美国国家公共电台 NPR Anthropologist Jason De Leon Awarded MacArthur 'Genius' Grant

 

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

To cross from Mexico into the U.S. without legal permission can mean days of walking through rivers, deserts and mountains and through places where dangerous criminals prey¹ on migrants. Jason de Leon thinks the paths that migrants choose will one day be seen as a kind of Ellis Island.

He's an anthropologist² with a past in archaeology³, and he uses the techniques of these disciplines to preserve the stuff that migrants leave behind. De Leon is the founder⁴ of the Undocumented Migration⁵ Project, and he has just won a MacArthur Genius Grant for his work. Jason de Leon, congratulations and welcome to the show.

JASON DE LEON: Thank you so much.

MCEVERS: Once someone crosses the border, oftentimes their stories sort of disappear and so does the stuff that they brought with them for the journey - backpacks and toothbrushes and tarps. And that is the stuff that you preserve, right?

DE LEON: Yeah. A big part of this project is trying to demonstrate that archaeology as a tool to understand the human condition does not have to be sequestered⁶ in the distant past.

MCEVERS: So how do you do it? Yeah, talk about your process.

DE LEON: So we hike in the desert. We survey vast parts of the Sonoran desert, looking for the things that migrants have left behind. When we find those things, we will stop and map them, photograph them, take GPS coordinates⁷, collect artifacts. They get put into a database and then get stored at the University of Michigan, where we analyze⁸ them and we use them in various ways.

MCEVERS: What kinds of things have surprised you that you found?

DE LEON: You know, in the beginning when we started this project almost 10 years ago, you saw a pretty wide range of stuff - so a set of hair curlers, cocktail⁹ dresses, high heels, you know, footballs, things that people were taking with them because they thought the journey wasn't going to be very long.

And over the 10 years that we've been doing this, what we've seen is they're much more aware of the dangers of places like the Arizona desert. And so the actual material culture that folks bring with them has evolved now to focus really just on alleviating¹⁰ suffering and surviving.

MCEVERS: Wow. What other stories are these things telling you right now? Like, what are some of the stories that are kind of emerging from what you're finding?

DE LEON: I think that the backpacks and the broken shoes and the bloody¹¹ socks, those tell one part of this physical experience people are having. And what we've really tried to do is to say these artifacts are very important, but they need to be brought into conversation with the voices of migrants themselves.

MCEVERS: Right. Because we could all look back on this moment and say, whoa, what? That - you know, it's like it could be this moment in history when this massive migration of people - where we all say, how did that work? What did that feel like?

DE LEON: Yeah. The worry is that it's going to get whitewashed¹², you know, in 50 years. I mean, people reminisce about Ellis Island as if it was, you know, a vacation spot. Ellis Island was a horrible place if you were Italian, if you were Eastern European. The human rights abuses that were happening when folks were migrating here have largely been forgotten with some historical distance.

MCEVERS: This Genius Grant, of course, comes with money. That's part of the deal. What are your plans?

DE LEON: Pay off my student loans, number one.

MCEVERS: (Laughter) A very good use of the money (laughter).

DE LEON: Yeah. I might try to get some Jason Isbell tickets.

MCEVERS: (Laughter).

DE LEON: Treat myself a little bit. But, you know, really we see this grant as a way to facilitate the work that we're doing even more and to push it in new directions. It's really exciting to think about all these projects that me and my - many of my collaborators have been workshopping for years now, we're going to have resources to do these things. And so we're looking forward - I mean, I haven't been able to tell anyone this, so that's what kind of sucks, is...

MCEVERS: Right. Because you don't know exactly what the plans are until you get to tell everyone, yeah (laughter).

DE LEON: Yeah. So for the last five weeks, I've been running through these conversations in my head with my collaborators. And finally, today I'll get to tell them that, you know, those ideas that we had, I think we can finally do a lot of them.

