Yettem: A Garden of Eden for Armenian California
[00:00:00] Trudi Sandmeier: Today on Save As, we’re going to answer the very important question of what taxidermy and bicycles have to do with Armenian California.
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[00:00:17] Cindy Olnick: Hello, and welcome to Season Two of Save As: NextGen Heritage Conservation, where we talk about the amazing work by the heritage conservation students at University of Southern California. They are part of the future, and we bring it to you live. Well, not really live, but we bring it to you.
[00:00:38] Trudi Sandmeier: Hi Cindy, and it’s super exciting to be back. And we’re excited that you, our faithful listeners, are back. And if you’ve never listened to the podcast before, we’re delighted to have you, and we encourage you to go back and listen to Season One, because it was pretty great too.
[00:00:53] Cindy Olnick: Yes, it’s excellent for like walking the dog, driving to work, doing the dishes, although you have to turn it up a little bit or put in your headphones, all of those things — Just make life better with a side of Save As.
[00:01:08] Trudi Sandmeier: Absolutely. Better living through podcasting.
[00:01:12] Cindy Olnick: Well, I am Cindy Olnick,
[00:01:14] Trudi Sandmeier: And I’m Trudi Sandmeier, and we are the co-hosts of Save As, and your guides to the realms of the future of heritage conservation.
[00:01:25] Cindy Olnick: The Cagney and Lacey of heritage conservation. If you don’t know, look it up.
[00:01:30] Trudi Sandmeier: Oh, I was going to say, we, we might, you might be dating us a little bit there.
[00:01:33] Cindy Olnick: That’s okay. Own it, embrace it.
[00:01:35] Trudi Sandmeier: Right. That’s right.
[00:01:38] Cindy Olnick: So we are, we are not the future, but we’re bringing you the future, because that is where we’ll spend the rest of our lives …
[Criswell clip]
[00:01:52] Cindy Olnick: As said by the Amazing Criswell at the beginning of Ed Wood, Jr.’s remarkable masterpiece, Plan Nine from Outer Space.
[00:01:59] Trudi Sandmeier: High culture and drama is what we bring to you here on Save As.
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[00:02:12] Trudi Sandmeier: So when I was a kid, my mom was training to be a docent at the Natural History Museum in downtown L.A. And she would go to her docent training and then come home and over dinner at night, she would start almost every sentence with, Did you know, did you know? And we learned all kinds of really random facts about Los Angeles and natural history and all kinds of things I never knew I needed to know. Training, early training, for trivia greatness, frankly. And so Cindy, did you know that California has the largest Armenian community outside of Armenia?
[00:03:02] Cindy Olnick: I totally did not know that.
[00:03:05] Trudi Sandmeier: And did you know that the city of Glendale is the largest Armenian community in California?
[00:03:10] Cindy Olnick: I spend a lot of time in Glendale, so that doesn’t surprise me, but I don’t think I knew it for a natural fact.
[00:03:17] Trudi Sandmeier: So there’s a lot of revelations in today’s podcast with Ani Mnatsakanyan, who is talking about her thesis that she wrote about a little corner of Armenian history here in California. And it’s a pretty amazing journey that she took, to find this place in the Central Valley that has a really unique story to tell.
[00:03:42] Cindy Olnick: Ani is a delight. I cannot wait to hear this.
[00:03:44] Trudi Sandmeier: Well, she just finished her thesis a mere month ago, and we sat down right when it was hot off the presses to talk about her work. So here we go.
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[00:04:01] Trudi Sandmeier: Hi, Ani, and welcome to Save As. Thanks for coming to talk to us today about your thesis and about the work that you’ve been doing over the last year or so about the town of Yettem. We’re looking forward to hearing about it.
