Latest / California Frontier / 054: What's Up with the California Frontier Project?

Transcript

054: What's Up with the California Frontier Project? · California Frontier

• 0:25
  Damian Bacich: About a month ago, my podcast hosting company, Damian.
• 0:30
  Damian Bacich: sent me a congratulatory email about the fact that I had published 50 podcast episodes.
• 0:40
  Damian Bacich: Now, I hadn't really been keeping track but It did kind of hit me that, wow, 50, 50 episodes is quite a bit.
• 0:51
  Damian Bacich: And over the last few weeks, it began, growing in my mind that maybe this is a good point to kind of, stop and maybe take stock of things and do an update for people on where we are, where we're going and really what is, what we're doing.
• 1:14
  Damian Bacich: the idea behind this whole California frontier project and the website and the podcast and so on.
• 1:24
  Damian Bacich: So that's what I'm doing.
• 1:27
  Damian Bacich: That's what I'd like to do here.
• 1:29
  Damian Bacich: So first of all, for those of you who are sort of new to this whole thing, and maybe even those of you who have been around for a while but aren't 100 percent certain on what this is, the California Frontier Project is a brainchild that I had a few years back and it started, let's say around the time of the canonization of Father Junipero Serra, the the Franciscan friar who really sort of started the mission chain in California and all of the controversy that surrounded it at that time.
• 2:16
  Damian Bacich: And I love California history.
• 2:19
  Damian Bacich: I particularly love the early time period, you know, let's say from prehistory about up through the Spanish and Mexican periods in particular.
• 2:30
  Damian Bacich: And I was so enthusiastic about it and it bothered me the way It seemed to be becoming instrumentalized and just sort of a a battleground for political narratives.
• 2:45
  Damian Bacich: So I started out by wanting to share the good information that I'd been encountering, both in an academic setting, But also, you know, for people that are just interested, right?
• 3:03
  Damian Bacich: The general public who is interested.
• 3:06
  Damian Bacich: So that's how I started and I started with a website and then later it, it evolved into a podcast that I, I created, several episodes and then paused it.
• 3:21
  Damian Bacich: And then after, after some time, people kept asking me when it was coming back.
• 3:25
  Damian Bacich: So I brought it back and been chugging away ever since.
• 3:29
  Damian Bacich: So the focus that we have here is to once again, communicate an enthusiasm and an interest for California history, especially its early history, and to do that by providing.
• 3:49
  Damian Bacich: background information to help understand the basics, the basic concepts and topics, and also to do deeper dives into subjects that are a little bit more complex or, that maybe aren't quite as well known to the general public or even to So what we do is we delve into a variety of topics from native peoples to exploration, immigration, settlement, trade, daily life, but also we focus on anything that touches this idea of California as a frontier.
• 4:34
  Damian Bacich: So, we wind up talking about trade, as I mentioned, people's lives, and we, we talk about other places.
• 4:46
  Damian Bacich: It's not just confined to California.
• 4:48
  Damian Bacich: We talk about Mexico, Russia, the Philippines, New Mexico, Arizona, Spain, Europe, what have you.
• 4:57
  Damian Bacich: So, that is the idea.
• 5:01
  Damian Bacich: to create a place that one can go to, to learn kind of the basics about California history, especially its early history, as well as take deep dives into topics that, that are that are more complex, but that are equally interesting.
• 5:20
  Damian Bacich: So for me, The two things that I want to get across with this, with both the website and the the podcast, and when I say podcast, I also mean YouTube channel, so on, is to communicate context and complexity.
• 5:46
  Damian Bacich: The two C's.
• 5:47
  Damian Bacich: So context.
• 5:48
  Damian Bacich: Why?
• 5:50
  Damian Bacich: Oftentimes when we talk about historical topics, especially topics that are kind of controversial as the California missions and the Spanish and native population, all this sort of stuff has become in particular, Over the last several years, and even more so since 2020, often what is lacking is context.
• 6:17
  Damian Bacich: People throw around facts or ideas and figures without having a grasp of the big picture, which helps explain things.
• 6:27
  Damian Bacich: So, in order to provide context, we have articles on the website, and we also have podcast episodes.
• 6:39
  Damian Bacich: Many of those are where I'm just talking, and some of those are drawn from articles.
• 6:46
  Damian Bacich: on the website.
• 6:48
  Damian Bacich: Other times they're just, they're topics that I've looked into and want to talk about.
• 6:55
  Damian Bacich: And then complexity because history is made up of human situations, human beings, right?
• 7:06
  Damian Bacich: And human beings are complicated.
• 7:10
  Damian Bacich: And as, as we all know, I'll oftentimes, bring in authors, scholars, or other people who've studied or done interesting things around these topics to discuss them.
