Q&A: Stefan Timmermans on ‘The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels’

The Unclaimed - Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels by Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans — UCLA In their book, Stefan Timmermans and Pamela Prickett ask what happens to unclaimed bodies when relatives decline burial or cremation, and what motivates strangers to volunteer to bury them.

UCLA In their book, Stefan Timmermans and Pamela Prickett ask what happens to unclaimed bodies when relatives decline burial or cremation, and what motivates strangers to volunteer to bury them.

By Elizabeth Kivowitz

News

Based on their seven years of research, UCLA sociologist Stefan Timmermans and Pamela Prickett from the University of Amsterdam have published “The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels.”

The book follows the lives, deaths and ultimately, the remains, of four Angelenos at risk of being “unclaimed,” meaning that upon their death, relatives or loved ones are unable or unwilling to bury them or to have their bodies cremated. Also included in the book are volunteers, community members and government workers dedicated to providing burials for unclaimed strangers, imparting a sense of dignity after death.

Timmermans, also the author of the award-winning book, “Postmortem: How Medical Examiners Explain Suspicious Deaths,” explores how contemporary society makes sense of sudden, unexpected or violent deaths and how the unfortunate end for the unclaimed should be addressed.

Why did you decide to write about the unclaimed?

No one grows up and says, “I hope that when I die, there is no one to mourn me.” My co-author Pamela Prickett and I were interested in what happens in a human life that makes someone go unclaimed in the end. What do we do with unclaimed bodies if relatives decline burial or cremation, and what motivates people to volunteer to bury unclaimed dead who are strangers to them?

Is being unclaimed a growing phenomenon?

The poor have always been more likely than the wealthy to be buried in unmarked graves and so-called potter’s fields. But today, Americans from all walks of life –– including people with jobs and homes and families who think they did everything right to prepare for old age — are ending up with a similar fate. An estimated 2% to 4% of the 2.8 million people who die every year in the United States go unclaimed — up to 148,000 Americans. This is roughly how many Americans die annually from diabetes. And that number is increasing. In Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States, the unclaimed used to make up 1.2% of adult deaths. Since the 1970s, that number has been rising and was up to 3% at the turn of the century. The increase means that hundreds more residents every year end up in a mass grave.

Why do we feel a sense of loss when we hear about growing numbers of unclaimed?

Going unclaimed goes against what makes us human. For as long as humans have existed, we have engaged in rituals to mourn and bury the dead. Even our ancestors in the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods buried their dead. It is precisely because burial is not a biological necessity, philosophers have argued, that its existence proves we are ethical beings, driven not just by nature but a cultural logic.

What does the prevalence of the unclaimed tell us about ourselves, our families and society at large?

The unclaimed are a sensitive barometer of kin support at the end of life. They reveal a hidden truth about the extent of family estrangement in America, as well as widespread social isolation and loneliness in contemporary society.

Shifts in the number of unclaimed remains across history tell us that something fundamental has changed in what Americans are willing to do for their relatives — and it’s far less than in generations past. Many of us can no longer take for granted that we will have someone to care for our bodies after we die. We will become more dependent on local governments to arrange our burials or cremations, putting us at the mercy of strangers and strained government budgets.

What is the book’s connection to Los Angeles?

The research took place in Los Angeles. We observed how county government officials in the office of the medical examiner, the public administrator and the department of decedent affairs retrieved unclaimed bodies and worked to notify relatives. We saw how employees in these offices, as well as strangers, come together to witness the burial of the ashes of the unclaimed, that are buried in a mass grave in Boyle Heights every year, if their cremains have gone unclaimed for three years.

Los Angeles may seem an unlikely haven in this haphazard landscape of loneliness and loss. It is after all, a city mocked around the world as superficial — the land of swimming pools, celebrities, ubiquitous blue skies and green juices. But L.A. has committed to bringing dignity to people who die vulnerable and alone. Indeed, L.A., and the Boyle Heights annual ceremony have shown people around the world that caring for the unclaimed dead can be deeply meaningful.

What policy changes or efficiencies could decrease the number of unclaimed? Do you have any recommendations?