[00:04:14] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Hi, Trudi. Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to chat about Yettem. I can never get enough of that. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, basically East Hollywood, my whole life. I been in the Armenian community here, like Little Armenia basically since I was born, so I’ve always had like a really strong connection to the Armenian diaspora in Los Angeles. But I think that’s what really got me into trying to learn a little bit more about diasporan heritage. And I feel like the Heritage Conservation Program really provides so many opportunities to take your interests and study them and delve deeper and have the ability to not just learn about these things, but try to make a positive contribution to the world of conservation.
[00:05:06] Trudi Sandmeier: So this has been both an academic journey and a personal journey for you.
[00:05:12] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Yeah. It really opened my eyes to how different the Armenian experience is based on each community. And like a lot of my experiences, I also realize that are related to the fact that my great-great-grandparents escaped Vaughan during the Hamidian massacres, and went to Iran, andwhere they established themselves, and then went to the USSR. So I also realized that a lot of my identity is multilayered in that sense too. I’m not just an Armenian or an Armenian American. A lot of the Persian experience that my family experienced is part of my community.
[00:05:53] Trudi Sandmeier: How did you discover Yettem in the first place?
[00:05:56] Ani Mnatsakanyan: I actually have to thank one of my professors for this. Professor Vinayak and I were talking to each other and he said that, you know, if you don’t do something about your heritage it might be not as much of a fruitful time for you in this program, because there are certain aspects of your interests that really need to be explored more.
And then after I started exploring more about like Armenian communities and I was circling around Fresno. And then again, through one of Vinayak’s courses, I started looking more into like the comparative landscape study between historic Armenian lands and Central Valley. And then that’s when the name Yettem popped up.
And I was like, all this focus on Fresno, and then there’s this small Armenian town with an Armenian name and the only Armenian town with an Armenian name in the entire United States. And there’s just one very short and very incorrect Wikipedia article about it. And a couple of really great like articles in peer-reviewed journals. And I was like, but there has to be more. It’s really such a well-kept secret because the community’s resources are so rich, but finding those resources through traditional means of research were a challenge. So that’s what really, I was like, I’m always up for a good challenge. And that’s when I started reading more about Yettem. And my mind was just blown.
[00:07:31] Trudi Sandmeier: So there’ve been three major waves of Armenian immigration to the United States. One prior in the sort of 1800s to 1910s, then there’s another wave following the 1915 genocide. And then there’s another wave when the USSR dissolves. So each of these waves has a different set of characteristics and reasons why they’re coming, but they have a shared language and shared cultural experiences. So why did Armenians end up in the Central Valley in California?
[00:08:19] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Conditions were really getting bad progressively in the Ottoman Empire for Armenians and other non-Muslim minorities. Armenians found ways of traveling to the United States. And first they went to New York and a lot of the East Coast states. But after a few individuals traveled to the Central Valley, they found that they have this sort of affinity for the land there, there were a lot of similarities between the land in Central Valley and the land in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire.
The first big wave of Armenians moving to the Central Valley was because of the Hamidian massacres of 1894 and 1896. And it got its name because it happened under the rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid, the second. And so about 300,000 Armenians are estimated to have been massacred. And one of the largest massacre sites was in Adana. And so many of the Armenians if we trace back where they came from to the Central Valley were from Adana and all the different surrounding areas like Evereg and Tomarza and Chomaklou.
[00:09:37] Trudi Sandmeier: The Armenian community comes to California, and settles in Fresno. Why Fresno?
[00:09:43] Ani Mnatsakanyan: So, the first Armenian that arrived, his name was Mardiros Yanikian and he arrived in the Central Valley in 1874. So when he first arrived, he said he felt like a new man. So because of that, he actually changed his last name. Well, and his first name, he called himself now, Frank Normart and Normart literally translates as “new man” — “Nor” is “new” and “mart” is “man.” and so that’s when he decided to return back to the East Coast and tell all of his friends about how amazing California is and how great the climate is, and the geography is so reminiscent of the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire. But eventually he did move back to Fresno in 1885 and he established both a bicycle shop and a taxidermy store.
