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Darby C. Stapp and Michael S. Burney
Altamira Press 2002
Let me propose a hypothetical: You recently graduated from college and
took a position within an environmental firm. Excited about your job
and ready to take on the various challenges associated with working
for a cause you are passionate about, you have taken on the task of
learning the necessary laws and regulations. After a couple months of
hanging out on the sidelines and watching how things are done, you are
given your first project to manage. Energized, you delve in, making
sure everything is on track and all federal and state obligations are
being covered. Or are they?
One area that is often neglected in environmental and natural resource
regulation fulfillment is that of meaningful American Indian tribal
consultation. Meaningful is used here to imply that more than just “letters
of notice” need to be sent to tribal offices for consultation,
and fulfillment of environmental and natural resource regulations, to
have taken place. Rather, meaningful refers to the establishment of
ongoing and transparent consultation between all parties involved. Furthermore,
meaningful consultation is mandated by the federal government, as stated
in Executive Order 13084. In the hypothetical posed at the beginning,
this means that much more needs to take place than simple “letters
of notice.” What does this look like when its implemented in the
real world? Tribal Cultural Resource Management: The Full Circle to
Stewardship provides the answer.
Written by two applied anthropologists, Darby C. Stapp and Michael S.
Burney, Tribal Cultural Resource Management is a tour de force when
it comes to articulating just how American Indian tribal consultation
should take place. Furthermore, this book also highlights how American
Indian tribes can become even bigger players in the overall environmental
and natural resource arenas. Broken down into three parts consisting
of ten chapters, Tribal Cultural Resource Management starts with the
history of American Indians and their involvement in resource issues
beginning before the twentieth century and continuing up to the present-day.
These five chapters, constituting part one of the book, give the reader
an adequate background to the history of the field today.
Focusing on the implementing regulations issued in 1979; the 1980 amendments,
which produced Section 110 and provided for grants to Indian tribes;
and the 1992 amendments, which strengthened consultation requirements
and created the Tribal Historic Preservation Office program, this book
is a must for anyone working in the environmental or natural resource
fields. As Stapp and Burney note, “These changes really propped
open the door for tribes that the National Environmental Policy Act
(NEPA) initially opened” (p. 53). Along with these regulations,
the National Park Service published Bulletin 38 in the National Register,
which changed “people’s perception of cultural resources
from places containing ‘things’ to places that were important
in their own right.” (pp. 55-56).
As a result of these regulations, the backbone to meaningful tribal
consultation was developed. The situations in which these regulations
take place are extremely varied, and in many cases the failure to comply
with them is simply the result of a lack of awareness concerning American
Indian’s claims to a particular area. In Tribal Cultural Resource
Management, Stapp and Burney eloquently explain this subtlety:
An example of a “place” possibly significant to tribes,
but lacking archaeological evidence, is near Estes Park, Colorado.
The Arapaho name for Old Man Mountain was known as “hinantoXthaoXut,”
or Sitting Man, where “Indians often fasted on the top of this
hill” (Toll 1913). Toll also made mention of a small round hill
east of the Stanley Hotel where the Arapaho conducted their “Sage
Chicken Dance.” Toll explained, “This ceremony consisted
of a fast during the day, and a big sage chicken dinner at night,
after which they gave this special dance.” (p. 56)
To remedy this situation, Stapp and Burney argue that
planners, environmental scientists, natural resource professionals,
and agency officials need to build a basic understanding of the lands
they are managing in terms of American Indian concerns. This means knowing
what has happened, what types of resources are present, their significance,
which lands have been surveyed, and the threats facing the resources.
In order to accomplish this, meaningful consultation between American
Indians and others needs to take place.
Part two, in which Stapp and Burney cover American Indian tribal resource
management in detail, is the heart of the book. It is also the part
of the book that details Stapp and Burney’s proposal for giving
American Indians an equal voice in environmental and natural resource
management actions.
As Stapp and Burney correctly note, “The addition of traditional
cultural properties as cultural resources was a major breakthrough.
Performing a cultural resource inventory by itself was no longer sufficient.
Rather, the traditional cultural property is simply a place on the landscape,
but a place identified in a unique way by the native culture”
(p. 61). Thus, to adequately survey an area to fulfill resource requirements,
tribes must be contacted to determine if any traditional cultural properties
exist. Traditional cultural properties are not like standard resources,
at least in terms of physical properties. Stapp and Burney give a perfect
example of what a traditional cultural property might be.
Resources significant to the CTUIR include such things as the Indian
people themselves, their communities, and their way of life; and Indian
elders, with their unique information regarding their personal histories
as well as tribal histories. Places scared to CTUIR tribal members
can include dance grounds and associated lodges; vision questing sites;
sweat bath sites; monumental geological features; ritually modified
areas or rock art sites; burial areas and cemeteries; boundaries between
cultural, life, and geological zones; mountain passes; headwaters
of streams and rivers; confluences of rivers; cascades, waterfalls,
rapids, hot and cold springs; caves; gathering areas where sacred
plants, stones, and other cultural materials are available; sites
of historical significance; hills; lakes, such as Wallowa Lake in
northeastern Oregon; rivers; islands; cairns; and other rock alignments.
(p. 84)
These traditional cultural properties, because of their
idiosyncratic and culturally focused orientation, are often not known
by non-American Indians. Likewise, American Indians are often not overly
excited to share these traditional cultural properties with agency officials,
resource managers, environmental planners, and the like. Their recognition
and inclusion in environmental and natural resource issues, however,
is mandated by federal law. Stapp and Burney argue that it is for these
and other reasons that American Indians must develop their own tribal
cultural resource management agendas and programs. By establishing a
tribal cultural resource management agenda, American Indian concerns
over environmental and natural resource issues can be voiced and adequately
included without specific traditional cultural properties unnecessarily
being publicly divulged.
How this process is gone about is the focus of part two of the book.
Covering the development of a tribal cultural resource protection program,
the consultation process, cultural landscapes and challenges to protection,
as well as the promotion of a cultural stewardship agenda to address
tribal interests and expectations, this book is one of a kind. If anyone
hopes to properly fulfill environmental and natural resource regulations,
then this book needs to be on their shelf. As Jeff Van Pelt said in
the book’s forward, “Friends like Darby and Michael have
assisted us in coming back full circle to places (sacred sites), to
our original responsibilities of taking care of the land and our cultural
resources. Coming full circle perpetuates a belief system, like bringing
breath back into a dying animal. This book will surely be a guide for
cultural resource managers…” (p. xii).
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