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Jessica Yaquinto - Episode 57
42 Plays7 years ago
Profiles in CRM features short interviews with CRM professionals from all experience levels and educational levels. I ask a standard list of questions and see how each person answers them based on their experience.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsors
00:00:00
Speaker
You are listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. The Archaeology Podcast Network is sponsored by Codify, a California benefit corporation. Visit codify at www.codifi.com. This is
Podcast Overview
00:00:15
Speaker
Jessica Uquinto, and you're listening to Profiles in CRM.
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to Profiles in CRM, Episode 57. I'm your host, Chris Webster. Profiles in CRM asks CRM professionals nine simple questions. The answer's very wildly, depending on their experience and education. Because of the nature of contract archeology and how small this field really is, some people choose not to reveal their name or the company they work for. Stay to the end of the show to hear how you can have a chance to answer these same questions. All right, we're here on Profiles, and here's the first question. What is your name and
Jessica's Background
00:00:45
Speaker
who do you work for?
00:00:47
Speaker
All right. So my name is Jessica Uquinto and I work for me. I founded a ethnographic and tribal consultation services firm called Living Heritage Anthropology about two years ago. Awesome. Okay. And what's the highest degree you've earned? I have earned a master's from Northern Arizona University. Okay. And how long have you been working in CRM?
00:01:17
Speaker
So I've been working in CRM for a little bit over a decade. Okay. Awesome. And where have you worked? And by that, I just mean what States have you worked in and or countries for that matter. Um, and that can be multiple States, you know, for the same, for the same company. Right. Okay. So I've predominantly worked in the greater Southwest and the great basin. So basically Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada,
00:01:47
Speaker
and Sonora, Mexico. I have somehow not managed to ever work in New Mexico, only with New Mexico tribes, but. Nice. All right. And in CRM, now you go ahead. Sorry. And then I didn't include the, who I worked for. Okay. So,
Founding Living Heritage Anthropology
00:02:08
Speaker
and yeah, so those projects, they were all for,
00:02:12
Speaker
a variety of agencies like the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, Department of Defense, Department of Energy. And that was through the Bureau of Applied Research and Anthropology at the University of Arizona through Grand Canyon National Park, Northern Arizona University, Dominguez Anthropological Research Group out of Grand Junction, their nonprofit there, and obviously living heritage.
00:02:37
Speaker
Nice. Okay. And now you own a company now. So that's probably the highest position you've ever held as president of your company or whatever you call yourself. My title changes on a daily basis. Um, but, uh, what is the position you usually have in CRM? And I guess that would be now this, and this would be the highest position. So if you've got a different answer for this question, feel free to give it to me. But, um, you know, what, um, I guess what is the position you've had mostly over your last 10 years?
00:03:04
Speaker
So I would say the position I've had mostly is ethnographer because usually when you're in a subset of CRM, people don't differentiate that much. So ethnographer, I don't know, tribal consultant, I guess. I'm not sure anyone's actually given me a title for that part of the work, but yeah, probably
00:03:28
Speaker
Most or the position I had most commonly would have been equivalent to, I guess, a project manager.
00:03:35
Speaker
Okay. And then now, yeah, I, I tend to go by founder, but, um, nice, but president sounds nice too. I know. Sometimes it's president, um, archeologist in chief. I like that. There you go. Nice. All right. So here's the fun questions.
Memorable Tribal Experiences
00:03:55
Speaker
Um, what is the best thing that's happened to you? That's related to being an archeologist and that can be personal or private or professional. I mean, yeah. Okay. So.
00:04:06
Speaker
The best thing about being a CRM ethnographer, I think there's just something magic almost that happens sometimes when you take tribes out to places in their homelands. There's just these moments that happen.
00:04:26
Speaker
you know, you'll get to a place and all of a sudden everyone around you starts speaking Zuni really excitedly. And you know, you just know that that you're in a special place or you get somewhere in Nevada, actually. And all of a sudden, the tribes start playing the rocks and they sound like drums and or you get you go to a solar calendar site with the tribes and
00:04:56
Speaker
It's a place that they want to keep people out of, but they're actively trying to get you there. You know, like there was this one time when I was having trouble basically rock climbing to this one site and one of the elders actually found a different access route to the site just to make sure that I got to be there.
00:05:20
Speaker
And you just build these really incredible relationships with people. And so basically I would say those moments when you actually get to go out in the field and be in these special places that maybe you wouldn't get to have access to otherwise with tribal members who are connected to those places, there's just really something special there.
