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Nevadans for Cultural Preservation - Ep 127
394 Plays4 months ago
Rayette Martin from the Nevadans for Cultural Preservation joins the podcast to talk about the work they are doing and how they are preserving rock art in Nevada.
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/rockart/127
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Transcript
Introduction to California Rock Art Foundation
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello out there in archaeology podcast land. This is Dr. Alan Garfinkel. I'm the president and founder of the California Rock Art Foundation. And what we do is we identify, evaluate, manage and conserve rock art both in Alta, California and in Baja, California. We conduct field trips, we have trainings, exercise, we do research, and in every way possible we try to preserve, protect, and coordinate treasures of Alta and Baja California rock art, of which there are many, and diverse.
Partnerships and Guest Introduction
00:00:35
Speaker
We also work closely with Native Americans and partner with them to recognize and protect sacred sites.
00:00:42
Speaker
So for more info about the fabulous California Rock Art Foundation, you can go to carockart.org. Also, i'm I'm open to give me a call, 805-312-2261. We would welcome sponsorship or underwriting, ah helping us to defray the costs of our podcasts, and also membership in California Rock Art Foundation, and of course, donations since we are a 501c3 nonprofit scientific and educational corporation. God bless everyone out there in podcast land.
00:01:16
Speaker
You're listening to the Rock Art Podcast. Join us every week for fascinating tales of rock art, adventure, and archaeology. Find our contact info in the show notes and send us your suggestions.
00:01:33
Speaker
Hello out there in archaeology podcast land. This is your host, Dr. Alan Garfinkel. Get ready for episode 127 with Rayette Martin, who is the executive director of the Nevadans for Cultural Preservation.
Mission of Nevadans for Cultural Preservation
00:01:49
Speaker
She will thrill you with her stories of rock art adventure and graffiti remediation. She is someone I've just gotten to know in the last week or so. Rayette, are you there? I am. I'm so happy to be here and also get to know you a little bit more as well. Thank you, Rayette. It's a pleasure. So I think before we launch into anything else, maybe give them a thumbnail sketch of of what Nevadans for Cultural Preservation is all about. I looked through your ah website just a few moments ago and it sounds like you've got a very strong educational platform, correct?
00:02:29
Speaker
Yes, our main thing is preservation through education, and we're really founded on the belief that we cannot expect people to care for things they know nothing about, follow laws they've never heard of, or protect things they cannot identify. And the nonprofit was really born out of my experience working with the Nevada Site Stewardship Program. And that program is run by the State Historic Preservation Office. And they
00:03:04
Speaker
educate volunteers to go out and monitor at-risk archaeological sites for damage and change. And then that information goes to the land manager and their archaeologists so that they can take action if need be. And in California, there's a similar program. It's the California Archaeological Site Stewardship Program. But while I was working there, I was noticing that a lot of the damages were things that maybe people just didn't know they should be doing or not doing. So things like children who had scratched tic-tac-toe underneath some petroglyphs and that type of thing. So we thought, hey, we really need a program to go out and educate folks on not only what's out there, but why it's important and then why we take care of it.
Education and Stewardship in Preservation
00:03:57
Speaker
That's fabulous. Yeah, i I'm somewhat familiar with the ah program of site stewardship stewardship in California. At least I met the couple that have been doing that for many, many years. I think i think through a particular adjunct of the Society for California Archaeology, at least that's what I understood. And certainly the California Rock Art Foundation is attempting to sort of serve your twin to do some of this education work that we're talking about as well. And we can talk about that further in in this episode. I think first to kick off though, this is something that I do each episode. Tell us a bit about how you ever came to be involved with this niche. this I understand you're an archaeologist, but how did you get from
00:04:48
Speaker
you know get that interest and that passion in this particular specialty. It's rather uncommon, isn't it? It is. So it's it's a long story, so I'll make it as short as possible. So I grew up in Alaska and I was a big PBS kid. I was always watching programs about different places and cultures and things like that.
