Debbie Sturm and Carole Nash

00:03 Good morning, and Carole. Nash. I'm 61 years. Old. Today is Thursday, June 24th, 2021. I'm in Harrisonburg, Virginia at the local library. My conversation partner is Debbie Sturm, and she is my dear friend and colleague.

00:21 And good morning. My name is Debbie Sturm. I am 55 years old. Today's date is Thursday, June 24th, 2021 or here and Harrisonburg, Virginia. My conversation is Carole, Nash. She is a friend of mentor and just a Shining Light.

00:46 Carole. I'm really excited for this and I I was reflecting quite a bit before we started in the last day or so about when we first met and how from that moment you really changed so much for me. And I think it was about 9 years ago with the Arboretum collaborative and the first formal time that I met you and heard you, you were talking about sense of place and there was something about the way you shared it. That I knew came from the core of who you are and it spoke to the core of who I was and you gave me a contact. But also a relationship that explained so much of my own story and an influence so much of what I've done since then and I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about place in your life and how it brought you here. Wow, quite overwhelming and

01:46 Gratifying and all of those wonderful words and back at you. But I guess the thing to do to say is that I can't think of a time in my life, when I didn't feel connected in some significant way to the place where I lived. And that place has almost always been in Western Virginia. We met at a program at James, Madison University. This program called the Arboretum collaborative where we were working on creating courses around sustainability and environment. And I think I kept saying we live in this beautiful, Shenandoah Valley. We live in this incredible place and let work with that. You know, let's, we've got wonderful text books that describe places in the world that we all want to go to and it appreciate. But here we are in this beautiful Valley that is story. That is

02:46 On the world over and how do we use that to teach with? And you're right. I was coming from myself when I presented that idea to you all because I guess to begin, my family has moved only eight miles in three hundred years on the east side of the Blue Ridge. I'm the first person to move west of the Blue Ridge, Mountains in my family. They're not adventurous people. What that means is I come from a place where being rooted is highly valued and it has its pros and cons. Sometimes it can feel a little stifling to be that tied to place and to know everyone in to have them know your business. But on the other hand it brings with it. Something that I think a lot of people long for and that is just really strong connection. So that when you see the light at a particular time today, or you feel the wind coming from particular direction, you know, where you are. And more importantly, you know, who

03:46 And so that is a background for me. I came across the mountain as an undergraduate student to go to school in this town in Harrisonburg and being from a very World part of Virginia. I thought this was a pretty big city existing for me. But at the same time, very rural. And so I made it my business to get to know this place. And to realize that there are really important stories, big stories in small spaces. So I started looking for those stories and I began to reflect on the fact that, as a child growing up, that was storytelling was very valued in our family. And so, I grew up in a community with grandparents, great, aunts and uncles, and our whole family was was pretty tight. And so we would sit together.

04:46 At least once a week and there would be storytelling and I remember feeling like I was being that, there was this sense of history that was being invested in me, that it was now my job. It was now my responsibility to listen and to remember and that being tied together on those front, porches, over in the Piedmont of Virginia, in the summertime where nobody had air conditioning and you just sat there and found yourself a so-and-so lived over here, are your Uncle Dale with a big Gardener in, this was his house and, you know, those are the sorts of things that stay with you as a child. And I think that I carried that way of being with me, a collection is of the story.

05:46 The earliest recollection is me running away when I was three years old because I was in search of a story, my mother, and I were out gardening. We were, we were planting flowers. At our new house at that time and great, aunt, and uncle were across the road and they had said, if you come over here, we're going to show you some of our plants and we're going to give you some plants so that you can plant them at your house and we were busy and all of a sudden I realized we didn't have the plans and so I ran away, I just took off and my mother did not know where I was. And of course I couldn't get very far as 3 years old, but I ended up at 9.

06:34 Yeah, but it's those are the kinds of things that I remember. All kinds of stories about a cousin who played professional baseball that I didn't know about, but who came back to the county when he was done with his professional career and sort of made it his business to get electricity in everyone's houses, you know, and so very, very brutal but very much, a strong sense of memory. And that you can't understand this place without knowing these stories. I'm just struck by the generational same as stories. And also how you then carried it with you here in search of the story. I think a lot of people look for experiences in places, but you seem like you looking for, what does this place have to tell me and and how do you, how do you do that? How do you find a story in a place?

