Biography
Jules Morris is a junior in Yale College majoring in Environmental Studies with a certificate in Islamic Studies. She is particularly interested in post-industrial ecology, emergent bioremediation techniques for brownfield reclamation, and Abrahamic philosophies of place. Jules grew up between New York City and rural northern New Mexico, participating in (and hanging around) archaeological digs with her family for as long as she can remember.
Paper Abstract
The New Buffalo Commune of northern New Mexico operated as a countercultural mecca during the late 1960s and 70s, drawing in young people from around the country who sought escape from the industrialism, capitalism, and militarism of mid-twentieth century American society. It was a community of those who were looking to return to lost relationships with the environment through active agricultural and spiritual work. Purposefully separated from religious institutions, the group sought to remake spirituality in a way that was inextricable from place and lived experience. Their land-based spirituality, however, was complicated by their self-alignment with histories of the surrounding Native American tribes and the fact that the commune’s occupants were highly nomadic, most passing through New Buffalo and other communal living arrangements on Kerouac-inspired expeditions. Thus, the community building project was also an experiment in the limits of itinerancy on place-making and sustainable cultural development. In this paper, I explore the material culture—excavated from the commune’s trash pit in the summer of 2009—of these restless American nomads and the cultural ramifications of fluid community-building and spirituality through the objects they left behind, asking: what did it mean for the Hippies of the 1960s New Mexico to occupy, have influence on, and be of a place?