00:05:46
Speaker
I can imagine that sounds amazing. Yeah. Okay.
Expanding Ethnography in CRM
00:05:50
Speaker
What is the biggest thing that you would change that would make being, I guess, a CRM ethnographer better? Yes. Um, well, that's, I guess that would be what I would change though, is that we're kind of in a funny position in the fields where we're, I feel like we're almost having to remind people, Hey, we're here all the time.
00:06:15
Speaker
You know, just because cultural resources in theory is a lot of different things, but it gets interpreted a lot of the time as just archaeology. So I think that I would say that it would make being a CRM professional better if some of those other aspects of CRM
00:06:43
Speaker
ethnography, tribal consultation, historic architecture, all of these different things that I think got left out a lot of the time were a little bit more included in the general discussion. Tom King, if you will. He does a great job of reminding everybody that cultural resources has a broader meaning.
00:07:13
Speaker
Right now, yeah, it just seems like there's a lot of conversation happening in archaeology that's like, oh my god, we need to work with tribes. And it just feels like we're kind of almost in the corner being like, yeah, we've been doing that.
00:07:31
Speaker
Well, and I'm going to comment on this real quick. I don't usually do that in this, but I feel like, you know, on a, on CRM projects, we'll often hire specialists to do different things like a geoarchaeologist or geophysical archaeologist to do, you know, GPR, you know, people that do our carbon 14 dating. We don't do that stuff because that's not our specialty, right? So, right. So why would we assume that tribal consultation is our specialty? That's an art in and of itself. And hiring a professional to do that for your project just kind of makes sense, doesn't it?
00:07:59
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. There's nothing quite as frustrating as people being like, oh, well, ethnography, that's just talking to people. I can do that. OK, thanks for, you know.
00:08:15
Speaker
Yeah. Denying our whole field. I don't know how to put that. Um, I know. I guess, uh, I guess four years on the archeology podcast network or podcasting makes me an ethnographer then. Right. Since I just talked to people. Yeah. All right.
00:08:31
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Okay. Yeah. So, uh, moving on, what is your career goal in CRM?
Future Goals and Recommendations
00:08:36
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Besides, um, obviously grand, uh, you know, grand archeology, ethnographer, um, Jessica the great. Yes. Taking over the world. Um, no, I, I would say obviously I want to grow my business. It's only been two years. So I would, I would really like to almost be the one-stop shop where
00:09:01
Speaker
Okay, I need help with ethnography. I need help with tribal consultation. This is the place to go for that. And I would like, especially within that, to be promoting community-based participatory research, which I know, for example, TJ Ferguson and Chip Colewell are really big advocates for that on the archaeology side, but just making sure that tribes are
00:09:30
Speaker
tribes and other descendant communities, not just tribes, but that people are involved throughout the entire process and involved as researchers themselves. So actively training.
00:09:42
Speaker
tribal members or their descendant community members to do ethnography, to do archaeology and having them along throughout the entire process. That's another big focus of mine. I'd like to do more work with youth and elders and connecting the two. That's always a big focus for me. And then we're talking about potentially developing a nonprofit and
00:10:11
Speaker
trying to make sure that we're, we're really giving back to tribes as much as possible. Okay. Awesome. All right. Well, final question then, uh, if you could give an undergrad thinking about CRM, I guess from an archeologist or ethnographers position, um, one piece of advice, what would that be? I would say to take a wide variety of classes, you know, try and
00:10:38
Speaker
If you want to be doing ethnographic work, for example, as a CRM ethnographer or CRM archaeologist, take an ethnography class. If you want to be doing tribal consultation stuff, take some Native American studies classes. If you want to do more historic architecture, take some historic preservation and other classes related to that.
00:11:02
Speaker
Just try and get a wide variety of classes. And I think that no matter what you do, that you'll benefit from that. And then also try and talk to the tribes or communities that you want to work with or that you want to do archaeology related to. Find out what cultural resources mean to them. And listen to my podcast.
00:11:31
Speaker
Absolutely.
New Podcast Announcement
00:11:32
Speaker
And that is the final thing we will say on this is Jessica has a podcast coming out actually in a few days if you're listening to this on the day that this debuted. So check it out. It's called Heritage Voices and it's on the archaeology podcast network.
00:11:49
Speaker
Show notes for this and all episodes can be found on the Archaeology Podcast Network website at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com/. At that page you'll also find a form that you can fill out so you can be interviewed on the show. Interviews take less than 30 minutes and you don't need any special equipment. Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the field.
00:12:10
Speaker
The show is produced by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com