Commentary: Can You Take Undergraduates to the Field? A Field School Example

Abstract

We are in a Rarámuri rancho in the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua, Mexico when one of the eight undergraduate students participating in the ethnographic field school starts whooping with joy. He has just spoken a Rarámuri word/concept he learned in my ethnography class to one of the Tarahumara children following us around, and the youth has responded. The anthropology major, a junior, has an intellectual epiphany as he sees how his classroom experience holds meaning here. The geology-archaeology major has admitted earlier that her only goal in attending the field school was to go down into Canyon de Chelly instead of looking at it from above. She says she is not really interested in indigenous people- she prefers rocks. She spends the next day with an older Hopi woman. During their time together the young geologist and the older basket maker share life stories and so begins a meaningful and ongoing cross cultural friendship.