[00:10:37] Trudi Sandmeier: Okay. That is a very random combination.
[00:10:40] Ani Mnatsakanyan: I know, it was actually open until the 1990s. So it was pretty successful.
[00:10:46] Trudi Sandmeier: That’s so funny. And were they both in the same storefront?
[00:10:49] Ani Mnatsakanyan: I’m not sure if they were both in the same storefront, but I mean, that would be awesome. You can get your dead birds and your bikes in one place.
[00:10:56] Trudi Sandmeier: Yeah, you do. It’s like, see a stuffed mountain lion riding a 10 speed. So, like many, he comes to California, sees it’s pretty great. He goes back. He tells all his friends and his family and inspires a new wave of immigration to California.
[00:11:15] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Yeah. So even though he was the first one to come, the first Armenians that actually like bought and settled in Fresno were the Seropian brothers and they were from Massachusetts. Ultimately they came for health and also to potentially see commercial and farming successes.
[00:11:35] Trudi Sandmeier: And then Frank shows up again and then they’ve got taxidermy, bicycles, farming, all kinds of crazy things and a community starts to form.
[00:11:45] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Yeah. And most of these people in the East Coast were working in factories and saving money. So they did have some sort of, some way of establishing themselves. Whereas the later waves of Armenians that came didn’t necessarily have that same financial opportunity as maybe some of the earlier ones did. Not to say that they didn’t struggle, but they did have something saved up before coming to California.
[00:12:12] Trudi Sandmeier: Were there restrictions on Armenians owning land?
[00:12:16] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Initially, there were racial covenants placed on Armenians in Fresno. So they were not able to own property or own land in certain areas, but Armenians found ways around it. They oftentimes paid way more for land or property, and oftentimes got into debt because of it.
And so the question of Armenian identity is really interesting too, and I think that’s what sort of plays into the Armenian experience in Central Valley. Geographically, Armenians are Southwest Asians. But even though they were Christian and oftentimes people assume that because they shared the same faith as a lot of the white Americans in Fresno that they would be accepted.
So in 1930, a man named Richard Tracy LaPierre conducted a research survey in Fresno and he interviewed 474 non-Armenians about how they feel about Armenians living in Fresno.
There were a lot of anti-Armenian sentiments. So like neighbors didn’t want their children to play with their Armenian neighbors. They did advocate for Armenians to be barred from becoming naturalized citizens of the United States. But Armenians were very eager to become citizens of the U.S. and that’s because of the fact that they felt like they don’t necessarily have anywhere to belong at this point, you know?
In that survey, they found that even though Armenians were Christian, that didn’t necessarily mean that they were accepted. There were a lot of newspaper articles published where Armenians would try to go to church and they didn’t want them because a lot of the Armenians that arrived, their skin was brown and so they didn’t want people of a different skin color to participate in church.
[00:14:22] Trudi Sandmeier: The Armenian community was subject to racism and exclusion from the very beginning in California. Did that ever change for them?
[00:14:34] Ani Mnatsakanyan: There were a couple of law cases which helped Armenians in the United States. But if we look back at it now, I think it also confused the Armenian identity and how we perceive ourselves as a group of people.
Armenians were possibly the only ones who were able to cross that racial divide from being Asian into being considered white. And so it was this very interesting thing where now Armenians are able to have white privilege for economic purposes, but socially and culturally, they’re still not accepted.
[00:15:18] Trudi Sandmeier: So how does Yettem come to be?
[00:15:22] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Armenians were realizing that conditions are going to get a lot worse in the eastern provinces in the Ottoman Empire. So there were conversations of creating an Armenian colony where they can purchase a few acreages and then maybe invite Armenians who were just arriving as refugees to live there, work on those lands, and potentially save up money.