07:34 Well, it helps that I'm an archaeologist and I often say that, I don't know if I chose archaeology or chose me because I feel like that is a calling almost for me and Archeology storytelling. We have methods that we use their ways, we go about it. But at the same time, it's all storytelling. And so as an undergraduate student, I got really interested in my archaeology classes and began going out in the mountains of Western Virginia, even over into the alleghenies and living in camps with our with friends, with with other students and faculty, and just going out and serving these old houses. And in that particular instance, there was going to be a big damn bill and a lake that was coming in and it was going to flood this River Valley. And so there was absolutely the sense that we have got to gather this information, or it will be gone. Nobody will know this.

08:34 And so that's the other side of this. It's it's when you, when you acknowledge that your, or your calling is to gather the stories, your calling them is also to tell these stories. And so even as an undergraduate, it's something that was we were trained in its this notion that when you go out in the field and you activate the site, regardless of whether it is a Native American site or an African-American site or you're looking at a homestead from someone who had a farm in the 1920s, their stories there, and we want to get to those. And so my entire undergraduate career ended up with three majors at the University, but what I decided I really wanted to go into with archaeology and so I came back to you to James Madison University where I had gone as an undergraduate to teach after. I finished my graduate work and my area of specialty is Native American studies.

09:34 Mountains of the Middle Atlantic. And so part of that was working has been working with Farmers people who have artifact collections, who have picked up spear points from their fields for years and years and years and have been in their attics and cigar boxes and just going out and walking with them so that we can find these places that people lived in long ago, or they tell me their stories. One time. I remember, I visited a farmer and he had a huge artifact collection, Native American artifacts steel, but he wanted to show me his little steam engine collection at. So, we spent the whole day, looking at this miniature steam engine collection that he had created, because he was so proud of it, and that was parked his story. So, as a scientist, I had gone there after one thing, but as a person who recognizes the value of place and the value of people's experience.

10:34 Spent the day with him. Instead going through his, his letting him show me all of his little engines. And that was part of what we do is magical and enterprising. And and what I suspected what I'm hearing you say is it's, there's the story and then there's the other store and and that you you have to have the relationship. He has to be open to the conversation, to the, to knowing the here-and-now story of the people. We are encountering in order to be able to find the Venom their story of Lando their place with a farm, or what they have in a box that the Gateway is the relationship solutely. Absolutely. And I think that a lot of times, we forget that in science, particularly, when we need to work with communities, one of the things we always remind ourselves of is that most archaeological sites are on private land. And in the United States, there are bear in Virginia where we live hardly enough.

11:34 He wants then, actually protect archaeological sites. And so one of the big issues is, how do we save them? How do we save these places that get plowed up every year or that people have forgotten about or that might be developed of a farmer sells their land. And so what you end up with is this recognition that Archaeology is not just of the past archaeology lives in the present and it's the method that I used to bring together the past and the present with the people who live on the land.

12:07 Yeah, I think that question is, how do you save it is really loaded and complex. How would you, how would you make that a little less complex for somebody who likes to do this? Well, it helps, you know, the fact that I've worked so much in rural areas means that I work a lot with people who have been on the land for a long time and so often what I will do is I will ask them to tell me their story. How did their family come to own this Farm? You know, how is it that your family settled here with mine in 1725 and then what happened? And you know, what is it like to be a farmer today? And what do you feel like when you find these things, when you find these sites? Are you tell me my great-aunt's cabin was over here and nobody lives in anymore, and it's falling down and I'm worried about it. So, tell me, tell me more about that. So we will have these conversations about what it means to them.

13:07 To be in these places. And then we start to look at what it means to protect the old stories that are on their Farms, the old stories that they know. So there's an element of oral tradition. We've actually started in oral tradition project associated with this, but then, there is just this question of. Well, if I were to say to you, the archaeological site on your property is 10000 years old. There were Native Americans here, 10,000 years ago, and you are in the middle of a valley where people move through and continue to go back and forth to other places were thousands of years. What is that? What does it mean to you? When I tell you that and they usually will get pretty quiet. And sometimes, folks will say, I'm going to do everything I can to protect my land. I'm going to die, will not sell this property, you know, or as long as I'm alive or I'll make sure that when I collect something, I make a note about where I found it.