Rayette Martin's Background and Journey
00:05:10
Speaker
And then I ended up kind of falling into college because I had worked enough jobs that I wanted to do something different. And I, you know,
00:05:21
Speaker
It started off wanting to work with people and solve problems and got a heavy emphasis in cultural anthropology. My thesis was bordered identities, class, ethnicity, and transnational social networks. ah so now Wait a second. no now that is i mean that That is a mouthful. Yeah, yeah yeah that's that's that's some of the best wordsmithing and anthropological, archaeological, psycho-babble I've heard in a while. God god bless you.
00:05:56
Speaker
Thanks. I moved far away from that. And I got my, um, you know, my master's great, you know, and then started at that stewardship program right away. And my hobbies and interests really aligned with going in the outdoors, taking care of, you know, cultural sites and hiking and off-roading. And so I was a good fit to work with the public. And so if you had to term or put a a label on what I do, I would say I'm more of a public archeologist. you I've had 10 years of experience you know relocating sites, educating land managers on their sites and how to take care of them, doing trainings and that kind of thing. so I'm an educator, I'm passionate about caring for cultural sites, and then also there's a little bit of art involved and and that comes in with our graffiti remediation and and other work that we do.
Petroglyph Festival and VR Initiatives
00:06:51
Speaker
Fabulous.
00:06:52
Speaker
So it it sounds like you know we were living, Ray, in parallel worlds, because you know my passion and the California Rock Art Foundation's passion is to be involved in those same things vis-a-vis education and stewardship, conservation, protection, documentation, and working with sort of state-of-the-art elements to marry sort of a field trip experience with a set of seminars or educational elements to teach people the value and the significance and what we think we know or might know about these resources. Does that make any sense?
00:07:36
Speaker
Oh, it makes total sense. That's exactly what we're doing. And then, you know, you have different audiences, but you cater that education too. So a lot of the work that I do is with the public who may not even be aware of the resources that we have. Right. Right. Exactly. exactly Now we know that that audience, that larger audience, We have attempted to capture, and this might be of great interest to you, there is a function that occurs annually in a place called Ridgecrest, California. Ridgecrest is sort of ground zero for Coso rock art, but they have a thing called the Petroglyph Festival.
00:08:18
Speaker
And it's been going on for 10 years, and it brings between 5 and 10,000 people for a two-day event there in Ridgecrest. It's amazing. Yeah. And they have ah you know a lot of vendors, but they also have a powwow that's going on at the same time. And so they have exhibitors and dancers and educations, and they have you know entertainment and food and all kinds of stuff. So all that and much more. And their platform has always been to try to reach out to the youngsters, if they could, even with a companion sort of educational environment and teach them the value of sort of the ah Native American heritage resources.
00:09:02
Speaker
so There's all of that and much more. They also created a thing called Petroglyph Park. and and There they did replicas of rock art that was there within the ah China Lake vicinity. right there near Ridgecrest, but also around the world. And they they brought in tons of rock, tons. And they sometimes they they replicated it by painting, but also by engraving and and mirror and mirroring the imagery that ah appears on rock art all around the world.
00:09:43
Speaker
Fantastic. I think it's really important for people who may not be the adventurous type and go out and hike and and go relocate these things to have access to that. So I think that's amazing. The other thing that they do is they have this thing called the Welcome Center. And so there's welcome centers all over California. So when someone is trying to get information about how to get to Death Valley or what can I do that I'm here in Ridgecrest, they go to this welcome center. well yeah In this welcome center, there's an exhibit, right? And the exhibit has several headsets, virtual reality headsets. And so they can put on a VR headset
00:10:27
Speaker
And boom, they're in Little Petroglyph Canyon and can walk through the canyon with a walking tour with Dr. Alan Garfinkel-Gold here, helping them to understand what they're seeing. Or they can put on another headset and be in the Arctic, be in China, be in Europe, and be in the American Southwest, ah seeing cultural resources. and VR has become so... The sophistication and the resolution of VR using these headsets
00:11:01
Speaker
is is scary because you can reach out in a three-dimensional way and literally feel like you're you're right there. it's you You move your head and it has a ah rotational thing so you can look you know almost 24-7 around in a circle and up and down and and it ah you see everything. And and you can you can see the grains of sand in the rock itself. That's the kind of resolution they have. It blows your mind. we yeah We happen to have a one of the world's experts in VR, who's a board member of the California Rock Art Foundation. Otherwise, you wouldn't have you know had any access to anything like this. So it's interesting. And as you're well aware, this discipline is is changing radically from moment to moment.