So there’s a romanticized story behind them, which I love so much, which is that three Armenians were on that journey from Fresno, 40 miles southeast on foot, and they came across this bare land at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and inexplicably they just bursted out into songs of their old homelands. And they set up tents there, and that’s what’s considered the founding of Yettem. Yettem in Armenian literally means “Garden of Eden.” So the name was chosen very carefully because they wanted this to be an Eden for Armenians.
[00:16:35] Trudi Sandmeier: What was there before?
[00:16:38] Ani Mnatsakanyan: So half of it was empty land, and then a part of it was a town of Churchill. In a few different accounts I read, like Charles Davidian’s memoirs of Yettem, says that it was a town called Lovell. And then others say it was a town called Churchill. Whereas other Armenians that arrived their firsthand accounts state that there was nothing there. It was just a desert. So bits of all of those stories are true. And so together they form the story of the founding of Yettem.
[00:17:11] Trudi Sandmeier: And how big is Yettem?
[00:17:14] Ani Mnatsakanyan: It’s 98 acres. So it’s pretty small.
[00:17:18] Trudi Sandmeier: Tiny little postage stamp.
[00:17:19] Ani Mnatsakanyan: I think conceptually Yettem is bigger than it is on the map, because the Armenians there actually owned more acreages than what is considered part of Yettem. So like right now, some of the Armenians that still live there — which is very, very few compared to the initial population of Yettem — their address might not say Yettem, but they are still considered to be living in Yettem.
[00:17:46] Trudi Sandmeier: One of the things you talk about in your thesis is the relationship of Yettem to a particular region in the Armenian highlands, which is called Chomaklou. So why is there a relationship between that place and Yettem?
[00:18:04] Ani Mnatsakanyan: So, most of the Yettem residents now can trace their roots back to Chomaklou. And it wasn’t initially founded by people from Chomaklou, but they later on came after the 1915 genocide. I had the opportunity to interview John and Alan Farsakian, who went to Chomaklou and saw it. And they really were amazed at the similarities between the two.
[00:18:34] John Farsakian: It was interesting when we made the trip to Chomaklou, the area around there, you looked out and it, it, it was very similar to the topography of Yettem. You know, they do have one big, beautiful mountain there that’s the focal point of that whole village. But in Yettem they have Stokes Mountain, which is, actually a big hill rather than a mountain, I’d say.
And, interestingly the soils were very similar. Our uncle Lavonne used to tell us about the really red soil of Chomaklou. And when we went there, I mean, you could just see it. In fact, we took a bag full of it and brought it home, but the soil in Yettem is very similar it’s a reddish reddish, very clay type soil.
[00:19:23] Trudi Sandmeier: So geography, soil, climate, lots of different ways that these two communities were similar. What are the crops that are grown in Yettem?
[00:19:35] Ani Mnatsakanyan: One of the major crops that you can associate with the item is grapes, and Armenians have always been known as like viticulturists. Grapes are also very symbolic in the Armenian church, even dating back to pagan times too. The oldest winery in the world was actually found in Armenia a few years ago and it has now turned into a museum.
So other crops were grown — tomatoes and also peaches. I do want to say, I did try Yettem tomatoes and Yettem peaches and nectarines, they were the most delicious things I’ve ever tried. I’ve never tried such flavorful tomatoes.
[00:20:14] Trudi Sandmeier: Do you think the tomatoes were sweeter because you knew the people who grew them?
[00:20:20] Ani Mnatsakanyan: You know, maybe, but I did also give that same tomato to a friend and their mind was blown at how great it was.
[00:20:28] Trudi Sandmeier: So it’s not just your own prejudice that led you to believe, but empirically.
[00:20:35] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Yes.
[00:20:36] Trudi Sandmeier: Many of the people that you interviewed for your thesis don’t currently live in Yettem but consider themselves part of the Yettem community. You were able to travel there and talk to some of these folks in person and interview them for your work. What did you find out in the course of your interviews? How did it differ from what you read in the newspapers?
