Cullen Smith, Alex Markos, William Harrison,
Katelyn Kiner, Taylor Mills
8 April 2015
Dr. Courtney Werner & Prof. Alex Galarza
IDS 181
NEH White Paper
Introduction[A1]:
Holland has transformed from a small, historically Dutch community to one containing many different ethnicities. One such transformation occurred in the early-twentieth century with the arrival of migrant Hispanic workers from Latin America and the Caribbean. Since then, the cultural history of the Hispanic community continually manifests itself in Holland’s industry, education, community, and religion. By exploring and analyzing the rich history of this Hispanic community, we have come to a better understanding of the Hispanic culture in Holland and hope to share this with the people of Holland. Our research showcases the significant impact that the Hispanic community has had on Holland’s rich education systems, industry, and culture through a documentary. We have compiled our research and interviews into a documentary that will be available on the Digital Holland website to act as a "looking glass" into the perspectives of Holland's Hispanic community. Through interviews with leaders within the Holland Hispanic community, this project explores the facets of a community that has been largely underrepresented thus far. Finally, this project allows us to continue a local, multicultural dialogue about Holland’s established Hispanic community.
The project itself extends beyond a local narrative to a wider national narrative. As a whole, America has experienced an immense amount of change politically, socially, and economically; its demographics have come to express this sweeping transition. We hoped that by exploring Holland, we could find that even in small American towns there are quite often cultural mosaics reflective of social and demographic change. Through the use of several interviews, conducted over the course of two months and compiled into a documentary, we were able to elaborate on our overall research question: what is the cultural history of Holland’s Hispanic population, and how is this growing population a reflection of a broader national movement? In our documentary, we were able to continue an important multicultural dialogue through this exploration, while seeking answers to this overarching research question.
Project History:[A2]
When our group sat down to determine the subject of our main project, we all had different ideas of what to study. We thought about looking at the impact of World War II and industry on Holland both socially and culturally since it is one of the most transformative experiences in our nation’s history. As we looked at these changes, however, we began to uncover a wider demographic shift in Holland’s community. We were unaware Holland’s population is over 22.7% Hispanic according to the 2010 census. Furthermore, we noticed that Digital Holland featured only one article regarding anyone of Hispanic descent. After some deliberation, we decided to delve into the history and the impact of the Hispanic community in Holland, using our exploration as as a sort of “looking glass.” Through this “looking glass,” we hoped that we could apply our findings to investigate the wider national shift in demographic and cultural change throughout 20th and 21st century America. This topic blended our original ideas of looking at Holland’s history, industry, and culture, while expanding our project to something of immense national relevancy and significance.
In the beginning of the semester, as we combed the Joint Archives, as well as the Herrick and Van Wylen Libraries for relevant information regarding our topic, we came to the realization that our topic would be slightly different than traditional archival research. In searching for research pertinent to our research question, we found that there was very little information about our topic in the local sense. While we were able to uncover much about the national shift in immigration history, especially throughout the 20th century and after 9/11, there was only one source that specifically discussed Holland’s Hispanic community in any great detail (Oltmanns 1989). In the face of this problem, we decided that a documentary featuring personal narratives would be the best method for hybridizing our research question with the research difficulties we faced. A personal narrative based documentary is unlike many digital tools, as it provides the researcher with a platform for connecting many voices and themes about one question. We thought that the voices within our documentary would form the basis of our research background. It was this shift from traditional archival research to a documentary involving personal narratives that was the core of this semester’s work.