14:07 So that it doesn't get mixed in with everything else. I find going to talk to my children about this so they don't sell my artifact collection. When I die. There will be very poignant discussion about things like that. But usually what happens, more than anything else is that they begin to make a strong connection between their own experience and thinking about was there and so I just always tell them how important their stories are and how important their experiences. But doesn't it mean even more to recognize that their work? And I think I'm really struck by just the timeline that you described of your family being here since 1725 and then put in years of Native Americans here and the stories that are here and and how that intersects with like your urgency to protect and tell the story. Can you can you talk about that?

15:07 Section between families timeline and then say that my family in 1625. So the rapper they've always lived in the Rappahannock River, Valley stages. Think that's ancient, you know, and I will say and you take your, how far back can you take your family? What do you know about your family and they can usually go? Then I will say, Native Americans were on this land for 15,000 years. So, one of the things that I'm really interested in as an anthropologist.

16:01 Additional ecological knowledge. And the idea that there are things that you come to understand about a place, because you have lived in it for so long. That when you hear somebody say, I know it, like the back of my hands. Think about all the times that we use our body parts to explain our relationship to things. So, I know this, like, the back of my hand, that's the sort of thing, then I'm talking about. And so, the farmers and my family will stay. Well. I know that, like, the back of my hand and what would, you know, and how does that explain why I find archaeological sites? Where I find them. How do I put that story together or culture of which I'm not a member and who lived here for so long ago. How do I tell that story and how will you help me?

17:01 What have you found that helps? You tell the story? What are some of the things that really struck you as a minute with my students? And I should say, I always text you in the long because that's what was done for me. And recently, gave a presentation of the colleagues are expressed surprise that we did so much work with students because they don't do that, and it was really quite remarkable because of doing it. But I take my students long and we have found archaeological sites that are 12,000 years old and we will dig. And we will be the first person to see those objects in thousands of years. And I never take that for granted and we always stop and look at what we found and talk about these beautiful spear points that are made of rock from far away, not from our area, but that work area.

18:01 Find the first people. And when you are faced with that, when you begin to recognize that you have the ability to open that up again. I always tell the students. There's a lot of power that comes with that. There's a lot of responsibility that comes with that. And so I think one of the coolest things that I ever did as an archaeologist with the students was to work on that site that was 12000 years old, in to find the stone tools that were still in place from a campsite from that long ago. And then 2 weeks later. We were in Shenandoah National Park working for the park service on a Civilian Conservation Corps Camp from the 1930s. And so it was sort of like I called it, Whiplash, summer, summer when we were in deep time when I called Deep time and then all of a sudden here, we were at this Civilian Conservation Corps campsite and just recognizing the

19:01 That site for those boys and they refer to themselves. Those who are there aren't very many left anymore. But those who at that time, 20 years ago, who were still alive call themselves, but we the camp was long gone, but the archaeological signature was still there. We were able to find all of the buildings and we were able to put together how the camp was just it was set up. The trails were through the camp and then they brought the boys. They came for a reason and they brought the boys and we had flagged out all of the buildings and they stood there and cry these men who are in their mid-80s and they opened up with all of the stories, you know, for example, we kept asking him when you know, we realize you weren't supposed to have alcohol up here. But in the woods around Camp weed we found a lot of bottles here.

20:01 And they said, don't you dare tell anybody, you know, so he stayed with them their whole lot in my students. And so the next time we were working on what it would be like if you had the chance to talk to them. Imagine what it would mean to be able to speak to them and I'd often will tell them that I dream about this. I have dreams about this. So one of the things that we are always aware of his house phone rubble and precious, these archaeological sites are and how quickly they can be destroyed and we can see a lot of them be destroyed in. Virginia is growing, in terms of population is growing. In terms of development, Royal Farms are being sold and there are subdivisions now and

21:01 That means is these places that have been intact are now going through major change in the soil is Disturbed and so I regularly have dreams about a particular spot where I have documented sites that I know have been destroyed. But in my dreams that house has been built but the artifacts are inside and they're covering over the floors and it's just this incredible, reminder, that the story never goes away, the story never leaves. And so I share those stories with my students, understand that, the work we're doing, has great impact. It has great impact on how they think of themselves, but more importantly it has great impact on making. Sure that people who are no longer here are still understood are still remember and they are appreciated and they're valued. Yeah.