[00:20:59] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Well, you know, it’s, it’s interesting because when you’re reading a newspaper it feels so distant in the past. It feels very much like I’m just doing a report. But then when you actually meet people who have their lives connected to this and who have an emotional attachment and understand the weight of what Yettem means to their ancestors, it really changes your perspective.
I first contacted the church, and the church put me in touch with Myron Sheklian, and Myron is just a wealth of information, as is everyone in Yettem. And so I was invited to go to church and see the town. At that church meeting, I met the Farsakians, and then afterwards they put me in touch with Mari Louise Menendian, who is probably now one of my favorite people in the world.
So it was through this sort of web of connections that I was able to meet them and learn more about their family histories and a little bit more about Yettem — what it was then, what it is now, and their lives growing up in this town.
So for instance, in one of my conversations with Mari Louise, one thing that really touched me is her telling me about when she was younger, they would spend all summers together like working on the farms or in the packing houses. And everyone had a role, like families worked on these farms together. No one actually hired outside labor. Everyone did everything themselves because they also had to repay the debts that they got into buying these lands.
And another story, which I think is so sweet, is that like, eventually when some of the Armenians started moving out and other communities started moving in–
[00:23:01] Mari Louise Menendian: Everybody was all together. The Italians from San Francisco used to come down for dove hunting season and stayed at the Rinaldis, but they’d come swimming over here and nobody got married until after tomato season and before dove hunting season, August, you know, but we’d go over there, the Armenians to the Italians, and mom would bring her mandolin and they had an accordion and, you know, we’d all sing and everything. All of these cultures respected each other.
[00:23:31] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Everyone just feels like family once you step into the 98 acres and the surrounding areas of Yettem.
The last time I was in Yettem was for the blessing of the grapes and the Feast of Assumption. And so, because most, almost everyone was already vaccinated and it was a little bit easier to sort of gather. That’s when I really met a lot more people and I was like, everyone has done an amazing job of preserving their own family histories and also the stories of Yettem. And so all of them together really like construct the story of Yettem.
[00:24:12] Trudi Sandmeier: What kinds of things did they share with you?
[00:24:15] Ani Mnatsakanyan: So Alan Farsakian gave me a book, Farewell My Mountain, which is — I think one of the hardest things about writing this thesis was having to stop and get a little emotional and cry every time I would read someone’s story.
Mari Louise gave me so selflessly all of the photos that she had of Yettem, and it was like some newspaper articles that she saved, and her grandfather Garabed Kalfayan’s book on Yettem.
In addition to like all the newspaper research and the maps that I was analyzing, a lot of the story came from Mari Louise’s firsthand primary resources that she had.
[00:25:01] Mari Louise Menendian: My generation may be the last that preserves what we had, that’s in our memory. I feel like, you know, I’m just a steward for these things. They have to survive somehow. I don’t want them to wither.
It’s connections. And it’s very, very strong, even with a younger generation. They know where they’re coming from. You really have a very good sense of how cohesive we were and how we still have that feeling. We were proud to be from Yettem.
[00:25:40] Trudi Sandmeier: In your thesis, you talk about some of the key buildings and places that are still extant in Yettem. Let’s talk a little bit about those places.
[00:25:51] Ani Mnatsakanyan: So the first thing that comes to mind is of course, the St. Mary’s Apostolic Church that was actually established in 1911. It was a wood-framed construction. Unfortunately it did burn down. So that’s when they decided to build this current church that we have now. And it was built by Lawrence Cohn, who was the same architect that primarily built residences for immigrant communities and also the church in Fresno which still stands today.
[00:26:25] Trudi Sandmeier: What other kinds of places in Yettem did you explore?
[00:26:29] Ani Mnatsakanyan: I also saw the Presbyterian church. Presbyterian Armenians exist, they’re just a very small sect. And the Presbyterian church, along with the Apostolic church, they were both sort of established around the same time. In addition to that, I was able to just see the vineyards and the packing houses. Most of them are not owned and operated by Armenians — most of them — but the physical structures still stand today.