Solving the problem of rising numbers of unclaimed bodies needs to start in life. We have been struck by how people who lived invisible and isolated lives received a flurry of government attention to locate their next of kin and dispose of their remains once they died. If only we could pour these resources back into life to intervene before people become disconnected and estranged. Social isolation is much less likely to lead to going unclaimed if people reside in communities that stabilize lives and strengthen human connections. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has called for a national strategy to prioritize social connections across local and national policies.

While it’s tempting to romanticize the idea of a return to the close-knit, multigenerational family, where siblings, spouses and children stand shoulder to shoulder in life and death, the lives of the unclaimed confirm that fewer and fewer people reside in such families. Instead, we need to recognize and foster the deeply meaningful connections of alternative family forms, such as cohabitation, companionship after divorce, deep friendship and involvement in religious groups. Often government officials stand in the way of people wanting to claim bodies because friends and other relatives don’t qualify as the legal next of kin. The next of kin should be selected on the quality of the relationship with the deceased, rather than on a legally sanctioned family tie.

We also need to strengthen the frayed social safety net. All too often, people who did everything possible to thrive in old age end up broke when they need intensive elderly care. There are no funds left for their funeral, and their relatives are faced with a large, unexpected expense.

Why do volunteers get involved in providing dignified burials for the unclaimed?

When strangers to the deceased stand in the gap left by relatives, they rally to mourn the abandoned. Ceremonies for the unclaimed have sprung up around the globe, motivated by the human conviction that every human deserves a proper funeral. In India, a woman made it her life’s mission to bury unclaimed bodies after her brother died a tragic death and her family was unable to conduct funeral rites. The homeless, poor and forgotten of Lafayette Parish in Louisiana are buried during an annual All Souls Day Mass, with public volunteers as pallbearers. In Erie County, New York, volunteers at a ceremony for the unclaimed each received a bag of cremains to spread in a straight line between imposing pines. High school seniors at the all-boys Roxbury Latin School participate as pallbearers in the burial of unclaimed Boston residents and bear witness to those who died alone. At the funeral of one lonely man, the seniors read as a group: “He died alone with no family to comfort him. Today we are his family, we are here as his sons.”

Is this a book about hope? If so, how?

Because the unclaimed end up abandoned in death as in life, burying them is an incubator for what sociologist Ruha Benjamin calls viral justice, small acts of justice based on care, democratic participation and solidarity, which inspire larger community movements. We have seen how attending funerals of the unclaimed spreads awareness about the high suicide rate among veterans, the desolation of recent migrants, and the power of radical kindness. Respect in death can be a rallying call for respect in life. Holding hands with strangers around the gravesite of the unclaimed as surrogate family members is an act of forgiveness and hope, seeding new viral justice opportunities. These funerals turn anger, sadness and sorrow into awareness, healing and connection. Even if it may seem there are other social problems more pressing and worthy of our limited time, the unclaimed remind us that unless every body counts, nobody counts.

What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

“The Unclaimed” is a wake-up call to take stock of what matters in life: social relationships. The book poses the haunting question, “How much did your life matter if no one close to you cares you died?” We are confident that readers will wonder who will claim them, and if the answer is not forthcoming, wonder what they can do to break through social isolation and repair broken relationships. We also hope that people will reach out to those they know to be at risk for going unclaimed, both individuals and high-risk populations. Do we really want to live in communities where more and more people go unclaimed?

This article, written by Elizabeth Kivowitz, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Marcus Hunter pens alternative histories of racial healing, cues Rihanna

Radical Reparations: Healing The Soul of a Nation by Marcus Anthony Hunter — Marcus Hunter’s new book imagines reparations as a framework of repair and support for the descendants of enslaved peoples that lasts in perpetuity.

The professor’s book uses creative nonfiction to show how one of the nation’s most divisive topics is bigger than money

Marcus Hunter’s new book imagines reparations as a framework of repair and support for the descendants of enslaved peoples that lasts in perpetuity.

By Madeline Adamo

News, Sociology

How much is a smile worth? Is it worth more if that smile was stolen centuries ago, stamped out by an iron bit that pierced the mouth of its victim, starvation often being the least of the wearer’s afflictions?

