 Boom. What's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host Alan Saakyan really excited We are still at AAA the American Anthropological Association. We are at the annual meeting We are now sitting down with Dr. Jason de Leon. Hey, man. Hi. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me greatly appreciate it This is gonna be a lot of fun Jason is at the forefront of the other undocumented migration project and that is one of many interests of yours, but you're the program chair for the AAA annual meeting So that that means you're coordinating what exactly that means if if you Love your time slot for your paper, and then that's I did that if you hate it That's also my fault, but I will pass the buck to somebody else. So we do a lot of the programming the selection of the keynote lectures The development of the theme for the meeting which this year. It's resistance resilience and adaptation And then all the physical Scheduling of every single session so which happens by hand two days in DC of damn hundreds of different sessions that you move across a Day of a timetable of five days. Yeah, wow So that's a tremendous amount of work, and then he's also an associate professor and director of undergraduate studies of anthropology at the University of Michigan Focus on violence materiality death morning Latin American migration crime and forensic analysis and archaeology of the Contemporary and so The undocumented migration project is crazy There was this backpack wall photo that I'm going to put into the feed of right now for you guys to see and It's a long-term study of clandestine border crossing that uses ethnographic Archaeological and forensic approaches to understand the phenomena a variety of geographical contexts including Sonoran desert of southern Arizona the Mexico border towns north Mexico border towns and southern Mexico Guatemala border You also won the MacArthur genius award last year last year. That's so cool. I'm grads. Congrats, and Let's okay, let's talk about this. This is this is really interesting First just give us a bit on like how does one even get interested in anthropology and archaeology? How'd you pick it up? Well, you know, it's funny We had an event on Wednesday with George Lucas and I was privileged to introduce him to the audience One of the things I talked about was the fact that when I was a little kid You know, I wanted to have a bullwhip where a fedora, you know jump into tombs all because of the influence of Indiana Jones And so for me, I mean and and that's really you're not supposed to tell the students I mean because the whole idea of teaching anthropology is to It's just something that hey, it's not that it's it's something much deeper and much more nuanced But my kind of entryway into archaeology really was through through Indiana Jones But as a kid I was fascinated with history My family in Mexico, so we would spend a lot of time visiting Mexico and I had went to Visited the pyramids of Tehti Wakhan when I was a kid, which just blew me away I didn't know what it was, but I knew that I wanted to have some kind of connection to that You know, 15 years later. I ended up studying anthropology and archaeology as a college student Is the combination of Indiana Jones and also the X the Being introduced to some of the largest historical. Yeah. Yeah Wow now as you When did you start professing at the University of Michigan? I started at the University of Michigan in 2010 2010 yeah eight years now and What has been a fascinating sort of takeaway from Working with now probably thousands of students over your eight years So like yeah, what's been some of your most fun takeaways about what the process of trying to educate students is like Well, you know for me I was a total screw-up student I was a terrible student. I failed our intro to archaeology I have an F on my transcripts in the in the colonial Indians of Mexico I got to see an intro to answer in the intro to culture anthropology so my introduction to the discipline was was kind of bad and It was through these amazing mentors who kind of helped me to to find my way and gave me lots of Support and responsibilities that really shaped me early on For me the what I love about my job one one of the biggest parts of it is to be able to then give that back to students And so I love I take I you know I've taught thousands of students over the years But I've taken hundreds of students to the field and so I work with a lot of undergraduates and graduate students and for me That's one of the the the most rewarding parts of this job is to be able to To give something back to those to those those folks and hopefully inspire them to do you know to do anthropology and What you just said about going to the field is so important because you there's video footage of you You know going through the desert area where the border isn't seeing the the leftover artifacts of the migration and When you expose young people's minds to that Process of actually going and doing the archaeology themselves then they gain that same awareness expansion Now are you taking students then from Michigan down there? Is that I have been yeah But I take students from all I mean I run field schools that are international so we get students from Mexico, Canada You know sometimes Europe, but but from all over the United States So some Michigan students and then people from other from other places as well and then And then that that seems to be a huge one. So the field work itself seems to be a huge part What was speaking of resilience being the annual meeting? topic What about your resilience? How did you get through the C and the F and how did you persist? You know I've I was an army brat. So when I was a kid I moved around a lot And I think what I didn't realize was I was really being trained to Insert myself into different cultural settings and figure out how to be competent in those places how to be comfortable and how to How to get to know people who were very different from me? And so I think that that early on prepared me for a lot of what I ended up doing as a researcher And when it came down to being in school, you know, I was this terrible college student I dropped out many times and It got to the point where You know I had been a musician for many years and I had dropped out wanted to be a rock star I went on tour totally failed had to come back with you know