After deciding the method and implementation for our documentary, we began intense deliberation about whom to select for our interview subjects. We sought out individuals who could guide us in understanding the perspectives of Holland’s Hispanic community. In doing so, we narrowed down our scope to include seven individuals to represent the voice of the Hispanic community in Holland. This was a challenging task, as it implied that we could use only a handful of people to represent the whole of Holland’s Hispanic community. For this reason we had to select our interview subjects carefully, supplying the reasoning behind the choice of our interviewees. We subdivided our research question into five areas of impact within Holland: history, business, education, religion, and politics. For history, we chose Dean Alfredo Gonzales, head of the Office of Multicultural Education at Hope College. For the business sector, we chose Ed Amaya, the owner of Kenowa Industries and recipient of the 2013 Minority Owned Business Award by the Holland Chamber of Commerce. For education, we talked to Yolanda Vega (head of the Phelps Scholars) and John Vega (Academic Behavior Interventionist at Holland Public Schools). To represent religion, we talked to Father Charlie Brown, head priest at St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church. Finally we selected Victor Orozco and Sarah Yore-Van Oosterhout to represent the political aspects of our documentary. For Victor Orozco, his experience as the second Hispanic Councilman in Holland’s government provided him with a unique perspective of the development of the political systems within Holland. For Sarah Yore-Van Oosterhout, her position as an immigration attorney allowed us to apply her experiences within Holland to the wider national topic of immigration. Our interviewees’ unique perspectives and roles within the Hispanic community of Holland revealed the significance behind our research question. By using a documentary, we were able to gather together all of these voices onto one platform and tie them together with our overarching research question. [A3]
Once we had gathered together our interview subjects, we had the immense task of the division of labor, centering primarily around the interviews. The completion of the project can best be divided into two phases: filming for the first month and a half and editing for the last month and a half. For the editing process, we divided ourselves further into two groups: on site and off site. For the on site group, Cullen, Taylor and Katelyn were responsible for the preparation and filming of the interviews. The off site group, Bill and Alex, were responsible for further research and narration.
For the first phase of work for the on site group, Cullen would first contact the interviewee and establish a meeting date for a “pre-interview” in which the interviewee would be briefed on his or her role in the project. After this briefing, the interviewee would be asked if he or she agreed to the informed consent documents and would then set up an official interview date. Once the interview date was established, Taylor and Cullen would standardize a set of “who, what, when, where, why, and so what” questions regarding the specific facet in which the interview subject was involved. For example, Ed Amaya was asked a series of questions regarding not only his involvement in the company, but his unique perspectives on the status of Holland’s Hispanic community. Once we arrived for the interview, Katelyn worked as the camerawoman, Cullen was in charge of audio, and Taylor presented the questions and facilitated dialogue. This group was also responsible for storyboarding drafts.
For the off site group, Alex and Bill were tasked with compiling further archival and research materials as well as the fine-tune editing of the narration and script. This proved to be one of the most important parts of our documentary, as the narration provided a backbone for the interviews, stringing them together to form a cohesive advancement towards our research question. While it was difficult to compile all of these narrative segments together while the on site group finished filming, Bill and Alex worked to connect the dots in the background, making sure that we were progressing towards the completion of a compelling documentary.
Once the filming was complete, we began a second phase of work where the off-site and on site groups merged into one. Katelyn did a majority of the editing and also taught the rest of the group editing skills. Taylor organized the documentary, selecting which segments of the interviews were to be used and in what order. Alex and Bill continued work on narration and assisted Katelyn in editing. Finally, Cullen was tasked with the completion of the white paper and working on the publicity of the public viewing for the documentary.
As we neared the end of editing, we spent a majority of our time in the Van Wylen Library’s Mellon Studio meeting as a group while we edited and deliberated on the final vision of our project. We finally arranged a public viewing where we introduced and viewed our documentary with a group of about sixty people varying from Hope College students and interviewees to community members and professors. While we recognized that our project had failures, we suggested that this project should be used as a base for further improvement. Regardless of our digressions, our project was received with applause and compliments from both the interviewees as well as surrounding community members. Furthermore, Yolanda Vega mentioned that she may use it as an example to spark the interests of Phelps Scholars. While we acknowledge that we made mistakes, the brightest moment of our project was when we were surrounded by a community in resounding support for our project.
Conclusions:
Throughout our seven interviews, we uncovered cultural and social aspects of Holland that we had not considered before. For many of us, we saw the Hispanic community as a newly developing migrant community that was still struggling to find its voice. We went into this project with preconceived notions that we would be talking with a majority of immigrants or people who had just arrived in the United States. We had even petitioned for a translator. All of these notions, however, were based upon biased assumptions. We found a community that is divided upon issues of identity and the presentation of voice. Despite struggling to find a united voice and identity, the Hispanic community in Holland is a developed and well-rounded community with over a century of rich cultural history. Festivals like Tulipanes indicate that the community itself is strong and developing an increasingly present voice in Holland. As Holland expands further into the 21st century, it must recognize the presence of the Hispanic community as a widespread entity, and welcome multicultural dialogue throughout Holland, as it is a representation of the shift in our nation as a whole. Despite all that we have found, there were several adjustments that we could could have made specifically regarding the concepts of subject material and terminology, methodology and time management, and division of workload.
