South Texas Human Rights Center.  My family will also be joining me to better understand what I do during these trips to Falfurrias.

I look forward to working with an amazing group of people from UIndy, TX State, the Brooks County Sheriff Office and the local community.  I am eager to catch up with our friends in Falfurrias and continue to contribute our small part to these identification efforts. Happy New Year to you all!

~KEL