It’s a painful memory from our country’s past. But for scholar Marcus Hunter, the sweeping allegory is meant to illustrate that reparations for the descendants of enslaved peoples aren’t only about money. Infrastructure of equity, he says, is what the reparations movement ultimately seeks.

The scholar’s latest book, “Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation,” is delivered in creative nonfiction, a form of allegorical commentary inspired by civil rights attorney and scholar Derrick Bell, to whom Hunter’s book is dedicated. Hunter, who holds the Scott Waugh Endowed Chair in the Division of Social Sciences, uses parables to approach a topic steeped in negative connotations by some, and in doing so hopes to disarm readers by “tickling” their imagination.

Readers will meet Sambo, a young African boy whose untimely death is memorialized in the 17th-century English town he’s shipped to as chattel. They’ll also be transported to Jubilee, South Carolina, a fictitious place where a large Black community and a unique Reconstruction era trajectory positions the region to secede from the U.S. by 1965.

The book came out Feb. 6, on the heels of a whirlwind few years for Hunter. He co-authored a renewed push for congressional legislation, along with U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, that would establish a Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation; was appointed to the National Black Justice Coalition board of directors; worked on U.S. Rep. Cori Bush’s “Reparations Now Resolution”; and took a lead role in planning this June’s historic Equity March in Washington, D.C.

UCLA Newsroom caught up with Hunter to discuss the book and hear what’s in store for the upcoming march.

When did you start working on “Radical Reparations,” and what planted the seed?

I started this book in 2009 when I started my dissertation research. During that time, I discovered the Freedman’s Bank, which was established and signed into law in 1865 by Abraham Lincoln as a national bank for Black people. At its peak, it had 24 branches across the United States and upwards of a billion dollars of Black people’s money by today’s estimates.

By 1871, it had so much money that Congress amended the charter so it went from savings to savings and loans. But the loans were given to white customers, not the Black patrons. Only 60% of those funds have ever been paid out.

We hear about 40 acres and a mule. We don’t hear about the Freedman’s Bank. Forty acres and a mule is a promise, versus your actual money in the bank. So that led me on reparations. I started to travel and try to figure out what all is entailed in reparations. I went to Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and all through the U.S. South.

How did you land on parables to distinguish this book from some of your previous ones?

I realized that if people were going to interact with this topic, I needed to write about it in a way that was inviting and that allowed them to draw their own conclusions.

In the first chapter, I present a metaphor about my idea of the seven areas of reparations. Imagine America is a beautiful mansion on a beautiful block. Except when you go inside, there are piles and piles of dirty laundry everywhere. P for political reparations; I for intellectual reparations; L for legal reparations; E for economic reparations; and S for spatial, spiritual and social reparations. Piles.

In each parable, some combination of the seven forms is happening. These are not histories deprived of reparations, but instead have some form of it. Jubilee has spatial reparations, for example. They’re also on the verge of getting legal reparations.

What do you think people get wrong about reparations?

One of the biggest misconceptions is that it’s a money-only conversation. I think the other misconception is that people think it will never happen.

What’s important to me about enslavement or slavery, or even land dispossession, is to ask “Can you actually repair that?” To me, there is an acceptance in saying that there are certain things you can’t repair.

But I think it’s important for people to recognize that what you want to do is build up an infrastructure of healing, repair and support that lasts in perpetuity. Not just because you can never repay, but because now you have something that acknowledges that inhumanity happened and that it was government-sanctioned, authorized and constitutionalized.

We’re saying that’s a part of us, and we have a setup that is meant to deal with outcomes and consequences of that. And I think that’s a radical reparative framework.

The final chapter of the book is titled “Better Have My Money” in reference to a Rihanna song. What’s the significance, and why did you make that choice?

I think it’s very powerful to have a woman from Barbados, which is a country that has asked for reparations from the United Kingdom publicly, singing a song that is as close to what I could call a reparations anthem.

