User:Robert Jan van de Hoek

Autobiographical Story of an at Risk Naturalized Immigrant: A Man Without A Country, who is a peace activist, environmental activist, and social activist with ethics aligned to ecofeminism in his philosophy.

My name is Robert Jan van de Hoek and I like to vote. I am a Euro-American naturalized citizen. Born in Amsterdam, Noord Holland, Nederland. I Immigrated to United States at 2 months of age with my parents, via New York, and my first residence for the first year of my life was Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Methodist Church sponsored me and my parents as new immigrants to the USA.

My mother tells me I visited the waterfall at Minnehaha Falls Park with her and our Norwegian Methodist sponsor in 1957. And both my parents tell me that I walked often at Bde Maka Ska (formerly known as Lake Calhoun, but since John C. Calhoun was a southern slave owner that started the Civil War, the name was finally changed legally after much politics in 2017). My mother tells me that at the lake is where I finally walked alone without holding the little finger of my mom on my first birthday of June 17, 1957. I lived only one block away from the lake for the first year of my life.

A few months after my first birthday, in the late summer of 1957, my parents decided to move to Santa Monica, California. We traveled from Minnesota to California by car on U. S. Route 66, with a stop at Grand Canyon National Park, where my parents tell me that I almost walked off the cliff. In Santa Monica, I lived on 11th Street in a duplex, and later moved a few blocks inland to 17th Street. I first saw the Pacific Ocean, from Palisades Park (Santa Monica), then went below the bluffs (palisades) of the park to the ocean below at Santa Monica State Beach. My aunt, Tante Mitzi, tells me that she took me to the ocean and beach many times.

I became a naturalized citizen of the USA at 10 years of age in the spring of 1967 in Los Angeles, California. A month after celebrating my 11th birthday, and thus my first birthday as a citizen of the USA, I traveled back to Amsterdam (Holland, Nederland) for the first time, seeing my home country through the eyes of a boy that was 11 years of age. I liked bicycling while I was in Amsterdam, Holland. I visited the birthplace of my father, and my paternal grandparents in Apeldoorn, Gelderland, Nederland.

After my return from Nederland, I became a boy scout and began to go hiking and camping in the Angeles National Forest of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument above Los Angeles, as well as camping at the seashore of Point Mugu State Park in the western Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, canoeing trips on the Colorado River, climbing more than a dozen mountain peaks, several of them 10,000 feet above sea level including Mount San Gorgonio, Mount San Antonio, and Mount San Jacinto, and a week-long hike from Mount Whitney and traveling through Sequoia National Park in the southern Sierra Nevada.

In 1974, I graduated from a LAUSD Sylmar High School, and I was accepted to CSUN, where I graduated with two Bachelor of Arts university degrees in Geography and Biological Sciences (environmental option). During my final years at CSUN, I began working for the state of California, as a land use mapper for the California Department of Conservation, student intern in Paleontology (Geology) and Ichthyology (Biology) and the USDA in the USFS at Modoc National Forest, as as an archaeology intern, and for a marine biology laboratory in Santa Rosa (while a inter-transfer student at Sonoma State University).

After high school and during my college years at CSUN, I had field classes and my own field trips to the Mojave Desert, Sierra Nevada, Baja California, Yosemite, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Channel Islands National Park, Big Sur, Elkhorn Slough, Ano Nuevo State Reserve, Point Reyes National Seashore, Pinnacles National Monument, Los Padres National Forest, San Bernardino Mountains, San Jacinto Mountains, Catalina Island, San Gabriel Mountains, Lake Tahoe, San Diego, Mt. Palomar, Salton Sea, Owens Valley, and Florida.

After completing my undergraduate education, I was hired as a professional archaeologist by the federal government in the National Forest Service, and also worked there as an hydrologic technician, while also attending graduate courses Range/Wildlife/Hydrology and Cultural Resources Management (CRM) at the University of Nevada (UNR) at Reno. In addition, I became a graduate student at CSUN for a Master of Arts Degree in Geography, while also becoming a professor at several California Community Colleges.

In 1989, I transferred to another federal agency, USDI - BLM, where I became a professional wildlife biologist, alongside my professional archaeologist status, assigned to the Carrizo Plain Natural Area with a stint in the Owens Valley and Mono Lake and Modoc County. I became a whistleblower and soon thereafter I departed the federal government after 11 years of service as a public servant in two USA Departments (Agriculture and Interior). Prior to departing from my federal employment I worked briefly as a professional botanist in the BLM (Bureau of Land Management). I climbed to the highest point of San Luis Obispo County, Caliente Mountain several times, some of them as a guide and leader for the Sierra Club, while in my USDI-BLM uniform in official capacity as a public servant.

In 1995, I became a volunteer at Eaton Canyon Nature Center in Pasadena. Soon after, in 1996, I began professional public employment with the County of Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation, through interviews at Whittier Narrows Nature Center, Veterans Park, beginning my career at Placerita Canyon Nature Center and Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park and with my first assignment at the Santa Catalina Island Interpretative Center. Over the next two decades, I worked at more than 12 county parks and nature centers, where I did environmental education and park supervision, as a supervising naturalist, recreation supervisor and park superintendent. Some of the parks that I worked at during my 20 years included Victoria Park, Jesse Owens Park, Alondra Park, George Washington Carver Park, Los Robles Park, Adventure Park, Manzanita Park, La Mirada Park and Bodger Park. I became a whistleblower and departed employment as a public servant after 23 years employment.

My overall employment as a public servant has spanned 41 years thus far, where I have worked at every level of government service, including US federal employment, California state employment Los Angeles County employment and City of Los Angeles employment. I also volunteered with awards from the US government an City of Los Angeles government.

Since 1993, for 28 years now, I have been active in various environmental groups, serving as a president for a CNPS chapter and a National Audubon Society chapter, chair of 2 conservation committees in the Sierra Club, and for several wetland organization, and currently, the president and founder of the Ballona Institute in Los Angeles, California.

In 2018, I became a student of philosophy and linguistics, while still continuing with my research over the last 23 years in California, covering conservation biology, botany, zoology, geography, anthropology, geology, paleontology, historical ecology, urban ecology, biogeography and environmental history, with a focus on wetlands ecosystems.

In 2000 and 2002, I brought my environmental science background into local politics, where I became a candidate two times for the position as councilman in the City of Malibu.

In 2017 to 2020, I initiated investigating again the nature and culture of northern Mexico, with a focus in marine biology, adding to previous studies that began approximately 43 years ago from 1977 to 1980.

During the last 10 years from 2010 to 2020, I have again been studying the eastern Sierra Nevada, Owens Valley, Mono Lake region and Great Basin Desert, with a focus on geography, environmental biology and history, from earlier studies in the late 1970s, beginning 43 years ago.

At this time, from 2019-2020, I continue with local studies of natural history in Sylmar in the western San Gabriel Mountains and San Fernando Valley, alongside taking care of both my parents, with Mom and Dad being nearly 92 years of age.