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Working with Tribes as a Non-Anthropologist - Ep 93
178 Plays2 days ago
On today’s episode, Jessica chats with Maia Poston (They/Them; Tribal Liaison and Manager of Project Support for InContext). Maia talks about growing up at archaeology sites, their thesis on Manifest Destiny, Liminality, and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and eventually finding their way to NAGPRA work. For anyone new to NAGPRA or working with Tribes, they give lots of useful tips on how to approach the soft skills of that work, considerations to think about, and how to reframe your approach. They round out the conversation by talking about how Incontext, as a CRM company, wants to change the way they work with Tribes and be part of the process of breaking down barriers between the CRM world and Tribes.
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- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/heritagevoices/93
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Introduction and Episode Context
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Heritage Voices, Episode 93. I'm Jessica Equinto and I'm your host. And today we are talking about working with tribes as a non-anthropologist. Before we begin, I'd like to honor and acknowledge that the lands I'm recording on today are part of the Neutch, or Ute, People's Treaty Lands, the Daneta, and the ancestral Puebloan homeland.
Maya Poston's Background and Journey
00:00:30
Speaker
Today we have Maya Poston on the show. Maya is the Tribal Liaison and Manager of Project Support for In Context, a small women and minority-owned cultural resources firm located in the Sacramento Valley. Previously, they worked for California State Parks under Tribal Affairs in the NAGPRA program, where they focused on equitable repatriation.
00:00:51
Speaker
They have a master's in literature with a minor in anthropology from Sacramento State, where they looked at the evolution of myth in the aftermath of Manifest Destiny. So welcome to the show, Maya. Hi, thank you for having me. Yes, I'm super excited to have you. I really, really enjoyed the session that you were part of at the American Cultural Resources Association. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have to have Maya on. So glad that we were able to make this happen.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, that was a giant surprise. i was I think I was given about 12 hours, 18 hours heads up for that panel. So I'm very glad it went over well. Yeah, you
Maya's Panel Experience and NAGPRA Discussion
00:01:38
Speaker
did great. I mean, that that was a lot to not be prepared for. so i was yeah i thought I thought you all did a great job. It was a good, important conversation about the new neg pro regulations in case everyone's wondering what the heck we're talking about.
00:01:54
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm curious. I'm really excited to hear more about your journey because it's a little bit different. It sounds like from a lot of the other people I've talked to. So I'm really excited to to learn more and to get us started on that. What, what first got you interested in this type of work?
00:02:13
Speaker
So my my mother is an archaeologist and anthropologist, and I grew up going with her onto excavations, going with her into fields but field schools, just because when i was when I was younger and when she was still going to school, it was kind of at a point in the archaeology CRM world where childcare wasn't really available or accessible. And, you know, my my father also worked full time, so it was. And daycare is expensive, so it was, you know, OK, well, I have a six year old who likes to dig in the dirt. All right, come on, little six year old, come dig in the dirt.
00:03:01
Speaker
And by dig in the dirt, I mean the dirt piles that they made. It made me feel like so I So I grew up around anthropology. My mom was a really, really big influence on shaping how I look at the world, how I interact with people, and how I view the past and our relationship with it.
Exploration of Myth in American Literature
00:03:32
Speaker
And so I think I just kind of naturally
00:03:38
Speaker
gravitated toward but the ballpark that is anthropology, even though I yeah really, really tried to convince myself that that wasn't the case, as evidenced by my right literature degree, which, you know, as, as you said, is ends up looking at myths and ends up being more, less literature and more anthropology. Yeah. Through through the lens of a fiction book, therefore this literature. But yeah, so i've I've always been interested in anthropology. And then as I, as I got older, you know, I started reconnecting and looking a lot more into my own
00:04:31
Speaker
ah heritage and roots. So I'm, I'm mixed, I'm Mexican, and native. And so I started paying a lot more attention. Well, no, cut that. As I got older, I wanted to learn more about my culture and about my heritage. And that led me to doing a lot of research and deep dives into the, to put it mildly, inequities that and Indigenous people across the world face and have faced historically. And so I, once I got my master's, I kind of realized that I may not necessarily want to work in cultural resources or anthropology or archaeology, but I want to do something to benefit tribes.