There’s a message that I think speaks to the fact that global slavery is at the root of our current human condition, and that a lot of people around here feel old. A lot of people around here feel disrespected. A lot of people have had their money taken from them. A lot of people have had their families taken from them.

That is the reality I think the song gives voice to. I’m hoping that this book is also a welcomed accompaniment to a very popular song and helps people see the connection between shouting that out while you’re hearing it in a club and what activists are shouting out right now. It’s not very different.

You’re also the executive director of the United by Equity organization hosting the Equity March in Washington, D.C., this summer. How are you connecting this event to your book?

Yes, the Equity March! It will be held June 15, noon to 5 p.m. at Black Lives Matter Plaza. Everybody’s welcome! Part of why I link the march and the book is because I know that, if you’re successful as a writer, then you’re probably able to touch somebody with these kinds of topics. And the first thing that people who are touched often say is, “What can I do?”

Usually you say something like, “Find out who your congressperson is” or “Make sure to vote.” I want people to do all those things, but I also want them to know there’s an activation event that they can go to on Juneteenth to demonstrate to the president and the vice president, and all the elected officials in D.C., that there is unfinished business. We who have been chosen to survive the unsurvivable have a mandate to collectively build a more inclusive and beautiful world. If not now, when? If not us, who?

This article, written by Madeline Adamo, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Hollywood Diversity Report 2023, Part 2: TV

Hollywood Diversity Report 2023: Exclusivity in Progress Part 2: Television

NEW! The Hollywood Diversity Report 2023, Part 2: TV is now available.

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To download any of the previous reports in the Hollywood Diversity Report series, click HERE.

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The Hollywood Diversity Report 2023, Part 1: Film (released March 2023) is also available. Download the full report HERE

Tobias Higbie appointed as UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment Director

By UCLA IRLE Newsroom

IRLE, News

Tobias Higbie – professor of labor studies and history and former associate director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) – has been appointed as the institute’s new director as of September 1, 2022.

Higbie succeeds Abel Valenzuela Jr., who was appointed as interim dean of the division of social sciences in the UCLA College.

“I am thrilled to appoint Professor Tobias Higbie as IRLE’s next director,” said Valenzuela. “For the past six years, we have worked closely to build and enhance the labor studies interdepartmental program and increase student and faculty engagement with research focused on Los Angeles, work and workers.”

Higbie has been a longtime leader at IRLE and has served as the institute’s associate director since 2009. He led the effort to launch UCLA’s labor studies interdepartmental degree program – the first in the UC system to offer a bachelor’s of arts in labor studies – and was the program’s chair from 2019 to 2022. Prior to the launch of the major, he served as chair of the UCLA Labor and Workplace Studies program for the academic minor from 2014 to 2019.

Before coming to UCLA in 2007, Higbie was an assistant professor in the Institute for Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois from 2005 to 2007 and the director of the Center for Family and Community History at the Newberry Library from 2000 to 2005.

As a labor historian, Higbie has led research efforts that sit at the intersection of work, migration and social movement organizing in the United States. He is the author of Labor’s Mind: an Intellectual History of the Working Class and the award-winning Indispensable Outcasts: Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest, 1880-1930, illuminating the history and issues affecting working-class communities and migrant workers.

“I am confident that with Tobias’ leadership, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment will continue its groundbreaking work linking UCLA with our students, faculty and research to move Los Angeles forward and change the world,” said Valenzuela.

UCLA Labor Center building to be renamed for civil rights icon Rev. James Lawson Jr.

Rev. James Lawson Jr. giving a talk — UCLA Medal Presentation Rev. James Lawson Jr.

UCLA Medal Presentation Rev. James Lawson Jr.

By UCLA IRLE Newsroom

IRLE, News

New California budget also sets aside $15 million for renovations. It’s been big news for the UCLA Labor Center. The historic building that houses the UCLA Labor Center will be named in honor the Rev. James Lawson Jr., a a civil rights and workers’ rights leader who worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., and the 2021-22 California budget includes $15 million to renovate the building that overlooks MacArthur Park.