00:11:53
Speaker
Most definitely. So one of the things that the nonprofit does is we write grant projects and oh there's a ah funding source called the Lincoln County Archaeological Initiative. And because they have these funds, they're from the BLM sale of lands, they can fund amazing work like that. And we are, hopefully, we've got our proposal out to bring that type of products that already exists into the community in Lincoln County, which is a small community north of Las Vegas. And think yeah, that's the future for sure.
00:12:33
Speaker
and And I know that Lincoln County you know Rock Art Granting and the associated rock art that's there. Rather well, I have a colleague who I work with, I worked with years ago and published ah made a presentation. His name is Ferrell Lytle. Do you know him? He is in Pio, Nevada. hi I do. I love Ferrell. but There you go. Farrell's a ah longtime colleague of mine, and we worked together to do the dating of rock art. and Using his portable XRF efforts, we ah dated COSO rock art, but he also dated other rock art, including the rock art there in Lincoln County. and That particular strategy has been pursued by others and taken to and elevated. There's a gentleman
00:13:26
Speaker
of ah German ethnicity and ancestry, who works with a um you know a world world-famous think tank. He's a chemist in other areas, and he's done ah XRF, experimental rock art dating all over the world, published three papers. when when I'm a co-author on the COSO stuff, but he's done ah two other papers, one on his work in the Great Basin. i don't know I think it's Utah more than Nevada, and another one on his work in the Middle East. and He does the portable XRF as well. and He's coming back to California, hopefully. We have some funding for him to do further dating
00:14:14
Speaker
at the National Mojave Preserve in eastern California because there's there's very little dating on some of this ah grapevine style rock art that you're probably well aware of. Yeah, the dating is the one of the public's main interests as well. So on whenever I'm engaging with public talking about the importance, I always want to know when it happened. Exactly. because Yeah. Please tell me. Well, let's ah take a break for the first segment. See you in the flip flop, gang.
00:14:48
Speaker
Welcome back, boys and girls. This is Dr. Alan Garfinkel, your host. This is segment two of episode 127 of your rock art podcast. And this time we have Rayette Martin, executive director of Nevadans for Cultural Preservation. Welcome back, Rayette. Thanks. Let's get into some of the details, some of the actual activities that are underway for the Nevadans for cultural preservation. Can you share with us some of the programs and some of the perhaps the actual activities and and elements that the nonprofit is actively involved with?
00:15:29
Speaker
I'm happy to do that. We have a variety of different things that we' we're working on and have been working on. One of the main ones since we're education focused is outreach and engaging land users in. Exploring reporting and protecting our cultural sites. So I was able to get an off highway vehicles commission grant. That's where people register their ovs and that money goes into a pot and I applied for funds to create an preservation ambassador program.
00:16:04
Speaker
So, there's a way for them to take a quick online training and then when they're out exploring, like they do, and they come across something, they can scan a QR code and just report what they found and they can also adopt sites that they may have gone out to. So it's kind of like the stewardship
Graffiti Remediation on Cultural Sites
00:16:23
Speaker
program. However. We are not sharing site information with them. They're just telling us where they've been going and what might need attention. So that's an actual program. And then we also have been doing a lot of work with graffiti remediation. and That's been kind of a passion project of mine and one that all across like the southern part of Nevada.
