Integrating Indigenous Values into Federal Agency Impact Assessments to Reduce Conflicts—A Role for Anthropologists

Conflicts surrounding the development of public lands are on the rise around the world. In the United States, where laws require federal agencies to conduct environmental and cultural impact assessments before approving or permitting development projects, conflicts still occur. This is especially true for projects that impact indigenous lands, resources, and communities, as the recent controversy surrounding Dakota Access Pipeline project so well illustrates. The purpose of this article is to highlight some of the problems I have encountered as an anthropologist conducting cultural impact assessments for federal agencies and for indigenous communities. Central among the problems encountered are the lack of awareness and appreciation for indigenous values by project proponents, agencies, and sometimes even the analysts hired to conduct the assessments. Recommendations for improving the quality of cultural impact assessments, which are based on the tenets of Action Anthropology, are explained

Generationally-Linked Archaeology

The research involved the efforts of a wet archaeological site specialist (Dale Croes) and a Master Basketmaker and Elder from the Suquamish Tribe (Ed Carriere), who joined together to replicate and scientifically analyze the 2,000-year-old basketry collection from the Biderbost wet site, Snoqualmie Tribal Territory, housed at the University of Washington (UW) Burke Museum Archaeology Program (Figure 1). Working on this analysis and replication project over the past four years, we concluded that it was not enough to call this a case of Experimental Archaeology; we describe our work as a new approach termed Generationally-Linked Archaeology, an approach that chronologically connects from both directions, linking contemporary cultural specialists with ancient and ancestral basketmakers through the science of archaeology. We present our approach here after publicly presenting our efforts to both indigenous and scientific archaeological audiences, including Native peoples at the Northwest Native American Basketweavers Association, Indigenous Ainu of northern Japan, and at a National Maori Weavers conference in New Zealand, and to archaeological scientists at two annual SAA conferences, the Wetland Archaeological Research Project (WARP) 30th Anniversary Conference in Bradford, England, and a Wetland Archaeology Conference in central France

Pacifc Northwest Archaeological Society (PNWAS): Reaching the Northwest Advocational Public for 36 Years

This paper is Chapter 3, pp. 35-45, of a 275+ page volume on How do we Reach More?; a free source book on trying to reach the public in the Pacific Northwest of North America: https://www.northwestanthropology.com/how-do-we-reach-more This book is freely available for those that want to see what tended to work or not work in this effort. Since PNWAS has been around for 36 years, a certain amount of success is demonstrated, including activism possible through a non-profit for education program. Abstract for Pacific Northwest Archaeological Society (PNWAS) chapter 3: As originally stated in our founding in 1985, PNWAS is a membership organization that “offers a means for individuals and organizations to declare their support for the preservation of the rich archaeological resources in our region and help to bring public archaeology programs to people of the Pacific Northwest. Benefits of membership include timely information on Northwest archaeological research, a bi-monthly lecture series, and opportunity to participate in professionally supervised research in the Northwest.” PNWAS was incorporated at that time as a non-profit organization in the State of Washington and has remained true to these original objectives. I have been the Executive Director throughout these 36 years, with a President, Vice-President, and other Officers on our Board