UCLA has leased this building since 2002 and purchased the building in November 2020. This one-time allocation will fund necessary renovations for the building and establish a permanent home for the center, which has provided a base for low-wage worker research, innovative labor projects, and community-engaged learning and leadership development for hundreds of UCLA students.

Lawson has taught a labor studies course on nonviolence at UCLA for the past twenty years. In 2018, Lawson received the UCLA Medal, the campus’s highest honor.

The UCLA Labor Center was established in 1964 as the Center for Labor Research and Education within the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations, now the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, through a statewide joint labor-university committee. Since its inception, the center has been dedicated to research, education, and service in the interest of California’s workers.

“We wanted to bridge the gap between the university and the labor movement, worker centers, and community-based social justice organizations,” said Kent Wong, director at the UCLA Labor Center. “We’re located in the most immigrant-dense zip code in the country and in direct proximity to the communities served by our research and programs.”

Read the full news release about the funding for the labor center on the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment website.

Renee Tajima-Peña wins Peabody for ‘Asian Americans’ docuseries

UCLA professor Renee Tajima-Peña, series producer of “Asian Americans.” (Photo Credit: Claudio Rocha)

By Jessica Wolf

Asian American Studies, News

“Asian Americans,” the five-part miniseries created for PBS by Renee Tajima-Peña, UCLA professor of Asian American studies, has received a Peabody Award.

The series, which aired in spring 2020, tells stories of struggle, progress and solidarity from the perspectives of multiple Asian American communities, highlighting their national, ethnic, religious, political, linguistic and cultural diversity.

Tajima-Peña’s production company shares the Peabody with the Center for Asian American Media, public broadcaster WETA-TV, postproduction house Flash Cuts and the Independent Television Service. The series was honored by the Peabody Awards for “its revelatory storytelling as a demonstration of activism and solidarity in the American story and fight for justice and dignity.”

“We’re all thrilled not only by the award, but the recognition that this history matters, at a time when we’re in the throes of a backlash to ethnic studies and to a perspective of American history that acknowledges the central role of systemic racism,” said Tajima-Peña, who is also the director of the UCLA Center for Ethnocommunications.

An Academy Award–nominated film director (“Who Killed Vincent Chin?”), she said she also feels like the current moment is powerful in the fight for racial justice and equity.

“Other people are really hungry to understand who we are today by understanding our past,” Tajima-Peña said. “Over the last 15 months, we’ve seen stereotypes of Asian Americans weaponized, as either the perpetual foreigner and walking virus, or the model minority deployed as a wedge against other people of color. In all the episodes of ‘Asian Americans,’ we tried to connect those fault lines from our arrival as immigrants to the current moment, and to center the resilience and activism of Asian Americans in resisting systemic racism.”

Watch award-winning actress Sandra Oh announce the Peabody recognition for “Asian Americans.”

Two years in the making, “Asian Americans” was a very UCLA-centric project. Grace Lee, an alumna of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, directed two of the episodes. Several other alumni were crew members on multiple episodes. And David Yoo, a professor of Asian American studies and history and vice provost of the UCLA Institute of American Cultures, served as lead scholar on the project.

Respected for its integrity and revered for its standards of excellence, the Peabody represents a high honor for creators of television, podcast/radio and digital media. Chosen each year by a diverse board of jurors through unanimous vote, Peabody Awards are given in the categories of entertainment, documentary, news, podcast/radio, arts, children’s and youth, public service and multimedia programming. Founded in 1940 at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, the Peabody Awards are based in Athens, Georgia.

This article, written by Jessica Wolf, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Graduating senior forged new connections to Vietnamese heritage through UCLA class

UCLA senior Anne Nguyen. (Photo Courtesy of Anne Nguyen)

By Elizabeth Kivowitz

Asian American Studies, News

Anne Nguyen started observing the economic and emotional tolls of the pandemic before a lot of others.

Having grown up in a community of mostly Vietnamese immigrants, she knew families who owned nail salons, people who worked as nail techs and also was familiar with some of the health concerns given the exposure to chemicals in that industry. It wasn’t until she came to UCLA in 2017 that she realized the severity of some of the health problems associated with spending hours in a salon.