• 7:25
  Damian Bacich: So, in that sense, we can go more in depth on certain topics, having a background of context to discuss them.
• 7:39
  Damian Bacich: So you, that's why I have interesting people on who've who really have something nuanced to say about these topics that maybe you hear about in the news, or maybe you don't, but that's my basic idea.
• 7:58
  Damian Bacich: Context is in background, framing things, and then complexity, getting into the nuance, getting into the details.
• 8:06
  Damian Bacich: So that's what you're gonna, that's what you're gonna hear, that's what you're gonna read about.
• 8:11
  Damian Bacich: When you, when you delve into the California Frontier Project and what we have.
• 8:20
  Damian Bacich: So, what's the plan going forward?
• 8:24
  Damian Bacich: Well, my plan is to keep on keeping on.
• 8:28
  Damian Bacich: That is, to do what we've been doing.
• 8:31
  Damian Bacich: To, to bring you interesting information, useful information that's well researched.
• 8:37
  Damian Bacich: To bring you discussions with experts and scholars and descendants and people who've looked into genealogy, anybody who, who has something interesting to say.
• 8:54
  Damian Bacich: And then the other thing that I'd really like to, work on going forward is building out even more so the aspect of community around this project.
• 9:09
  Damian Bacich: And I call it a project because I'm still working my way forward as we all are trying to understand more, trying to share, more information.
• 9:26
  Damian Bacich: So it's a project in the sense that we don't know ultimately where it's going to go or what it's going to blossom into, but it's a working hypothesis.
• 9:37
  Damian Bacich: And that's what I do.
• 9:39
  Damian Bacich: I'm doing is to follow this hypothesis.
• 9:42
  Damian Bacich: So back to the community aspect, there's already a sort of community that's grown up around the California frontier project.
• 9:54
  Damian Bacich: That is a community of people who, who read or listen to the things, to the content.
• 10:01
  Damian Bacich: That we put out.
• 10:03
  Damian Bacich: Also, a community of contributors.
• 10:06
  Damian Bacich: All of the people who've been on, whom I've interviewed, they contribute something to this community.
• 10:13
  Damian Bacich: And as, as you probably noticed, I've had guests on multiple times.
• 10:20
  Damian Bacich: From Gerald Jackman, talking about the Santa Barbara Presidio, to Marie Duggan, talking about trade in the Pacific, to Eric Plunkett and his explorations around Mission San Juan Capistrano and others.
• 10:39
  Damian Bacich: Now I'm going to keep doing that and getting these people involved, so I want to build that, grow it, so that we who are interested in this sort of thing can be even more connected.
• 10:52
  Damian Bacich: Scholars, authors, and just aficionados, right?
• 10:58
  Damian Bacich: So one of the things I want to do is to create, more support for community.
• 11:06
  Damian Bacich: So I'm going to try to understand better the logistics of that, but ways that we can interact and also just draw in the people.
• 11:16
  Damian Bacich: who are supporting the project, support the podcast, support the website, both with information, but also monetarily.
• 11:26
  Damian Bacich: I want to give back more to them, to you.
• 11:30
  Damian Bacich: Right?
• 11:31
  Damian Bacich: One of the things I want to do, and I plan to do in the coming weeks, is to begin sharing.
• 11:38
  Damian Bacich: Both the videos of the podcast, right?
• 11:43
  Damian Bacich: All the interviews I do, all of the, the the episodes I record are done with video, right?
• 11:54
  Damian Bacich: And you've seen clips from some of those on social media.
• 11:57
  Damian Bacich: We put some of them up on YouTube, but I want to give access to the full videos to those who are supporting the show and who are interested.
• 12:08
  Damian Bacich: I also want to provide, transcripts of all of the, of all of the episodes and especially the interviews.
• 12:18
  Damian Bacich: Now, as you know, with AI, podcasts, transcripts are easy to generate and create.
• 12:27
  Damian Bacich: But oftentimes, if you've noticed, those are kind of haphazard, full of misspellings or words that don't make sense, et cetera, because it's just the machine trying to pick up what's being said, and especially when we talk about California and California history.
• 12:43
  Damian Bacich: There are a lot of words mixed in people's names, Spanish words, native words, et cetera, that, that automatic transcriptions don't really pick up well and understand.
• 12:57
  Damian Bacich: So I want to provide transcriptions that make sense, maybe that aren't perfect, but that, that have the, So to recap, one of the things I want to provide is community, way to share information, and the video recordings and the transcripts to people who really are, are supporting this experience.
• 13:27
  Damian Bacich: So finally, what's the overall approach of this project?
• 13:36
  Damian Bacich: So I've touched on a little bit of it to provide context, to share the complexity behind California history that is the nuance.
• 13:47
  Damian Bacich: And the last thing is an idea of empathy or sympathy.