00:16:50
Speaker
tell us Tell us a bit more. i'm I'm especially interested in this graffiti remediation because it is something that I've not had a lot of experience with. and I ran into a boulder in a park not far from me. me I live in Bakersfield, California. and They asked us to remediate a tag you know a yeah tag from from a gang. yeah and it was and It was on a granite boulder that also had a bedrock milling surface and a you know incipient bedrock mortar. and They said that they would they would just use you know a high-powered hose
00:17:28
Speaker
And the pressure washing would get rid of that particular tag. I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that would be possible. And I did also didn't realize that that would be an acceptable way of doing it. We worked with a Native American who was ethically affiliated with the indigenous people who lived here in Bakersfield, a Yalumni Yokuts. And she thought that was a great idea. And they did do that. Now, they did relocate that boulder away from where it was in situ because they wanted to protect it. They wanted to make sure that this didn't happen again, and they placed it in an area that is being used for interpretation in an interpretive facility on site. They just spent a million dollars to put an interpretive facility on site in this park.
00:18:20
Speaker
And there they're also going to have a native California plant, plants a sort of a garden there. And I think they're working on, hopefully working with the native people and myself and others to do some public interpretation so that so that the people that visit the interpretive facility might understand the significance of these plants and what they meant to the native people and how that would work in with the archaeological record. So, tell us a bit about this ah graffiti remediation issue. I imagine it's far more complex.
00:18:59
Speaker
Yeah, it is. And I'm glad that you mentioned that the tribe was involved in the decision making because that is ah what's of utmost importance is there's a lot of different ways that we can approach vandalism. Sometimes it's leave it how it is. Sometimes it's removing it. you know it it all All of those come with pros and cons. Once something's vandalized, you can never get it back to its original state. So there are many, many different techniques. And then there's many different paints and rock surfaces and and considerations to bring in. So there's not a one size fits all. And in addition to that, there's a lot of, as you're working on something, the rock surface changes within you know centimeters.
00:19:48
Speaker
as you're going. And so one thing will work in one spot and not in the other. But my experience has been is back in 2012, 2013, I got some training on removing scratches, you know, like when you have a rock and it leaves a little bit of like chalk behind how to remove that. And then I sat down and was able to use mineral pigments to do some color matching to camouflage deeper scratched like in size graffiti. And I found out that I could do that all day. Everybody's got a special skill in mind as I can sit for 10 hours painting rocks. ah ah yeah You never know. authority
00:20:32
Speaker
right No starting lithics for me. but i call You love to paint rocks. Yes, I didn't know. And it's kind of unarting, like I'm removing markings. So the strategy really is creating, and this is through Stratum Unlimited, who's been mentoring me. Gentleman's Dr. Loebser is the art of creating chaos chaos out of order. So when we think of graffiti removal or camouflage, a lot of times people want everything to be gone.
00:21:03
Speaker
and I want it to go back to the way it was, but really the main thing is to distract the eye from something that's recognizable. So the tag that you had, if you could see a straight line, you know you want to be able to break up that straight line so your eyes aren't drawn to it and that type of thing. so The first step is always knowing your surface, knowing what rock art is there, if it's petroglyphs, pictographs, really taking a detailed look and doing fine line tracings so that when you go in for any kind of technique, you're not impacting that. And then testing, testing, testing. It's a a slow, tedious process, but once you find something that works, you kind of move through there.
00:21:50
Speaker
So this technique does not necessarily remove ah the graffiti in all times. It sort of masks it, doesn't it? Am I hearing that or no? Yeah, because, for example, I worked on a site where we had a pictograph and somebody had spray painted over it and yeah the rocks yeah in giant black letters so we were able to we used wire brushes drill with a wire to remove the paint and.