Then in March 2020, nail salon workers were being laid off even before shutdown orders because of the rapid decline in business after false reports that the virus was spreading in nail salons. Soon after there was the rise in anti-Asian racism.

“The impact on this community feels close to home,” said Nguyen, a soon-to-be UCLA graduate from San Jose, California, who is determined to help the broader immigrant community that raised her.

During her time at UCLA, Nguyen spent four years volunteering with the student-run Vietnamese Community Health organization, or VCH, which operates mostly in Orange County offering screenings for hypertension, blood glucose, cholesterol, as well as women’s health services like mammograms or OB-GYN consultations.

Nguyen and the group have also focused on offering connections to mental health providers who speak Vietnamese. She says the community, especially the elderly members, have historically stigmatized the use of mental health resources, but that these resources are invaluable to refugees and immigrants who are adjusting to a foreign culture and experiences.

“I think that my work with VCH was particularly meaningful to me because it introduced me to community-based medicine,” said Nguyen, who is on track to earn her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and a minor in Asian American studies. “I loved the focus that the organization had on educating their patients, as well as treating/screening them. It really helped me establish my service philosophy of giving communities the tools they need to commit to long-term change themselves.”

This past winter quarter, Nguyen’s desire to help Asian immigrants, took a more academic turn. She enrolled in a course put on by the Asian American studies department and the UCLA Center for Community Engagement called “Power to the People: Asian American Studies 140XP.”

The Center for Community Engagement supports community-engaged research, teaching and learning in partnership with communities and organizations throughout Los Angeles and beyond. This particular course was borne out of the hunger strike at San Francisco States University in the 60s, during which students demanded the school offer ethnic studies classes and that the school diversify its faculty and student body. This course, which has been taught at UCLA for seven years exposes students to different Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in greater Los Angeles and creates opportunities to work directly with those organizations.

During the course, Nguyen met with the instructor and her classmates two hours each week to discuss history and theory, and met virtually with community organizers, advocates and members of the nail salon industry through the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. The statewide, grassroots organization addresses health care, environmental factors, reproductive justice, and other social issues faced by low-income, immigrant and refugee women from Vietnam.

Dung Nguyen, program and outreach manager for the collaborative, supervised Anne Nguyen (no relation) and previous UCLA students who interned at the organization. Dung said there is nothing like working directly for an organization to bring social activism to life.

“Our student interns often reflect how civic engagement, advocacy, community organizations and collective power in a text book are very different than seeing this all play out in reality,” Dung Nguyen said.

Nguyen and another student phone banked to raise awareness about two bills in the state legislature — assembly bills 15 and 16, which were intended to protect tenants from being evicted during the pandemic and beyond. The pair created packages of Lunar New Year cards and masks for members of the nail salon collaborative to reinforce social bonds with the group during the isolation of the pandemic. They ran a small fundraiser to support nail salon workers who lost income during the pandemic and couldn’t meet their most basic needs. They also conducted a survey to see which members had been vaccinated, and then helped women get vaccination appointments so they could return to work safely.

“I did not expect to take a class like this when I came to UCLA since I never thought of volunteering/interning as something you can structure into a curriculum,” Nguyen said. “Every organization had a different method of organizing to best fit their communities and this class really reinforced that this was valid. The class gave me a greater appreciation for all the thought that went into the creation and continuation of the nail salon collaborative and all of the other class partners.”

Community organizer and course lecturer Sophia Cheng said that all the community partners tend to see themselves as part of the ethnic studies movement that started in the 1960s.

Cheng, who is the primary liaison for all the organizations, pushes students to go beyond critiquing, analyzing and dissecting situations, instead asking them to come up with real solutions to real issues. She said that she’s not trying to train every student to join the non-profit sector; there aren’t enough jobs in the Asian American nonprofit sector. Instead, Cheng focuses on different ways students can serve their communities in whatever career path they take.

Nguyen’s trajectory continues to be influenced by Cheng’s approach.