21:58 You know, when you talk about the the men who came to see the Conservation, Corps site, you choked up a good bit and Incredibly powerful. And I found myself stoking up to and I imagine the students were profoundly moved as you.

22:23 Hello. Feels like that moment was so confirmatory for you that they offered in that moment. Like this is what a current generation feels about something, very important them and then it brings you back to Thousand Years of people who probably would.

22:48 That when you take on this work of telling stories, you have to care at all. And as I say to my students and you've probably heard me say this, just because you love a place, doesn't mean you can't be critical of it. It doesn't mean that you don't recognize that there were Dreadful things, that happened, terrible things that happened, you know, so for example for my family to have moved into the Virginia Piedmont in 1725 meant that the native people who have lived there for 15,000 years. Something that I carry with me everyday, it's something that drives me every day because there was a rupture of culture at that time and when you begin to understand that,

23:39 Just before the Europeans showed up, and just before those they had enslaved, were there with them. There had been native towns that had several hundred people in them on the floodplains of the rivers of the Piedmont and in the Shenandoah Valley and that these were people who had been in this place of this place who were this place who were gone. And so when you open up a textbook for Western Virginia and you want to run archaeology and Native people and you look at the map often native or Western Virginia is identified as the place where there are these unknown tribes of the interior, which means that they were quote-unquote gone. By the time, someone with written language was here to write about them as opposed to the English. Colonial records that are filled with stories of records of the native people of the coastal plain of Virginia.

24:39 And so, it's almost as though, you come across the Blue Ridge and it is a new often referred to as a, no man's land that it was open that it was abandoned and those thoughts. And so in my career, at this point, the question that I ask is who's benefited from that story.

24:59 Has benefited from that particular way of understanding Landon place and why has that been such a prevalent part of the narrative that we tell? Why is it that no one has to give Native American sites a second thought? Except to say, look at that. Cool spear point that you found.

25:20 Yeah, and so where's the responsibility there? And so I think that my career has very much Peril to doing archaeology for 40 years now and I have paralleled a lot of the changes in our discipline. And one of those major changes has been collaboration with Native people. And so in Virginia, the closest tribe that it still exists that John has been recognized. That is very well, organized with the Monacan people and they are on the east side of the Blue Ridge. But we know from the archaeological record that they and their confederated tribes associated with them were living in this part of Virginia. So the questions that I now ask are questions that I want to work on with them and I want them to tell me what they want to know that I can help them with what's important to them. So, recently we've been working on a project on Berry.

26:20 And here in the Shenandoah Valley, there was a very specific burial tradition that was used by native people for about four hundred years from about a d 900-280-1300. And the people who were here at that time has settled in their Villages were growing, but they were not the huge villages at the time of European settlement, but they were getting there. But one of the interesting things that they did is they would bury people in the mouth and if you can imagine a central place, usually a floodplain that is in case that is surrounded by Hills, just this incredible location. The people who lived in the hamlets and the small villages, let's say for about a 9 mile radius when someone in their Village would die, they would be buried in the village. But then

27:20 Any given time everyone in that group from those that nine or ten mile radius who had died were exhumed and were brought together and this went on for over four hundred years. And so they would build these Mounds overtime and ultimately they were ten to twelve feet high several thousand people buried in them. And it was a communal always called collect and so they are on Prime agricultural. Europeans showed up. One of the first things they did is they started. And so there is very little left today. You barely can see them on the landscape. And one of the things I've been working on with my students is trying to figure out if there are ways to use technology like, say, for example, satellite imagery remote sensing.

28:20 Non-invasive that will not impact the sites but that will at least help us find them again and what's left of them. And it's usually the basis of them and maybe a foot or so is that you can barely barely tell that they're there. But there is like the shadow of the site on the landscape. And so those are sacred places. Those are exquisitely in heart-wrenching lie compelling that the sacred burial is the part that will help you find the story about that. And also,

29:00 Spiritually. Beautiful, you know, it opens the door to so as I always say to him to the students when we go because we recognize that we as I said or seen things that no one has seen for a long time. We're trying to put together a story of people. We don't know and that's a great responsibility and we need to be committed to this. And so that's the bat is the, I guess you could say the mindset that we take when we go into the field and work together, but I think that we also recognize that sometimes Archaeology is the only way to get these stories material culture. What is Left Behind that? The village site the arteries in the arm, Stone spear points that have survived that a farmer will pick up. That's our, that's our clue. That's our key. And I always think of unlocking.