00:05:30
Speaker
And so I was, you know, looking at job websites and looking at California state jobs. And I saw a job listing for ARCS's NACRA program and That was that. So, okay. I definitely want to go there, but before we go there, I am, I am curious to hear more about your masters and, you know, what that looked like, why manifest destiny, you know, all, all of that. So, I mean, it it looks like a, like a chaotic whirlwind until my my thesis advisor said that it was clean enough to submit.
00:06:15
Speaker
But i my thesis is centered around and the novel American Gods written by Neil Gaiman. And so when I first read it back in 2006, I think, what interested me the most was the concept of backstage that the main character Shadow goes into in a Winnebago, which the novel acknowledges is but but the RV brand, but it's also a tribe and there's some overlap and gesturing about what that means in terms of myths and in terms of the, for lack of a better term, the longevity of Native American tribes in the collective consciousness. And so when it came time to write my thesis, I was like, okay, this is my favorite book. I'm going to write on that.
00:07:14
Speaker
But backstage still stuck with me. And so I wanted, after a lot of talking and a lot of reading and a lot of indecisiveness, I i realized that the space gay men holds for Native American culture heroes, as they're referred to in the novel, is very prominent.
00:07:45
Speaker
throughout the novel, but they are very underrepresented in terms of ah quantity as compared to the Nordic Pantheon, which is kind of who the novel all focuses around. And so I started looking at liminal spaces and the concept of liminality and how culture heroes and myth evolved in the United States as a symptom of liminality in liminal spaces. And so the conclusion I came to was that because my interpretation of the novel is gay men doing an homage to Americana and how myth functions in the modern age with it, like myth and mythic worship.
00:08:43
Speaker
functions in the modern age in the US. The reason why ultra heroes are underrepresented and literally are seen predominantly backstage is because of manifest destiny. Because you had, you know, these Anglo Europeans come in, raise, you know, the continent from Maine to California. And so there's very little left in the aftermath of Manifest Destiny, Westford Expansion, Andrew Jackson, all of that, you have pockets.
00:09:28
Speaker
And that's what Gaiman is representing with the poultry heroes. But also, he acknowledges and he represents the very land of see america the United States is native and is indigenous and it's represented through the Buffalo Man ah throughout the novel. And so it's kind of this, these figures take a backstage and are kind of hidden in the wings. However, they are the very foundation upon which this novel is built.
00:10:11
Speaker
from an in-world perspective. So, okay. If we're talking books just for a second, have you ever read Gods of Jade and Shadow by Sylvia... Wait, is it Moreno Garcia or Garcia Moreno? Sylvia Moreno Garcia? Yeah. Yes. Yes, I have.
00:10:28
Speaker
Oh my God, I love that one. Sorry. Just talking about it. And it was, uh, that one came up strong for me because I love it. But anyway, sorry, side notes. And then the, sorry, the tie-in with anthropology is liminal spaces and liminality is a concept coined by Victor Turner. He's an anthropologist and his probably going to butcher the French pronunciation of this because I don't speak French, but the rice de passage and so like rites of passage. And he has a couple books on liminality and how, and how rites of passage it are liminal spaces and just kind of what that means. So I took his writings on that. So the, the anthropological concept of liminal spaces and
00:11:26
Speaker
turned it into a semi-functional literary theory and applied that to my reading of the novel and also the theoretical foundation for my thesis. So how? Yeah, now I'm curious about how you went from from there to the the California state parks position.
00:11:52
Speaker
yeah I mean, I wrote what ah I combined, what I love, what I know with what I'm interested in. And then, you know, like like I said, i ah my own my own journey on kind of reconnecting with my heritage and the research
Role as NAGPRA Analyst and Tribal Consultation
00:12:12
Speaker
I did with that novel kind of really gave me a hard shift from what I thought I wanted to do as a career.