For subject material and terminology, we encountered the largest problem in the framing of our research. We picked a topic thinking that it would be a relevant and important addition to Digital Holland. In actuality, we opened the door to a complex research topic that had no simple answer. Even in the final week of our project, we were having meetings to discuss the actual concrete form of our research question. Throughout the semester, we would have periods where we would think that we had finally found our framework, and then have it confused with a further addition or different angle. For example, we originally met with Alfredo Gonzales to discuss the initial history of the Hispanic community here in Holland. We thought it was as simple as the stories of seasonal migrant farm workers until we met Sarah Yore-Van Oosterhout. She told us of the nationwide implications of immigration, focusing on the complexities of immigration law and the distinctions between Hispanics in America. We learned immediately afterwards that there was simply too much information with too many complexities to cover in one semester. One of the biggest problems emerged from terminology. We discovered quickly that there is an immense amount of difference between the terms “Latino” and “Hispanic.” While we eventually decided upon Hispanic, as it is a term enveloping all Spanish speakers, it was a question that could have been more effectively handled with more extensive background research.
When regarding time management and methodology, we required more time to create a more inclusive and far-reaching documentary. For the immense scale of this project, we had no idea of the scope of our project. A better sense of the research methods and a concrete idea of the methodology of our project would have aided us immensely. We inserted ourselves into the project without any thoughts as to the background information necessary. By the time we realized that this would have helped us to solve the crisis of our research question, it was too late. We should have managed our time more effectively, making sure that we at least had some clue of where we were going before we sat down to complete our documentary. This way, we would not have been pondering the full direction of our research question in the middle of March. Time management would have allowed us to develop our positions in our group further, allowing equal workloads and time for training and preparation for the arduous task of creating a documentary on this very relevant topic.
In terms of division of workload, one of the biggest problems we encountered was how to divide the workload between five group members. To put it simply, there was just too much work to divide huge segments between group members effectively and too much diversity between our skill sets. This is especially true for Katelyn, who was tasked with a majority of the film editing. While we did have other people learn the basics of film editing, no one else could have sat down and made the documentary look as complete as it had with Katelyn there to help. Taylor made an immense effort in the narration, organization, and direction of our project. Cullen was tasked with initiating and coordinating interviews with several individuals while staying up to date on research progression and the completion of the white paper. Alex and Bill also had an immense amount of work coordinating the narration and developing our research methods. As mentioned above, better use of time in the first and beginning of the second semesters would have allowed for our group to effectively plan and manage for the tasks necessary to complete a documentary.
In completion of this project, we view our documentary as a finished success despite all of the issues mentioned above. After more than a semester of work, research, and interviews, we completed what we set out to do. We wanted to make a documentary that highlighted the voices of Holland’s Hispanic community, utilizing this documentary as a “looking glass” to continue multicultural dialogue within our community and on Digital Holland. While our overall vision changed greatly from the beginning, the core remains the same: we wanted to continue the overarching multicultural dialogue in Holland through interviews with members of the Hispanic community. Through these interviews, we explored a prominent minority community within Holland and the dynamics that make it an integral piece of the mosaic of Holland’s sociocultural history. We acknowledge that our project cannot be the sole account of this population, but see the project rather as a platform for future expansion on Digital Holland.
Appendix & Selected Bibliography:[A4]
Alvarado, Rudolph Valier, and Sonya Yvette Alvarado. Mexicans and Mexican Americans in
Michigan. Michigan State University Press. Print.
Badillo, David A. Latinos in Michigan. East Lansing: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Print.
Bednarick, Tracy L., "Orozco, Victor Oral History Interview: Sesquicentennial of Holland, "150 Stories for 150 Years"" (1996). Sesquicentennial of Holland, "150 Stories for 150 Years". Paper 89.
Glazier, Jack, and Arthur W. Helweg.Ethnicity in Michigan : Issues and People. East Lansing:
University of Michigan Press, 2001. Print. Discovering the Peoples of Michigan.
Martinez, Rubén O. Latinos in the Midwest.Michigan State University Press. Print. Latinos in