research ethnographic: Etniker-Navarra

meeting of Etniker Euskalerria in front of the cave of Isturitz at leave Navarre

Etniker means, in the words of its founder, José Miguel de Barandiaran, "to investigate ethnicity" and it emerged as a complement to the teaching at the Chair of language and Basque Culture at the University of Navarra. Its goal is to obtain data with a view to drawing up a cultural atlas of the Basque people.

There is no exact date of creation of the group since Etniker is the reformulation of a project whose roots go back to 1920, during the teaching of Barandiaran in the seminar Conciliar of Vitoria but, the infancy of the group as such takes place between 1964 and 1969 under the protection of the new Chair. Barandiaran, aware of the cultural change brought about by industrialization, managed throughout his life to involve those who approached him in the systematic recording of the facts that make up the traditional life of the localities of the Basque area. In any case, he always tried to provide his collaborators with three basic elements: training by means of classes or seminars, a methodological instrument formulated as survey and a space where to publish the result of the research.

In the case of Etniker de Navarra [PDF], the teaching support was the Chair de language y Cultura Vasca of the University where he taught a course focusing on a single topic Basque Ethnology between 1964 and 1979; the methodological instrument was the guide para una survey etnográfica [PDF]; and the space in which to make known the result of the research fieldwork was the magazine Notebooks on Ethnology and Ethnography of Navarre created in 1969 by the Diputación Foral, whose editor was the anthropologist Julio Caro Baroja.

Once the model Etniker was exported to Alava, Biscay, Guipuzcoa and the northern Basque Country, the different Etniker groups worked to contribute materials for the Ethnographic Atlas. In order to give greater impetus to project of the atlas, in 1987 they set up a legally registered company as Etniker Euskalerria [PDF], with an interregional committee , with the aim of promoting the publication, not only of local monographs but especially of the Ethnographic Atlas of Vasconia, project undertaken by José Miguel de Barandiaran and whose first volume, dedicated to food, became a reality in 1990.