00:12:23
Speaker
into wanting to be a lot more tribal focused. So yeah, I was, I was looking for any, any jobs having to do with tribal relations, tribal liaison, anything like that. And the state parks job came up for a NAGPRA analyst and I applied and yeah, I got the job. yay Yeah. i'm I'm still, I'm still surprised that I was
00:12:55
Speaker
So if they, as I said at the interview that they're like, Oh yeah, we want Maya, but I'm not complaining. Yeah. I mean, I'm not surprised, but you know, I know it's always harder to, to see it from the, you know, when it's yourself. Well, it's also that I didn't have a lot of experience working with tribes before then. Most of my experience.
00:13:24
Speaker
Up until that point was doing very, very part time work for in context, just kind of help with student loans and stuff for grad school, but mostly doing tribal outreach. So no consultations, no, you know, I don't want to say no formal interactions because, you know, if I went out.
00:13:45
Speaker
onto a site, you know, I talked with the tribal monitors and stuff, but that was kind of the extent of it. So moving from that into formal government to government consultation was I think that's what surprised me the most of like, oh, everybody, I i don't actually have experience doing this, but I'll learn. Very few people do, though, is the thing. And it's yeah very hard. Yeah. and Yeah, that's what I that's what I learned once I got started. Yeah. Yeah. That combination of skills. Yeah. I mean, it's getting more common, but yeah, I mean, it's hard because you can kind of only learn on the job and there's not a ton of positions. I mean, obviously that's changed right now that that this particular moment, there's a lot of positions, um but I think it's it's tricky. Yeah. I think it's also, um,
00:14:44
Speaker
It also has to do with the fields and sub fields that a lot of these jobs are posted in. If you're not working for a tribe directly, it's almost always under cultural resources. And so that attracts archeologists, anthropologists, people who, if they don't have direct like tribal consultation experience, then there's a strong likelihood that their understanding of tribal consultation is academic or solely from the legal requirements of and section 106, NHPA, CEQA, if you're in California. And so it's that has the potential to lead to a very different type of tribal interactions than I think the NAGPRA world requires.
00:15:39
Speaker
yeah Yeah, and especially it's as as a rare cultural anthropologist within CRM, it's especially archaeology heavy, which like you're saying, doesn't necessarily set you up much. I think that's changing, but in the past beyond just what what the laws are.
00:16:02
Speaker
on that note. We are already at our first break point, but we will jump back in and talk about yeah what it was what it was like figuring all that out through the the California State Parks work when we come back.
00:16:19
Speaker
I want to dive right into the California State Parks position. So when you first started it, you were talking about how you didn't feel like you had the kind of background going into it that you would have liked to have had, I guess. yeah What did you, you know, I'm just thinking about like other people coming into those positions. How did you learn what you needed to know and where did you find resources to do that position. I really wish I could say, Oh, you know, it's, it's this website or this book or this, you know, very accessible, influential person that, you know, every, everybody knows of. Um, it's and be kind of like you were, what you, what you were saying before the break though, it's, it's,
00:17:15
Speaker
It's never really that easy because it's, it's a soft skillset. And so I think it yeah it's, it's a soft skill. So it can, it's not the easier level taught. It's in my experience, it's more about what your intentions are and how, how you want to go about
00:17:45
Speaker
realizing those. And I mean, there there are a lot of factors in my experience that play into what I view as successfully navigating tribal consultation. The most, for me, the most important one is active humility.
00:18:08
Speaker
And being able to accept with grace and without being defensive that four out of five times, whatever stance you're coming from, you're in the wrong. You know, working, working for state arts, it was, you know, I had to set aside, you know, Oh, I am mixed native for, I am a representative of the state government.
00:18:42
Speaker
And it is a state government that historically has done irreparable harm and damages. again Again, to kind of underplay the history of what happened, but you know state state-sanctioned genocide for decades, arguably continuing into today, you know depending on certain perspectives.
00:19:12
Speaker
And so it's being able to understand that no matter what your actual end goal is, you need to keep that in mind, that this is what your position is, and this is what you are representing. It's not about you, the individual, but it's you know i'm I'm representing systemic racism and sentence a history of genocide.