My tail between my legs and go back to college and it was kind of like failing at music And my choice was either to move in with my grandmother Which was like I'd rather go to jail Or to go back to school And so I went back to school finally with with real seriousness after these apps and these other sorts of things and I Was convinced by my mentors that these things that I love travel being around people of different backgrounds I could do all those things with within the discipline of anthropology And that was what really kind of helped me to get over the hump of these early failures But part of I think my early failures was the fact that I was oftentimes taught an archaeology that just didn't connect with me It's it felt very distant and foreign and you know I grew up in an era where we were still still showing like the grainy footage of naked You know brown people from from some third-world country and that wasn't that was an anthropology for me that I recognized as problematic And it wasn't until someone pointed out to me that like look There's other types of types of work that you can do that really is not that is the complete opposite of that But it could be inspiring and can be really fulfilling When I found those people and found that that subject matter Then I just hit the ground running and you know It was just the matter of having the heavy good mentorship and and really being inspired But I you know, I think that for me it's important to talk about those failures to students because yeah, you know and not everybody You know not everybody needs to go to college I mean I sort of didn't have a lot of job skills and I was like, okay. Well, I'm obviously a terrible musician I'm not I'm not gonna make a living doing that. So what else am I good at? I'm super good at hanging out I'm super good at with being with with people and so I was able to kind of build a career out of that And I think and much of my work is about connecting with with people and trying to understand the stories and to highlight These experiences that we have as as humans you nailed it. You have the teaching about failure, which is crucial building that resilience Then you found what you love because you had a mentorship Inspire you found that inspiration and so exposing young people to as many of these options for things for them to fall in love with as possible is so crucial that equality opportunity and Then and then how did how did it end up being that you studied the tools of? Latino tools Mexican tools. Yeah. Well, so my my initial training was in archaeology And so I my dissertation was on ancient stone tools. I wrote a 800 page Horrible horribly boring tome about stone tools and I had been really in love with archaeology up to that point and I Felt like I kind of lost my way in the middle of it And I ended up doing this project that didn't really feel fulfilling because I felt like I had written this book That's six people in the world who want to read maybe one of them is my mom and that's about it You know, but I felt like I'd become too focused and I had lost sight of the people And so I made a shift, you know, I finished my dissertation and was like I never want to look at a stone tool again I want to do something else and I had been really inspired by a lot of the folks Who I'd worked with on these excavations so men and women in Mexico who had had these traumatic border crossing experiences And I found that over the course of all these years of excavating in Mexico I was increasingly more interested in what in what they had to say than about what was coming out of the ground And so they ended up being kind of lucky to To find a project on immigration on on border crossings that allows me to be with people and to do ethnographic work But also to use art the tools of archaeology to document these these experiences and to collect these things and to archive them we have we've had Dr. David Eagleman on the show who's a neuroscientist and he had this similar moment when he was exploring how he could publish these very deeply nuanced Neuroscience papers that six people in the world would read and then he decided to start making new senses for the human body And so these sort of like augmentations that can get to you know 130 million deaf people around the planet, right so so this sort of How can you you know you decided for you you were like I'm gonna talk about something I'm gonna research something that undocumented migration project that Hundreds of millions of people are going to be interested in learning about Rather than the six even though ancient soil tools that is a different color on the color wheel There is that interest for people as well I just find that to be very interesting that people care about What other people will find interest very deeply moving and interesting? Okay, so now let's talk about how you know you're going down you're having these These my you're you're literally migrating people to an area of other people's migration Yeah for periods of like these are long periods of time of going through and excavating for artifacts and So yeah, teach us about what all of that is like so my work is a mix of you know Part of it is being in the Arizona desert collecting the things that migrants are left behind doing archaeological survey Hiking in the desert with with students to document these these places and these trails and then in other parts of it You know it could be I do that for two months and then it could be I spend two months in a migrant shelter talking to folks about their experience of doing interviews about what's happened to them in the deserts and One of those things are interesting in and of themselves But I think they're much more powerful when I put them when I put them together And but so but my typical day I mean it could be I'm in the desert all day hiking it could be I'm sitting in the deportation court taking notes It could be I'm doing interviews of migrants in northern Mexico It could be I'm running forensic experiments with using pigs as proxies for the human body out in the desert to understand What happens to the dead people it could be that I'm in Ecuador or New York traveling to meet with the families of the missing Or the dead so it's a it's a interdisciplinary project that allows me to kind of bounce around and and for me that's really To be able to kind of follow these stories is really