00:22:21
Speaker
not the surface of the rock because again it was like hard granite as well and it smears it then we use a little chemical we wipe up the smear until we get it faded to the point where you can't really tell it's there and then on top of the actual pictographs we didn't touch it we didn't try and remove the paint itself and but in other instances we've removed the paint on top of pictographs so but it will never come back it will never be all the way back to normal But it will be remedial,
00:22:54
Speaker
right, to the eye. It won't be as offensive. And one can then aesthetically be a bit more appealing, I guess would be the answer, right? Yeah, it brings your attention back to what's supposed to be drawn to, right? It brings it back to the pictograph or the petroglyph. So, because your eye will catch that. It's not going to catch this mere little bit of black that looks like part of the rock. It will go to the imagery. Is there a ah rich literature published about these techniques and this particular method for remeation remediation and dealing with graffiti? I have not found such went in my own just preliminary research. right and and I honestly think that's because it is so specific to each situation.
00:23:45
Speaker
so okay well the and that' But there's still a a series of things you want to go through. So first you want to record everything that you see there and like really get in there, use your D stretch, get out your magnifying glass and find the boundaries of where the imagery is. Okay. And then you want to start with like really simple dry techniques, sometimes just a dry paintbrush. right can remove some chalk or some charcoal and then you use a rolling poultice which is a cotton ball put on like a dowel and you try it dry and then you try it wet and then you move up to a toothbrush and then you move up so you just slowly
00:24:29
Speaker
go to, I don't want to call it invasive, but potentially, you know, rougher or more damaged. Yeah, some sort of stronger or more invasive technology to try to do so to repair the damage. Exactly. Or ameliorate or mask. Yeah, and so in one spot, it may brush off. The other spot, the rock's more porous, and now it's kind of part of the rock. right use You use some chemical, like potassium hydroxide, to break up that bond and flush it out. But maybe we don't need to get there. So it's not like, hey, I have acrylic paint on top of Aztec sandstone. What do I do to fix that? I can't tell you.
00:25:11
Speaker
There's very few people in the world that know about this, is there? I mean, in terms of expertise for you know graffiti remediation for rock art. Yeah, there it's it's a very small group of professionals. And each one of those professionals comes at it with a little bit of a different technique and may sink what a successful case looks like is different from each other. So when looking for a professional to do this, you want to you know make sure you look at their portfolio and and understand their mindset and how they want to go about it. There's technology with lasers now that can break up graffiti.
00:25:50
Speaker
But the problem with maybe lasering something off is now you went from having the graffiti your eye was attracted to to now is the laser making lines. Can the laser feather it out and make it look natural? So is it removing the paint that you want to do or is it distracting the eye enough to where again you're looking at the main attraction and causing the least amount of change to the rock surface? What is it you want? And what do the natives have to say about this in terms of what you're doing? what is there I know that every group would be different, but what has been their ah consensus from tribe to tribe about the activities of remediation or graffiti? Is it something they support? Is it something they find ah important and significant to their religious observations or no?
00:26:44
Speaker
So I can speak from, I just finished up a project outside the Las Vegas Valley. So I worked with the to Las Vegas Southern Paiute tribe and this area, it was damaged for over 30 years. So it was a big party spot and people had layers and layers of spray paint, the trash, the burning, you know, how that goes. And so It was important to them to see the area cleaned up because it's like a symbol of respect for the area. and And so they were very happy at the level of removal that I was able to accomplish. And again, I didn't remove every single thing.
00:27:28
Speaker
Because now you can actually we were able to uncover petroglyphs and pictographs that nobody knew were there because it hadn't been recorded before the damage occurred. So we found it as we were going in some instances, you know. If you wait long enough, sometimes that little bit of damage fades, so they don't really want people to go out and start making a mess of it. But when it's a huge area that's covered extensively with graffiti, it's been very positively received. The same thing with historical scratching. you know when When an area is graffitied, whether it's scratching their name in something or spray painting it, it attracts more.
