Working Together |
T. J. Ferguson
The relationship between Native Americans and archaeologists in the United States has changed substantially since the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966. In the last 30 years, under the impetus of the NHPA, Native Americans have implemented numerous initiatives to increase their involvement in archaeological research and strengthen their control over the management of their heritage resources. This column reviews the economic, political, social, and intellectual aspects of these initiatives, and then assesses the current status and future prospects for incorporation of Native American perspectives in archaeological method and theory.
As the focus of archaeological method and theory changed to time-space systematics and processual approaches, the intellectual involvement of Native Americans in archaeology waned. This is not to say that there were no important Native American archaeologists in the 20th century. Arthur C. Parker, the Seneca Indian and New York State archaeologist who served as the first president of SAA, and Edmund J. Ladd, a Zuni Indian who served as Pacific archaeologist for the National Park Service (NPS), provide two examples of Native Americans who made significant contributions to our discipline during this period.
It was not until the passage of the NHPA in 1966, however, that Indian tribes, as well as individual Native Americans, became directly involved in conducting and regulating archaeological research. The growing number of tribes involved in archaeology in the last 30 years has greatly increased the numbers of both Native Americans employed as archaeologists and archaeologists employed by Native Americans. These trends are helping to restructure the intellectual growth of our discipline.
The increase in the number of archaeologists working on Indian lands, as well as the need to get "archaeological clearance" prior to development of land modifying projects, were both of interest to tribal leaders in the 1970s. Within five years of passing the NHPA, for instance, the governor of Zuni Pueblo, Robert E. Lewis, began a program in association with the Arizona State Museum to train tribal members to undertake work mandated by the NHPA. From the outset, Lewis' goals were to provide employment, keep money circulating within the Zuni economy, and provide the rapid delivery of necessary archaeological services to the Zuni Indian Reservation. This effort led to the establishment of a tribal archaeology program in 1975, which now includes a regulatory office (the Zuni Heritage and Historic Preservation Office) and a contract business (the Zuni Cultural Resources Enterprise).
Similarly, the Navajo Nation responded to the NHPA in the early 1970s by expanding its museum-based archaeology program to include a contract business. With roots in litigation work for the Indian Claims Commission, the Navajo program eventually grew to include the Navajo Archaeology Department (providing archaeological services under contract) and the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department (fulfilling a regulatory function).
Reaping the financial benefits of the NHPA was an early part of the rationale for tribal sponsorship of archaeological research and remains important today. During the last two decades, both the Zuni and Navajo programs have provided major sources of employment for tribal members, and many of the wages paid to the non-Indian archaeologists employed by these programs are spent on the reservation, helping the tribal economy.
The other two important impacts of the NHPA are related to the 1992 amendments of the act. One of these amendments officially recognized that traditional cultural and religious sites--"traditional cultural properties"--are historic properties that may be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and therefore must be considered during the review process to ensure compliance with Section 106 of the NHPA. Section 106 requires federal agencies to consider the effect of their undertakings on historic properties before permits are issued or funds are expended.
Traditional cultural properties in the national historic preservation program are required to be inventoried and evaluated in a manner similar to archaeological sites. In fact, many traditional cultural properties are archaeological sites--introducing an ethnographic component into historic preservation activities. Many tribes prefer to undertake their own ethnographic research using tribal employees or consultants rather than employ outsiders for the studies. Tribal research of traditional cultural properties engages tribes in the implementation of the NHPA, and, more often than not, increases tribal involvement with archaeology in general.
The third impact of the NHPA has been to foster a tribal role in the management of heritage resources, including the regulation of archaeological research. Once tribes began to provide professional survey and excavation services for federal compliance with Section 106, many also decided to become more involved in the regulation of that research on their reservations. This involvement led to the establishment of many tribal historic and cultural preservation offices, allowing tribal assumption of functions formerly fulfilled by State Historic Preservation Officers (SHPOs). Between 1992 and 1997, 15 tribes assumed assumed SHPO responsibilities for their reservation (Table 1). The functions assumed by Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPOs) include inventorying resources, determining the eligibility of places for the National Register, education, and planning and compliance review pursuant to Section 106 of the NHPA. While the revised NHPA encourages tribes to embrace professional standards and guidelines in historic preservation activities, it also mandates that tribal values be taken into account. This means that each tribe can fashion a program to meet its particular needs. Because these new THPO programs are still in development, their full impact on archaeology cannot yet be assessed. It is clear, however, that they will have a major effect on the practice of archaeology on Indian lands by structuring research questions that are relevant to tribes and regulating the methods by which those questions are investigated.
By combining data on NPS grants gleaned from CRM and the SAA Bulletin, I compiled a list of 57 tribes actively involved in tribally-based archaeological research and historic preservation programs (Table 2). These tribes are located in 21 states over a wide geographical area. This is undoubtedly a conservative list; there are probably additional tribes engaged in archaeological research that were not represented in the consulted sources. However, these 57 tribes constitute almost 10 percent of all tribes in the United States--a cogent testimony to the effectiveness of the NHPA in increasing Native American participation in archaeology. These tribal archaeology and historic preservation programs increase the tribal control in establishing the archaeological agenda on tribal lands, thus helping to make archaeological research more relevant to Native Americans.
The Navajo Nation budget is much larger than any other tribal program and
almost four times the size of the operating budget for the State of Arizona,
excluding Heritage Fund Grants funded by the Arizona Lottery (Figure 1). While
the annual budgets and staffs of other tribal programs are smaller, they are
still significant when compared to the population of the tribes or the size of
their reservations. For instance, the 2,000-member Hualapai Tribe actually
spends the most preservation dollars per capita--$190 per tribal member (Figure
2). The Hopi Tribe spends about $48 per capita, while the other tribes spend
around $20 to $25 per capita.