is really helpful for me to kind of get To get a better understanding of the entire picture because I think that the deserts one part of it There's so many other pieces of it and and I think people would joke to that. I'm a bit it's like a Jack Jack of all master of none, right, but constantly bouncing around but for me like interdisciplinary research you Have to do these things because one thing alone. It's not gonna. It's not gonna give you all the information that you need. Yeah there was a Section where I was looking at what you you know that you were really trying to prove to some people was that people that have Undocumentedly undocumentedly migrated to the United States or to Guatemala that that they are human they have lives they have histories and so When we dehumanize others we dehumanize ourselves and so it's time to you to look at and care at what why You know in the why the why is so interesting too So I want to also ask you about you know You're talking about literally capturing someone's soul by a photo of their of them looking at a camera and telling their story Like why did they move? Why did they leave and like you know tell us about that about what you've been learning from these? interviews and yeah, but you know for me it's it really has become this commitment to people and a commitment to To showing people that that there's a lot of suffering in the world and needless suffering and You know we are bombarded with statistics about immigration We're bombarded with this kind of Polarizing rhetoric about you know the the brown invader the immigrant the you know the the the foreigner and That's not helpful. I think that's so problematic for so many reasons and I think it's it's a mask for these other anxieties and so for me it's I'm committed to people and I think anthropology is a tool that can show that we have a hell of a lot more in common than we don't that we do a Difference and you know being with people for me is really important and I've also just been incredibly moved by The things that I've seen and the people that I've encountered and a lot of my work is focused on on those who die in the Arizona desert people who get Who who end up who are funneled into the Arizona desert because that's a through border patrol infrastructure That tries to use the desert as a natural impediment to to movement and we've been doing that for 20 years it's killed thousands of people and I'll tell you what I mean It's one thing to look at the names of the dead that you can find online or to read the statistics It's another thing to find a dead body damn and to be like, okay This is as real as it gets and so for me, you know having those encounters with with the dead out there just really Confirm that this is what I need to be doing and it's not just here is this dead body look at You know gawk at this corpse, but who was she who was where did she come from? Where is our family? Why was she out here and what are the repercussions of this death? So for me, that's really My kind of goal is to to make visible these things that are happening right now And with with the hope that if we know more about the stuff and we have a deeper understanding of it Then we won't be fooled by this rhetoric that says immigrants are horrible. They're terrible people. They're here to destroy this country It's like no, these are just people people trying to survive People who are trying to make a living and prove their situation and we need to treat Them with the amount of respect that we would want ourselves to be treated And you know, I've never had to be in a situation where I need to cross the desert to feed my family I don't know what I would do but I want people to understand that these are not easy choices that folks are having to make and and really We should be ashamed that thousands of people have died on US soil and many of them will never be identified because of the Arizona Desert just quickly destroys destroys people's bodies. Well It becomes a whole this entire conversation has became so much different because of the actual Visualization that you've put in me and likely with other people of actually seeing dead bodies That are just gone with nature really quickly from the desert after and I want I want you to give us a bit of an explanation at what you think are the Variables that are pushing geopolitical economic political whatever they are That are pushing people to make the decision to attempt to to go through this crazy Circumstance of migration. Yeah. Well, you know for a long time. I mean the easiest explanation was, you know The economy I mean NAFTA in the mid 90s crashed the Mexican economy and forced all these poor farmers who could no longer Make a living growing corn because we were flooding their market with with American produced corn. That's cheaper They were forced to migrate then to to make a living wage and that had been historically, you know That it was both the the poor economic conditions in Latin America that were forced people to leave But then also the the the pull of you at the US labor market I mean we love undocumented labor and so we employ these folks we tell them we hate you at the border But we love you when you're in the kitchen. We love it when you're when you're doing the landscaping So there is this this poll as well that happens, but but now, you know with the whole migrant caravan That's happening the caravan These are folks who are leaving places like Honduras because they are literally running for their lives and Honduras is a nightmare right now I mean it's one of the most dangerous places in the world people are literally dying daily on the street because of gang violence because of drug cartel violence and so that's a different reason for this outmigration, but we have to know too that you know Latin America Honduras these El Salvador these places are the way that they are because oftentimes of pull of us political intervention We've done these things of these countries that then have created the conditions that then force them to leave And then you've got things like global warming that are pushing, you know, Hurricane Mitch in the in the 90s That was something that created this new wave of Honduran migrants that had to leave because they could no longer live in these Places and so it's a lot of there's a lot of complex factors that are that are both I think pushing and pulling people