00:28:12
Speaker
and more and so you end up if you don't take care of it right away it becomes 50 years old or older now we got to deal with that ah but also you know it keeps adding adding new new things and then the story of that area is no longer about the petroglyph panels it's about you know the class of 1972 that came in and and scratched over it so Yeah, we have a site that's right along the highway near Little Lake that's on private property, believe it or not, that was near a major transportation route for the last 100 years. There was a trail there and now it's Highway 395 and it was you know the road was right there. So what you have there is advertising.
00:29:08
Speaker
superimposed over prehistoric rock art. You've got advertising from the turn of the century, not but 1900. that where they're advertising. And then on top of that, you've got graffiti, both painted and actual scratched into it. And then you've got a lot of rock art, probably have over 100 elements minimum. And it looks like it they should go back probably about 12,000 years all in this one little spot.
00:29:41
Speaker
which is which is interesting. and I've always wanted to develop some way to perhaps deal with that area and maybe try to develop some respect or education because it's been hit so heavily. yeah I think it probably would mirror the situation you dealt with in Las Vegas because it's so you know It's so open and so readily available and so notable right there. so Everybody and their uncle has put their name on there.
00:30:12
Speaker
and they've so For the last 12,000 years, you've got rock imagery and you have advertising and graffiti and everything else all concatenated or conflated in this one little area. Is that something similar to what we're talking about? That's more like an area that we have. It's an archeological district that covers about 2,000 acres. It's called White River Narrows. and Same thing, the the old road used to go wind through that canyon. and and yeah We have the exact same issue. and In that case, through work at the Bureau of Land Management and the tribes and the State Historic Preservation Office, they agreed to remove some of the historic
00:30:56
Speaker
remove, quote unquote, you know, minimize some of that historic engraving and stuff so that again, the rock imagery would be the main focal point. And so that was a decision that was made between all of those stakeholders. Yeah, we were able to to do that in that area. Well, let me let me but ah close out this segment and we'll move to the next one. Thanks so much for seeing the flip flop gang.
00:31:23
Speaker
ah Welcome back, gang. This is your host, Dr. Alan Garfinkel, and we'll ah round it up. This is segment three of your rock art podcast with Rayette Martin. Rayette, you were just saying in the during the break that there's one particular program of the Nevadans for Cultural Preservation that you have tremendous passion for and and needs to be recognized by the general public. Please speak to that if you would. Yeah, so I had talked, you know, real briefly in the first segment about having an OHV preservation ambassador program. But what I really want to highlight is that we have ah like a citizen stewardship pledge and a way for anybody to report damage they find on public lands across Nevada. So when you visit our website, which is NVFCP.org,
00:32:19
Speaker
you can go to action, take action, and report. and so It's through those citizen reports that we can then get out and address issues, whether that be graffiti remediation or you know making sure that erosion isn't going to take away a historic property and those
Public Involvement in Site Protection
00:32:38
Speaker
types of things. so i just One of our main missions is not only educating folks, but providing them an opportunity to participate and you don't have to sign up or do any special training to make sure that your voice is heard and the information that you come across can be shared. And how and how is that done, Rayette? How would a someone from the general public interact with your organization and inform them of something that they discovered?
00:33:05
Speaker
So, you can always give us a call and that 702-466-3013. It's my personal cell. We're a small organization and we partnered with the Nevada site stewardship program, which I mentioned before, because they have full time staff and it's their job to manage sites and reports. So when you come to our website and you want to do it anonymously or it's a way for you to upload your pictures and that kind of thing, you just fill out a real simple online form and you hit submit. That form goes off to the State Historic Preservation Office and your observations become part of the archaeological record for that site and we make sure that the proper people get notified because because I know a lot of times you may be out recreating and you don't know if you're on BLM land, Bureau of Land Management, or if you're on Forest Service or National Park Service, or you might even be on a state park and you're not quite sure where the boundaries are. That doesn't matter. You can do like a one-stop shop, call me or go online and make a report and we'll make sure the right people are notified. That's fabulous. What did it what did it take for you to sort of implement a program like that? How did that come about?