[00:26:59] Trudi Sandmeier: So the identity of Yettem is not so much grounded in the physical environment, in terms of the buildings that are there, per se, but in the cultural continuity of the Armenian traditions that are centered in this place.
[00:27:17] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Something that is very interesting is because of these journeys of getting from the ancestral homelands to where they are now, it’s almost like the physical structure loses its meaning, because only things that you can use to preserve your heritage are these intangible practices, which will always be there.
When you’re trying to preserve a culture that is nostalgic and yearns for the land and is connected to that land, but doesn’t necessarily have access to it, how do you preserve that?
[00:27:56] Trudi Sandmeier: So people who live in Yettem, or who identify as people who are from Yettem, what do they call themselves?
[00:28:05] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Yettemites.
[00:28:06] Trudi Sandmeier: After all of your research and interviews and time spent in Yettem, are you now considered an honorary Yettemite?
[00:28:16] Ani Mnatsakanyan: I hope so I’m not sure. I’m going to leave that up to the community. Everyone is just so like, has their arms open and they’re really lovely people.
[00:28:29] Trudi Sandmeier: The process of writing this thesis was kind of emotional for you.
[00:28:33] Ani Mnatsakanyan: It was, yes.
[00:28:35] Trudi Sandmeier: Why?
[00:29:37] Ani Mnatsakanyan: I grew up learning about the genocide and knowing about the genocide, but, at some point when you’ve known about this since you were a child, you become, I hate to say this, but it’s true. I, I became a little desensitized to violence and trauma because on one hand I was reading about it, but on the other hand, I also grew up in a really impoverished area of Hollywood. So I would always see violence outside, literally outside my window. But then now as an adult, when you have to come face to face with the reality of these individual stories and read them and have to write them down in an academic manner, it becomes really challenging. Because you want to handle these stories with care and love and attention because all of these people went through so much to survive, to come and establish themselves here. So many people arrived with literally nothing in their pockets, with a few cents, a dollar.
And, so, to have to read those stories every day and do it in an academic setting, it sheds new light on all of these stories that you heard growing up and really brings you back to reality that you can’t be desensitized to it. Sure, I heard about it, but the weight of that is still felt every day with every diasporan Armenian, because I wouldn’t be here talking to you about my thesis if this hadn’t happened.
[00:30:19] Trudi Sandmeier: those layers of history feel very personal and very present in your everyday life.
[00:30:26] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Personally, it was very important to me, and I also felt personal growth with every conversation that I had, but academically, I think it opened new doors because I’ve always been interested in the intersection of cultural landscapes and trauma and heritages of trauma and diasporan heritage.
But I would love after this thesis to continue this work, I would love to just continue exploring different diasporan Armenian communities and individually as little pockets of diasporan heritage, they are very significant, but overall they construct the story of why Armenians are everywhere but where their ancestors are from.
And I think that’s something that is important in global history, as well as Californian history. And what Armenians contributed to California or what Armenians contributed to where they arrived and where they lived. So it’s, it’s a larger picture.
[00:31:40] Trudi Sandmeier: Yeah, I think it would be really amazing to develop an Armenian context statement for the state of California, because I think as you say, it’s the largest Armenian community outside of Armenia. So maybe that’s next.
[00:31:55] Ani Mnatsakanyan: I I think so. I think I definitely want to do that.
[00:32:00] Trudi Sandmeier: Well, I want to thank you for coming and talking to us on Save As, and for spending a little time, sharing your research and your knowledge and your passion for this place and for this history, which is not only a history of, of Eden, or Yettem, but your own history and a part of your own story now.
[00:32:23] Ani Mnatsakanyan: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me Trudi. I appreciate it. And I appreciate the Heritage Conservation program for all the opportunities it provided. Thank you.