out of these countries and forcing them to make these Incredibly difficult decisions to to migrate that was a good rundown of also some of the the history of NAFTA a little bit about What's going on in Honduras this we don't we don't get this as part of our our our Variable that we calculate within our empathy This so when we get to hear it And we get to add it to the calculation in the mixture of all the perspectives We're trying to synthesize into into how we feel about what's going on in the world I think that helps a lot now when when you're When you're there dealing with artifacts, what are you finding because we see your Amazing art installation. You made very thought-provoking art installation of the the backpack wall again. You can see that right now and Then also I saw the video of you with you know, you were seeing the leftover water bottles You know tell us about these artifacts and how do they add to the narrative? Well for me though a big part of the archaeology is to make this stuff visible to say look people are out in the desert They're crossing in the middle of nowhere, but they're leaving behind these materials and for me the archaeology part of it is It's helping to make this thing. That's invisible visible. It's helping to document this historical moments And as far as I'm concerned, you know the Arizona desert that is our new Ellis Island, you know, that is that's a part of American immigration history It's incredibly Polarizing at this moment. I mean we whether we like it or not it's part of our shared immigration history And so part of the archaeology for me is both to understand what it looks like on the ground But also to make the case that that we need to we need to document and and conserve these materials for for humanity And one of the you know for many many years I fought with people who who hated the fact that I was using archaeology in this way They found that it was not actually archaeology and I would say you know what? All archaeology is is a study of the past through material culture That past could be five minutes ago. There's no law that says it has to be five thousand years ago And so it's fun. It's for me It's been a really interesting way to use archaeology in this in this new and much and I find a really compelling kind of Contemporary way, but also to to show like yeah, this is American history This is this is American history And so for many years people were saying what you collect is garbage and I you know, it's not language that I use I'd say these are things people have left behind in distress. It could be food wrappers water bottles It could be Bibles baby bottles personal letters things that they've lost in routes But there are artifacts these are artifacts and we treat them with with a lot of respect and one of the biggest I Think proudest moments of my life was when the Smithsonian Assessions, you know hundreds of these objects and they're on display now You can go to the American History Museum and see Materials from the Arizona Desert next to the materials from from Ellis Island because those curators there do see the the value and the historical connections between you between these materials Good job. Yeah, good job man. That's a long fight. I mean really But but I think it's um, you know, it's a good it really makes me makes me proud of Of the work that my students have done and you know, I'm very grateful for for the opportunities to To try to help tell this story Wow to be able to see the artifacts next to Ellis Island's artifacts. Whoa so Where where else do you think? Contemporary archaeology can be of use. It's happening now all over the place I mean when I started this project the big the big kind of most well-known Version of this had happened in Tucson, Arizona funny enough, you know, but looking at people's garbage There was a Tucson garbage project where they were excavating landfills. They were doing archaeology and people's Dumpsters to see what they were throwing away and thinking about issues of consumption and Waste but now you're seeing contemporary archaeology happening all over the globe We were just on a panel this afternoon with folks who do this type of work in the Mediterranean looking at that humanitarian crisis What what those refugees are leaving behind in the water? When they get to get to get to Europe, you've got folks doing this in all over the US in different contexts so I mean I think archaeology is really relevant and We're only now kind of scratching the surface about the different places that we can put we can put it to use In a contemporary setting But for me that's and that was not the type of archaeology that I had been trained to do Yeah, it's from stone. Yeah, ancient stone tools to today's archaeology. Yeah, yeah from yesterday's people Whoa, and that that I think that is such a profound Augmentation to people's awareness that that archaeology can be from what happened yesterday so a Thought is how do you how do we figure out how to immediately send safely? Archaeologists to the areas like in Myanmar with the Rohingyans being displaced to Bangladesh How how do we safely send archaeologists there to start? It's hard There's a lot of places right now where we know archaeology should happen, but it's just too it's too dangerous I mean the second the Sahara people are coming from West Africa the crossing the Sahara to get to Libya and Many of those refugees will tell you the worst part of the journey is not the Mediterranean where thousands of people have drowned It's crossing the Sahara where thousands of people if not more have died out there And so we know there's archaeology out there in the making it's it's being made right now in real time with bodies being left behind Abandoned trucks and that kind of stuff, but it's not a place that you can go to right now to do this kind of work but I but I do hope in the future that there will be a moment of reconciliation and Where people will be able to get in I mean you look you look at like the mass graves from genocide It's sometimes taking decades for us to be able to get back in there to do this work of identifying these bodies Well, so so safety for contemporary archaeology needs to be pushed. We need a big push for that That's also so interesting now I Want to I want us just here now maybe some of your information synthesis about you know What about what you've been teaching you've