“I want to be a doctor, and I am focused on community health,” Nguyen said. “The course taught me to be more cognizant of cultural fit when it comes to health care, and other needs. A lot of Asian American and Pacific Islander patients might not trust or have resources like in typical western health care. The older generation also might not trust the younger generation. I’m using approaches from class to figure out how to approach medicine and how to help people, from the place where they are. I try to figure out what are the needs of the people, how can I serve them, and help them strengthen what they have to improve themselves.”

This article, written by Elizabeth Kivowitz, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

In Conversation with Bradley Burnam ’01

By Bekah Wright

News

Bradley Burnam ’01, founding member of the recently formed UCLA Social Sciences Dean’s Advisory Board, says that delivering UCLA’s Department of Sociology’s 2019 commencement address was “the most amazing day of my life.” The theme: “Know Your Why.”

One might assume to know Burnam’s “why” from the story behind Turn Therapeutics, the biotechnology company he founded that specializes in advanced wound care and infection control. A severe skin and cartilage infection born of antibiotic resistant bacteria led to 19 surgeries on his scalp and ear. The technology he invented in his home-built laboratory ended up saving his own life and helping many others.

Q. What was your “why” when you headed to UCLA?

A. I really wasn’t certain what I was interested in when I started. And with UCLA being a big place, it was hard to find that in the first couple of years. While there, I became entrenched in a program through which students got to teach seminars on public speaking, study skills and speed-reading. It made me realize I really love to teach. I also was extremely interested in how to teach people with learning differences. When I left UCLA, all I wanted to do was teach.

I got my master’s in education at Stanford, and my thesis was on how to address ADHD without chemicals. After graduation, I worked with kids with learning disabilities. My life took several random turns after that, but my “why” never changed. Today, my company is my teaching platform and the subject is very personal, having been a victim of a recurring, antibiotic resistant infection.

Q. Who inspired your path?

A. My dad, who was a cardiologist, would go to the emergency room where someone was dying of a heart attack. An hour later, he’d be back home and that person would be alive. His having that kind of impact on people’s lives blew me away. Because of him, I wanted to be a healer.

Q. You’ve since worked with cardiology patients?

A. I was a medical device rep for two big pacemaker companies, a job that let me experience a little of what I dreamt about growing up. I’d be in the operating room tuning up what was controlling patients’ hearts and making sure they were beating properly. There were occasions where I’d notice the programming was wrong and could make a change that would allow that person to walk out an entirely different person

Q. What is success to you?

A. When I see photos and studies of patients whose limbs my company has saved from amputation or whose severe eczema outbreaks we have halted, that keeps me going. It’s a crazy thing to wake up and think, “My dad got to help a few people at a time. I get to help thousands at a time.”

Q. What does your future look like?

A. My immediate future is decidedly Turn’s future. I plan to grow this company as a major disruptor in the medtech and pharmaceutical space. Eventually, I want to go back and get my Ph.D. in social sciences with an emphasis in public health, then join the professor ranks while continuing to innovate in biotech.

Q. What advice would you give to others?

A. Figure out what you’re amazing at and then perfect it, rather than trying to be good at everything. Even if you have to take smaller wins over time and reduce instant gratification, don’t sacrifice the identity of your “why” over quick money. You’ll never forgive yourself.

Early on, there were people who wanted to take my technology and apply it to minimally impactful, but highly profitable indications. While it probably would have made a ton of money, I wouldn’t have received a single photo from a patient whose limb was saved thanks to this technology.

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Advancing Equality with Better Data

Data: All That Is Seen & Unseen Professor Desi Small-Rodriguez has studied Indigenous tribes around the world. Her Research on data collection efforts can help build better government.

By Elizabeth Kivowitz

Data, News

A proud Northern Cheyenne Indian and Chicana, Desi Small-Rodriguez says that she’s a relative first, then a researcher and teacher, and thus considers herself a bit of an anomaly in academia.

“I need to remain accountable to my community,” said Small-Rodriguez, an assistant professor of sociology and Amer-ican Indian studies in the UCLA College and the first Indigenous woman to be jointly hired by the sociology department and the American Indian studies program. “That’s how many Indig-enous faculty feel. Academia can take you far away from the communities, lands and waters that ground you. I’m consistently reminded by mentors, ‘Always lift as you climb,’ because this is such a lonely path.”