00:34:23
Speaker
It started when I was working with the site stewardship program, because to become an official site steward, there's like a 6 hour training class. You have to sign confidentiality forms and then you're assigned to a particular site. But being part of the off road community myself. And hiking and doing that type of stuff. I know that the rest of us come across these sites. Pretty often and the ones we come across are most likely the ones that are going to be damaged. So I figured if we made an online reporting form, then we could.
00:34:58
Speaker
Maximize our reach and get those folks involved so that we can expand our eyes and ears on the ground. And so it was a collaboration between the 2 organizations to make sure that that these resources are available to the public so that they can report. And how is Shippo involved with this the state state of historic preservation office? Well, the nice thing is in the state of Nevada, there's a Nevada right revised statute that mandates that the state historic preservation office runs a Nevada site stewardship program, there's funding and there's funding through that so that there's always an administrator for that program. And then that way, say something happens to my organization, which it won't because we're doing amazing, but if it happens to, that will continue on no matter what.
00:35:49
Speaker
Right, so it's funded and as part of the government infrastructure for the state. Yeah, it's fabulous. And then our nonprofit, because we are so small, we're not the ones that are constantly, you know, having to manage that data. right That's all already set up in a statewide system. So yeah, I i think I understand. So we're more of a partner. Yeah, it looks like from your website that there's a number of people who are faculty members or people who have you know prominent placement and in certain scholarly institutions. Tell me a bit about that as well, please.
00:36:30
Speaker
Yeah, so our board of directors, so I'm the executive director and founding member, but the other members on our board were selected for that reason. We have the chair of the anthropology department at UNLV, Dr. Barbara Roth, because she comes with a different level of experience and expertise, but also has that education background. We have Dr. Kevin Rafferty, and he's well known for his Background in rock art and it was also from an education perspective. He's retired now and so he has a little more time to help us out and then we also have a non voting position for the Nevada site stewardship program because that relationship is very important.
00:37:13
Speaker
And we have federal archaeologists, Justin DeMeo, and he brings that level of CRM and working with the agencies that helps us really still in where. Their needs aren't being met and we find opportunities to help them with. Preserving and managing their cultural sites, and we have a master teacher for the Clark County school district because we have a curriculum as well that we developed. That is a very simple curriculum to work in schools that. Don't have as many resources because in Nevada, we don't have a textbook on Nevada history.
00:37:52
Speaker
that is up to me. We have a ah curriculum that's easy and it's everything they need. It's taught to the standards so they can fill out their rubrics and stuff. so who Yeah. did Who did the curriculum? That was our master teacher, Laura Treanani, and she'll actually be going for her doctorate in education. Does that cover a sort of Native American issues, including rock garden, cultural heritage preservation elements? there It walks through the, we made it as simple as possible because we we do not have the best record as a school district. So they don't have as many resources or time. Of course, of course. So we made it like, you know, but there is a bonus lesson at the end that talks about things that our organization is passionate about. yeah And it does talk about the different tribes. It it cuts out the caricatures. It brings actual photographs.
00:38:52
Speaker
It talks about how the tribes are not gone. They're not in the past. They're here. This is awesome. This is really awesome. That's excellent. Yeah. Is the curriculum designed for what level of education? Is it grammar school? Is it high junior high, high school? They learn about a history in fourth grade. this Fourth grade, okay. yeah for Fourth, fifth, and it's taught to those particular standards or it's written for those standards. And it's just PowerPoints and also, yeah, some handouts that they can print directly. It's all black and white, you know, keep it as far as the handouts, you know, yeah yeah keeping it real.