• 13:56
  Damian Bacich: If you heard the interview with author Jeremy Beer, who wrote the book Beyond the Devil's Road, about Francisco Garcés, who explored much of the American Southwest at a time when it wasn't the American Southwest, or wasn't the U.
• 14:13
  Damian Bacich: S.
• 14:13
  Damian Bacich: Southwest.
• 14:16
  Damian Bacich: Garcés had a unique approach to dealing with Native people, a very empathetic approach, to understand them and hopefully to be able to build understanding between himself and the native people he encountered.
• 14:37
  Damian Bacich: And Jeremy, the author, talked about how his approach to writing his book was one of sympathy.
• 14:45
  Damian Bacich: toward the people he was writing about, whether or not he approved of their actions or their judge or shared their judgments.
• 14:55
  Damian Bacich: And that's sort of where I'm coming from as well.
• 14:58
  Damian Bacich: When we describe the people of our history and their interactions, both people who had, positive or negative interactions, I want to start from a point of sympathy or empathy, understanding the human condition and what it entails.
• 15:20
  Damian Bacich: And so even in a story like ours, it's filled with violence, it's filled with misunderstanding.
• 15:32
  Damian Bacich: You can still approach people, even historical figures, from a standpoint of trying to understand their motivations.
• 15:43
  Damian Bacich: Once again, even if you don't share their ultimate judgment, or even if you don't have a stance of approval, but you can begin from a, an understanding of shared humanity, which I think is something that we need in the present as well in dealing with one another.
• 16:05
  Damian Bacich: So, context, complex, complexity, Empathy.
• 16:12
  Damian Bacich: Those are sort of the three pillars around which I'm trying to grow this project.
• 16:20
  Damian Bacich: And I think those of you who follow it appreciate that and share that ethos with me, at least some of you because I hear from you.
• 16:31
  Damian Bacich: So to finish, I just want to thank you.
• 16:37
  Damian Bacich: If you're coming along on this journey, thank you for your support and, and encourage you to, you know, reach out, let me know what you think.
• 16:48
  Damian Bacich: Keep giving me suggestions for episode topics or guests.
• 16:53
  Damian Bacich: Keep telling me about interesting historical events you've learned about, or your ancestors may have participated in, or places, or books.
• 17:06
  Damian Bacich: All of that stuff that hopefully I can share with, the larger community that follows this project.
• 17:16
  Damian Bacich: So in short, we're going to keep going down the path.
• 17:22
  Damian Bacich: We started, I'm going to expand the scope of what we're doing and hopefully bring more people along.
• 17:33
  Damian Bacich: Oh, and one thing I keep neglecting to mention sort of the, the third pillar of this whole project.
• 17:40
  Damian Bacich: So the website.
• 17:43
  Damian Bacich: The show, podcast, YouTube channel.
• 17:46
  Damian Bacich: And also I created over the last couple of years, a fourth grade elementary school, California history curriculum that aligns to all the standards.
• 17:58
  Damian Bacich: for history and social sciences that the state of California asks fourth graders to achieve.
• 18:07
  Damian Bacich: So this is once again, my way of helping those people who are teaching, who are, raising children in California to better understand and better appreciate our history.
• 18:23
  Damian Bacich: The curriculum is called California History Teachers.
• 18:26
  Damian Bacich: Not very original, but I think it gets to the point.
• 18:29
  Damian Bacich: And it's based on the work that the California Frontier Project has done.
• 18:36
  Damian Bacich: And it's, it's been now used by, hundreds of students over the last couple of years, and more and more every semester.
• 18:47
  Damian Bacich: So if you know of anybody who's a teacher, if you owe yourself for a teacher, check it out, californiahistoryteachers.
• 18:55
  Damian Bacich: com.
• 18:56
  Damian Bacich: It's also linked at the California Frontier Project website.
• 19:01
  Damian Bacich: So those are the three elements, the California Frontier Project.
• 19:06
  Damian Bacich: And again, I, I want to thank you for supporting it, and I hope you'll stick with us and
• 19:17
  2024-09-30 09-09-24: um,
• 19:17
  Damian Bacich: stay involved in what we're doing so again, thank you.
• 19:22
  Damian Bacich: And, we'll see you on the next episode.
• 19:25
  Damian Bacich: Bye bye.
• 19:34
  I hope you enjoyed this episode of the California Frontier Show.
• 19:38
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• 19:44
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• 19:48
  One is by scrolling down in your podcast app to where it says support the show.
• 19:53
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• 19:57
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• 20:05
  Finally, the show is supported by California History Teachers, which is a full year of lessons for 4th grade California History and Social Studies.
• 20:14
  You can find out more at www.
• 20:17
  californiahistoryteachers.
• 20:19
  com.
• 20:20
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• 20:28
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