In her research Small-Rodriguez examines those on the periph-ery of mainstream data collection efforts like government surveys and the U.S. Census, to understand the ways people in these groups are or are not being counted. She says these efforts often do a poor job of collecting data on Indigenous peoples, undocu-mented migrants, those experiencing homelessness, the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups, which causes harm and perpetuates inequality.

“The U.S. is the most unequal country of any of the developed countries in the world,” said Small-Rodriguez, who joined the UCLA faculty last fall. “I’m interested in how systems amplify suf-fering and why suffering is being disproportionately experienced by certain populations, and also systems of erasure and how erasure perpetuates inequality. If your literal presence is com-pletely erased, that is a unique form of inequality and injustice.”

MAKING DATA WORK TO BUILD EQUITY

Small-Rodriguez sees wide-ranging applications for her work that could drive systemic change in how data collection efforts are organized and operated – leading to better government decision-making and policy.

“Ultimately, I’m an optimist. I believe that just as structures of inequality were built and maintained, so too can they be dismantled and replaced,” Small-Rodriguez said. “And like most Indigenous scholars, I am called upon to work, advocate and serve in different directions. Being a professor is simply one of my dream jobs. I have many paths that will sustain me, and I believe that eventually all roads lead home.

“This means that part of my work in academia includes making myself literally obsolete. I want to train enough young scholars to take over this work, so that one day I can be back full-time on my homelands living the Cheyenne way of life in good relation with all that is seen and unseen.”

With her move to Los Angeles delayed due to the pandemic, Small-Rodriguez resides on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana where she grew up. Over the past few months, she has been encouraging people in her community to get vaccinated against COVID-19, especially given the disproportionate impact of the virus on Indigenous peoples early in the pandemic.

“I’m thankful for all the brave and amazing frontline medical workers and our tribal leaders who continue to exercise tribal sovereignty so that we can get all of our people vaccinated regardless of age or health status,” she said.

Small-Rodriguez also co-hosts “All My Relations,” the mostpopular podcast in the Indigenous world with more than 1 million downloads.

A LEAP OF FAITH INTO DEMOGRAPHY

As a student, Small-Rodriguez became interested in demography and social science because her sociology professor, one of the only Indigenous sociologists and demographers in the world, noticed her abilities in the field. He offered her a job with a Māori doctoral student he was advising who was doing research in New Zealand. She learned how to be a researcher and demographer working for tribes in New Zealand for many years, and then con-ducting the same type of work for tribes in the U.S.

“My time in New Zealand was life changing,” she said. While there, Small-Rodriguez worked on tribal census projects, community surveys, and social determinants of health and policy research. “It’s where I learned how to do research and build data by Indigenous Peoples for Indigenous Peoples. I also learned about the boundaries of indigeneity and tribal belonging in ways that are far different than for Indigenous Peoples in North America. In New Zealand, Māori kinship is affirmed in very inclusive ways as compared to minimum blood quantum policies that we use here. That led to another area of my research understand-ing the boundaries of belonging for Indigenous peoples.”

Small-Rodriguez points out that the word data comes from the Latin “datum,” meaning something given. For Indigenous Peoples, the term more often means “something taken” – and that data has been used as another method by which others extract some-thing from the Indigenous, leaving behind very broken systems to rebuild and repair. She references everything from Indigenous bodies, to language, to knowledge of the important connections with lands, water and animals as having become disrupted. She calls that “data erasure” an ongoing effort of genocide.

Amid all the loss, the recent vaccination effort illustrates an area of hope. “The only reason that Indigenous Peoples now have some of the highest rates of vaccination uptake is because of tribal sovereignty,” Small-Rodriguez said. “Tribes exercised sovereignty and have been able to protect their people in ways federal, state and local governments have not. Tribal sovereigns know how to get their people onboard because of their deep commitment to collective survival. In Indigenous communities, we are born and raised with a collective survival strategy, and we’ve been doing this since we were invaded 500 years ago. This is something that we have seen shine through in the middle of this pandemic — something positive amidst so much negative.”