been bringing students down you've been teaching them about contemporary archaeology Your exhibits now with Ellis Island. What is a huge synthesis for you of this? You know, I think that we need to see the The historical connection between this immigration wave and the ones that have come before it We need to see that every generation in this country. We have demonized immigrants It used to not be cool to be Irish, right? It used to not be a welcoming Ellis Island was never a welcoming place We've romanticized it a hundred years later, but when you were if you know Europeans coming to Ellis Island where we're mistreated and abused Like much like Latinos are we do the same thing to the Chinese to all these different ethnic groups that have come in these waves And so for me a big part of it is to see that what's happening now is no different than what's happened in previous generations And we need to to fight against this historical amnesia to see these connections And I would hope that by having information about how bad it was for people's ancestors And there's no difference people will say well my ancestors came here legally and they worked really hard and learned English into those Mike, you know that in in 50 years We're gonna be saying that same narrative about about Latinos and there'll be some new group that people will be demonizing And so for me, it's really important to to to educate people that What they think about what it used to be like is probably not is not not the case so that's a big part of it another part of it too is to understand that People aren't leaving their home countries because they want to that's all these things that are happening on the back end that are pushing them out And a lot of times it's us intervention that is creating these these these problems I mean the drug war in Mexico we snort the cocaine and shoot the heroin up that That that we are paying Mexico to produce Mexico's a war zone because we send them guns I mean it's not like they're making these firearms in Mexico So understanding those things and how they're connected to this these waves of migration. I think is really important and I think finally understanding that Millions of people have crossed through the Arizona deserts because of because of policies that are in place along the border That force them into these areas in hopes that if you have to walk five days across the desert that you will stop coming And and that it may kill you and those are things that you can find online I've written extensively about those policies that explicitly say the desert can kill people and that would be a good strategy to deter them So I want people to really understand that thousands have died. There are thousands of unidentified bodies that have That it will never be identified the people who have died in this during this process and this happens on US soil I mean more people have died crossing the US Mexico border than in the died in 9-11 and If you look at the maps, I mean it's we're talking. This is a lot of dead bodies and We should be we should be ashamed and shocked and we you know if you took these 3,000 bodies You know 5,000 bodies, however, you know depending on who you ask and you put them in downtown San Jose, right? You put them in you know in some other part of the US it would be immediately deemed a humanitarian crisis But the fact that this happens in the middle of nowhere people don't see it These are oftentimes let you know undocumented Latinos that that a certain segment thinks is not worthy of care People are just like yeah, whatever. It's fine illegal border crossers, right? They broke a law kind of thing or I don't want to hear about it But I think we need to hear about it and we need to we need to be inspired to take action Because it's a troubling thing and we should be really ashamed that our country does these things to people We should be ashamed we do this to each other. I mean it's just a basic human level. Yeah, there It's got to be a major shift in and in syncing into oneself and one's heart and finding coherence and resonance with other humans not dehumanizing people a different economic and political roots of civilization that must be augmented to to transition to make that transition to stewardship and to just a different Resource flow of civilization all that stuff Maybe the last thought for you would be What's is this is this the focus for a while and you know, what would be a next for Jason? Well, I'm working on a book right now about smugglers. Whoa. Yeah, so I've been working with smugglers for the last three or four years Honduran smugglers who are crossing people getting him across Mexico and part of that work for me is Oftentimes smugglers are really If there's if there's a bad guy to blame it's the smuggler It's a smuggler's fault that people the migrants that smugglers fault that they're coming it's more than someone got assaulted I want people to understand that smugglers are a natural progression outcome of Political power of economic policies of labor markets of all we make smugglers We make these folks who then get into this into this This economic system that we benefit directly from and so that's part of my you know, and it's hard to write You know, can can you write a sim a sympathetic story about a smuggler and should you and so that's one question But for me, it's like okay. I don't want to write a specific a sympathetic story about a smuggler I want to write a Moving story about a person who finds himself in a situation where they have to make these difficult decisions We all think that we wouldn't be the guards at the Nazi concentration camp Yeah, so I really want to understand those things as one as one other part of this problem because I think that the immigration issue is so complicated and We've got to understand all these different parts and how they fit together We really look forward to smugglers Yeah, really look forward to everything that you're showcasing and building congratulations on the amazing success Thank you Thank you very much on the show and talking to us and thank you everyone for tuning in give us your thoughts in the Comments below. We'd love to hear from you and check out Jason's links also in the bio, please Go and build the future go manifest your destiny into the world everyone huge. Thank you to AAA our partners Thank you, and we'll see you guys soon Peace