Another way to measure preservation budgets is to look at the available funds
in relation to the size of landbase (Figure 3). In this perspective, Zuni
Pueblo spends the most money--$147 per km2. The other tribes spend
between $34 and $90 per km2. All of the tribes spend more per
km2 than the State of Arizona.
When examining these charts, it is evident that all of the tribes have significantly more financial resources per capita and per km2 of land than the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office. This is partly due to economies of scale because certain functions must be provided regardless of landbase or population size. However, this discrepancy also is due to a much broader range of research and preservation activities undertaken by tribes to fulfill cultural preservation mandates.
Ultimately, the success of THPOs depends on long-term programmatic funding. SHPOs are funded from allocations from the U.S. Historic Preservation Fund using revenues from offshore mineral leases. A similar permanent arrangement needs to be made for tribes in a manner that ensures that tribes and SHPOs are not competing for the same limited funding sources. The continued success of the NHPA requires that THPOs and SHPOs both have the funding necessary to carry out their mandates.
There are many reasons why Native Americans in the United States allow archaeologists to work on their land or do archaeology themselves. These include the management of cultural resources using tribal values, a genuine interest in tribal history, the litigation of land claims, attainment of intellectual parity with non-Indian researchers, facilitation of development, retention of financial benefits, and maintenance of political sovereignty. For many tribes, the tribal assumption of SHPO responsibilities has become a meaningful way to assert tribal sovereignty because it replaces a regulatory process led by a state official with a tribal process led by a tribal official.
As tribes have become major employers of archaeologists, many non-Indian archaeologists now have regular, face-to-face interaction with Native Americans. To some degree, this interaction entails a process of socialization whereby archaeologists come to understand and accommodate Native American values, even if they do not personally subscribe to those values. This new understanding can have a profound effect on how these archaeologists choose to do archaeology. I know of few archaeologists who have worked for Indian tribes for any length of time who have not come to reevaluate their thoughts about archaeological excavation and the study of human remains.
Many archaeologists employed by tribes find themselves in the role of a "cultural broker," explaining the reasons and methods archaeology to Native Americans, and, simultaneously explaining to non-Indians why Native Americans want certain approaches to archaeology. This is difficult work, fraught with the potential for misunderstandings on both sides.
Many archaeologists working with Native American traditional cultural properties find their research blurs the boundaries between archaeology and ethnography. In dealing with cultural landmarks and landscapes, these subdisciplinary distinctions often have little relevance to Native Americans. Many of the places that have cultural importance to contemporary native peoples have archaeological manifestations, yet these can only be fully understood and evaluated using knowledge derived from traditional history and cultural practice. This new and still emerging body of work is a new form of ethnoarchaeology, which, unlike earlier formulations of ethnoarchaeology designed primarily to improve archaeological method and theory, is oriented towards managerial and interpretive goals.
Most of the principal investigators and project directors employed by tribes are non-Indian and have been successful in making the research questions and archaeological method and theory guiding tribal archaeological research meet the standards of the profession. This is important because it has given tribal programs the credibility they need.
While tribes produce solid archaeological reports, these rarely contain Native American perspectives interpreting the archaeological record. The question, then, is: If tribes are doing solid, conventional archaeology, what are the prospects for the development of uniquely Native American perspectives in archaeological research? Ultimately, the answer depends on our success in providing the academic preparation needed by Native Americans to fill high-level archaeological positions. The challenge here is to provide Native Americans with the rigorous scholarly standards for scientifically-valid work without forcing them into normative paths of non-Indian thinking--a far from easy task, but not an unattainable one either.
Several years ago I attended an ethnobiology conference in Albuquerque where a distinguished panel of scholars discussed ethnotaxonomy, using the Linnaean classification as a frame of reference. After hearing these papers, Joe Zunie, a Zuni colleague attending the conference, said he thought the papers implied the Linnaean system was based on some ultimate truth that the folk classifications lacked. He turned to another archaeologist and asked, "Don't these people know that the Linnaean system is just one more folk classification?" This was an insightful observation, and it is upon such insights that a Native American perspective will ultimately be developed.
At present, we can only glimpse what such a Native American archaeology might entail. Carlos Condori, an Aymara from Bolivia, and Roger Echo-Hawk, a Pawnee from the United States, have both published on the historiographic basis for historical interpretation provided by Native American oral traditions and how they can be used in reconstructing archaeological culture history. The use of Native American traditional histories in archaeological research has great potential but its success will be contingent upon the participation of tribal members in all aspects of the research, from research design through fieldwork to report preparation.
Condori (Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions, Unwin Hyman, 1989) also suggests that Native American archaeology can be developed using Native concepts of time and space. Archaeologists already use multiple temporal frames of reference, including calendrical time, radiocarbon time, and relative time based on archaeological phases. There is no reason why Native concepts of time cannot also be arrayed alongside these other frames of reference.
Traditional Native American knowledge about the past is sometimes embedded in a conceptual framework that is spatial rather than temporal. For instance, the Páez Indians of Colombia transmit historical knowledge in fragments of oral narratives that allow listeners to construct a history based on their spatial knowledge of geographical referents. There is, therefore, not one history but multiple histories. It should be possible to use these and other similar principles to structure archaeological research but Native peoples will have to take the lead in accomplishing this task. When they do so, our profession will be enhanced with important new ways of understanding the past.
T. J. Ferguson is with Heritage Resources Management Consultants in Tucson, Arizona.