Questions. So many questions.
In preparing this piece, I reached out to many individuals and institutional representatives, asking what they see as the past, present and future of Kule Loklo, the roundhouse and Big Time. Each time I spoke with a stakeholder, I came away with a new, somewhat wrenching understanding and found my own perspectives seriously challenged.
We’re taught in anthropology to declare our biases when composing ethnographic studies. Here’s mine. I’ve been active in Kule Loklo affairs for the past four decades. This includes field trips with my young students (we helped dig out the first roundhouse), volunteering with the Miwok Archaeological Preserve of Marin on workdays and coordinating their Indigenous skills classes with the College of Marin, teaching and taking many of those classes, writing articles, attending numerous Big Times and participating in sacred ceremonies.