30:00 Stores with these artifacts. And it's never about the object itself. It's always about what they're not. So when I hold a spear point in my hand, that is 5000 years old. And I think about the fact that the native people in this area were really beginning to work with wild plants and we're beginning to domesticate while species in this area. And that the spear point. I'm holding in my hand may have been from someone who had been out hunting at a time. When a smaller group was back at their campsite auction, Podium cooking lambsquarters cooking, the seeds of sunflowers and you know, what, what does that mean? So, I do think that as we get farther and farther into this, we have come to recognize that archaeology as a discipline, which was very science. Bisikan, Tisbury.

31:00 But that it has really started to morph into something different. Now. We're we're all beginning to recognize that. There is a greater responsibility to be described as being on the porch and have your family's home and, and hearing all these stories that your work was students is, is that like a c? I mean, you're sitting here and bring the legacy of Storytelling to them as well. What is that? Like for you? You know, of course, covid has made things different but it is pretty amazing, just to be in a van riding to a place with students and to sort of set them up for the day by starting to point. They tell them would vote on stories about the work, we're going to do.

32:00 Just explaining what we're doing. When we get there. We'll get the equipment out. And let me tell you about the family that lived in this hollow in Shenandoah, National Park was established and they were removed. Let me tell you about them because I may not have chance. We may be doing other things. But and so it's like we turn these return field work into these. If that's where I tried to get across to them. The importance of knowing, where they, in the hope that regardless of where they end up regardless of whether they live in the United States or they'd go abroad. Or, you know, they move back to California. What I've given them is the way of looking at the world that will carry with them, and they'll start to look for stories.

32:54 It's really beautiful. And I think it's so important because we can just get so caught up in doing things and not not Savor that what you just lied to about, you know, who it is. And she's been here before and where those like depth of connections to thinking about what used to be here. I'm thinking about the fact that, you know, here we are in downtown Harrisonburg close to Main Street, which was the Great Valley Road Route. 11, one of the earliest documented roads in the eastern United States and we are just and thinking about all the people who were stable, not pretty much sitting where we are now as part of the story. So it can be really annoying when you go to parties.

33:54 Let me tell you story, but

34:07 I'm sure you're a wonderful guest at party, time. It will not be that long before I retire. Not ready yet. I haven't really made any move toward it, but I will be retiring one of these days. And one of the things that I often reflect on, is when I'm teaching. And when I have students in the field as have I done enough, have I done enough to get across to them how important this is have. I done enough to help them understand their responsibility and their power, and I don't know, but I do feel pretty lucky to have people to talk to at work with people who have, trusted me with their stories, with, who have shared their land, who have shared what they have found, what they know.

35:07 Like that has made me who I am.

35:14 Well, I know I'm again, as always deeply moved by what you're sharing say. And I also just in all of the questions that you asked of yourself and everything that you said, has it a whole series of questions along with it. Like, are we doing enough? Are we connecting to the story or giving people the opportunity to learn and valued and honored? And that seems like such a powerful Compass to just Who You Are.

35:51 I think that.

35:54 One of the things I worry about the most particularly given climate change and what climate change, the wires are just rolling over the west. And we have increased fire risk here. One of the migrate worries is that we are going to start losing so much before we. So I always

36:21 I feel that I've had a 1/3 in a certain way because of, who I am in my position, my job, but at the same time that there is the sense of it may be that what we are going to have to do, is just to try to salvage to save what we can. And then hope that as we get it from the ground, we can talk to people. So, it's like my whole method of work is, in a way, being drawn into question for me being called into question because the way to do things, and I think that we've definitely, we were looking at the time when we've got to find new ways of doing this. But when you go on the Virginia's Eastern Shore,

37:21 As well, take students over there and you just watch people's backyards going. You can't begin to express the trauma that that brings to both the family members who live there, as well as the archaeologists who have never been trained to deal with these kinds of things. And so that's where it's at. That's where that's fascinating and

37:53 I just critically important and that I love that, you continue to ask the questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.