MCEVERS: Oh, well, I hope you enjoy that. That sounds like a good day. Jason de Leon is an associate professor of anthropology¹³ at the University of Michigan. He is founder of the Undocumented Migration Project and a new recipient¹⁴ of a MacArthur Genius Grant. Thanks a lot.

DE LEON: Thank you, Kelly.

MCEVERS: And just a note here, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is among NPR's financial supporters.

(SOUNDBITE OF RATATAT'S "CHERRY")

1 prey   

n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨

参考例句：

• Stronger animals prey on weaker ones.弱肉强食。
• The lion was hunting for its prey.狮子在寻找猎物。

2 anthropologist   

n.人类学家，人类学者

参考例句：

• The lecturer is an anthropologist.这位讲师是人类学家。
• The anthropologist unearthed the skull of an ancient human at the site.人类学家在这个遗址挖掘出那块古人类的颅骨。

3 archaeology   

n.考古学

参考例句：

• She teaches archaeology at the university.她在大学里教考古学。
• He displayed interest in archaeology.他对考古学有兴趣。

4 Founder   

n.创始者，缔造者

参考例句：

• He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
• According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说，罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。

5 migration   

n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙

参考例句：

• Swallows begin their migration south in autumn.燕子在秋季开始向南方迁移。
• He described the vernal migration of birds in detail.他详细地描述了鸟的春季移居。

6 sequestered   

adj.扣押的；隐退的；幽静的；偏僻的v.使隔绝，使隔离( sequester的过去式和过去分词 )；扣押

参考例句：

• The jury is expected to be sequestered for at least two months. 陪审团渴望被隔离至少两个月。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Everything he owned was sequestered. 他的一切都被扣押了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 coordinates   

n.相配之衣物；坐标( coordinate的名词复数 )；（颜色协调的）配套服装；[复数]女套服；同等重要的人（或物）v.使协调，使调和( coordinate的第三人称单数 )；协调；协同；成为同等

参考例句：

• The town coordinates on this map are 695037. 该镇在这幅地图上的坐标是695037。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, coordinates all UN emergency relief. 联合国人道主义事务协调厅在紧急救济协调员领导下，负责协调联合国的所有紧急救济工作。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 analyze   

vt.分析，解析 (=analyse)

参考例句：

• We should analyze the cause and effect of this event.我们应该分析这场事变的因果。
• The teacher tried to analyze the cause of our failure.老师设法分析我们失败的原因。

9 cocktail   

n.鸡尾酒；餐前开胃小吃；混合物

参考例句：

• We invited some foreign friends for a cocktail party.我们邀请了一些外国朋友参加鸡尾酒会。
• At a cocktail party in Hollywood,I was introduced to Charlie Chaplin.在好莱坞的一次鸡尾酒会上，人家把我介绍给查理·卓别林。

10 alleviating   

减轻，缓解，缓和( alleviate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• If it's alleviating pain,who knows what else it's doing? 如果它减轻了疼痛，天知道还影响什么？
• Measuring poverty is not the same as alleviating it, of course. 当然，衡量贫困和减轻贫困是截然不同的。

11 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

12 whitewashed   

粉饰，美化，掩饰( whitewash的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The wall had been whitewashed. 墙已粉过。
• The towers are in the shape of bottle gourds and whitewashed. 塔呈圆形，状近葫芦，外敷白色。 来自汉英文学 - 现代散文

13 anthropology   

n.人类学

参考例句：

• I believe he has started reading up anthropology.我相信他已开始深入研究人类学。
• Social anthropology is centrally concerned with the diversity of culture.社会人类学主要关于文化多样性。

14 recipient   

a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器

参考例句：

• Please check that you have a valid email certificate for each recipient. 请检查是否对每个接收者都有有效的电子邮件证书。
• Colombia is the biggest U . S aid recipient in Latin America. 哥伦比亚是美国在拉丁美洲最大的援助对象。