00:39:32
Speaker
so Well, you know, and in terms of my own experience, I guess I'll give you some parallels. Here in California, the federally recognized Native American tribes are, of course, very, very active in having tipos, you know, traditional heritage preservation officers for those tribes. And then they develop divisions within their operations that work as but Native American monitors, right? so And those Native American monitors are paid sometimes ah very, very well for their time and talents and work with archaeologists, especially if there's an excavation going on, et cetera. So I have been contracted personally
00:40:24
Speaker
to go to the ah tribes and teach the Native Americans about being Native American. believe it or not, and to teach them about the native California Indian tribes, who they are, what they are, what we know about them, and what their culture was like, and then about you know the languages and the ah subsistence settlement systems.
Native American Cultural Preservation Projects
00:40:52
Speaker
So there's that. But then there's you know teaching them what's archaeology.
00:40:57
Speaker
and what would the Native American, what they would be doing with their monitoring and safety, and you know very, very elaborate exercise that went on for days and days. It was a it was ah a workshop, I believe, that went on for almost a week. that had you know these modules of information for them on many, many aspects of cultural heritage preservation activities. and
00:41:28
Speaker
so that That was of interest. I've done that several times, sometimes very truncated. and into an hour-long class you know when we trained 50 Native American monitors for a project I was involved in that where we needed all these sites done. There were over 100 sites that were discovered, and they were constantly needing to develop some way of mitigating the adverse effects that would be taking place at those sites or on those sites with those sites and dealing with some means of either collecting those artifacts on their surface or excavating the sites or covering them with fill and a ah geotextile and protecting them on and on and on.
00:42:26
Speaker
So, that was a project that was funded by a group of wind developers, wind energy developers, to the tune of about, I think it was about $5 or $6 million dollars was you know expended on that particular, just on the cultural resources and that program alone. Now, the only other program that I've been involved with that was you know as complicated and as difficult and rather sensitive was in Oregon, where they had a mountain burned to the ground. It was appropriately named Burned Mountain.
00:43:09
Speaker
And they discovered over 100 archaeological sites on that mountain. And so they contracted with the archaeologists to identify them and evaluate them, and in some cases, at least test them to see if we can get some sense of how big and how big they were and whether there was any subsurface material. and In other cases, if the site was large enough and important enough to collect the surface material, that might be time or culturally diagnostic.
00:43:46
Speaker
and write a survey report and do some analysis about all these artifacts and work with the native people on questions of significance and heritage preservation, et cetera. That particular project has gone on. I'm a senior author of the monograph, which is probably 5,000 pages long. And that project ah was funded to the tune of about eight or $9 million. dollars And it's it's interesting because it's so difficult when like when you had to boil things down to an hour or put it together in a school curriculum. There's so much you want to cover that you feel like you're not giving everything the attention that it deserves. And as you said, you know these other larger projects, 5,000 page document, it's like I have to boil that down into like two slides.
00:44:48
Speaker
Yeah. It's like, it's like when you attend these archeological conferences, right? Society for California archeology, is the great basin, anthropological conference or whatever. And they say, well, you know, we'll give you 10 minutes to make your PowerPoint presentation. Right? Yeah. 10, 10 minutes. Right. And how can you possibly discuss anything in a 10 minute time, time span to cover, you know, a particular theme or project or subject that is so complicated. So you just, just the, just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts. And I think that's as a public, quote unquote, public archeologists, I do that every day. I read large documents saying,
00:45:41
Speaker
I know all that background in history, but again, I got to give you a sound bite. I got to give you a small bit to yeah grab your interest and hope you'll want to learn more. Exactly. Bring it to that eighth grade level and and see where it goes from there. so So what would you like to say to the general public and the audience of the only ah rock art podcast in the world as a sign off, Rayette?
Encouragement for Public Engagement
00:46:06
Speaker
I'd like to say get out there and explore, report damages that you find, and help protect these amazing places for future generations, where wherever you are in the world. Amen to that. God bless you. See you on the flip-flop, gang.
00:46:28
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Rock Art Podcast with Dr. Alan Garfinkel and Chris Webster. Find show notes and contact information at www.arcpodnet dot.com forward slash rock art. Thanks for listening and thanks for sharing this podcast with your family and friends.
00:47:00
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.