00:19:42
Speaker
And that's ultimately the position I need to approach while I was with the state. That was ultimately the position I needed in the perspective I needed to approach consultation from. And with the NAGPRA specifically, it was also just having this broader scope of understanding of what NAGPRA consultations
00:20:13
Speaker
Because if you if you really think about it, it's so messed up and horrific that it it feels absurd. I mean, I'm i'm sure if you except took away a lot of the identifying features and just kind of explained, you know, oh, well, there's a government that grave robbed and stole uh, the ancestors out of these, out of these graves and like all their belongings and help them in a room to be studied and gawked over for a hundred years. And then their descendants want to, you know, would like to rebury their ancestors and the, the state's kind of like, uh, no we need to go through a process for that. It's like, are you kidding me? Really?
00:21:08
Speaker
But then when you add in the layers of, oh, well, there's the history of anthropology, archaeology, in California, there's Al Krober, there's an acro, there's Calnacra, there's all these other contextual layers. And then it's like, oh, well, actually, no, like that makes sense. There's a lot more, I think, unintentional justification.
00:21:32
Speaker
But it's still, like, at the end of the day, my my perspective is always, I am representing thieves. I'm representing red tape to the bare minimum of being able to bury ancestors, of being able to visit ancestors. I'm representing the the red tape of, but it's quite frankly, a facet of basic human decency. I'm representing gatekeeping.
00:22:08
Speaker
And so with that in mind, there was no way for me to ever go into a consultation, expecting to be on equal footing or, you know, I know they're, I've seen, I've seen some people go into several consultations wanting to be adversarial.
00:22:34
Speaker
from the start and expecting there to be tension, expecting there to be conflict and going in being ready for that. And so that created the tension that created the conflict. those There's already a lot of tension between tribes and anthropologists and archaeologists. And so that's another layer of humility that I think people in CRM in general need to understand is that there's There's history there and it's not good. It's, it's terrible. And just because, you know, one individual may, may feel like they're doing better or they're doing it differently or something like that. It's still the weight of your field behind you. yeah And so, yeah, for me, what I learned was when I got started was, was
00:23:34
Speaker
this is This is how tribes will see you. This is how tribal representatives will see you and put yourself in their shoes.
Communication and Language in Tribal Consultations
00:23:45
Speaker
Difficult to do, frankly. um You can kind of grasp concepts, but you can't really fully put yourself in their shoes. And it also really helped that my my manager is also or my manager when I first started,
00:24:05
Speaker
is native and she's California native and had that additional connection and perspective to you knowd be like, hey, so there are just ways that non-native people will say things and it's really not okay. these This is not how you ah you want to go about it. And hearing it from an outsider perspective, one would think it's completely appropriate to to say, you know, certain things, but having the native, you know, looking at it or being told, you know, by my manager, you know, this is how it's received. It's like, oh, well, okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Why you don't want to say that, why you don't want to do that. Yeah, unfortunately, it's it's a lot of learning as you go and being able to accept that you're
00:25:03
Speaker
you're going to make mistakes and if you get called out on it, it's because they want to better the relationship with you. it's It's not because they want you to feel you know inadequate or incompetent, but it's I'm telling you this because I have faith you'll be better.
00:25:24
Speaker
So is there an example of things that people said that they were saying totally innocently that were being received another way? Just trying to think of like examples. So again, for people that are that are listening that are going into this type of work, they they know not to do those. Yeah. the
00:25:52
Speaker
The big one that I think is unavoidable when you work in the government, state or federal is the title chief. o I know that's, I mean, that's, a you know, your your mileage may vary on how people respond to it, but but some of the feedback I did receive was like, hey, why is this white person's job title chief?
00:26:18
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Why, why is this job category thief? Like there was, there was one instance where I was in a consultation and somebody said that they were, they said that they were, they were pioneering a new approach to tribal consultation. And, and so it's, it's just one of those moments of like, Oh,
00:26:48
Speaker
but No, I don't. And so it's, it's it's common. it's It's phrases that are otherwise very common in office culture that I think people don't realize have kind of an anti indigenous history to them. but You know, pioneering spearheading on the lowest on the totem pole.
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah. I heard circle the wagons once and I was like, hi, excuse me. Yeah. yeah but So that's, that's a couple of examples. There's also, I think a harder one, one that was hard for me to learn was talking too quickly. Yeah. Because you, you generally want to speak it's, it's speaking slower allows for more comprehension time allows ah more time for the words to settle. And when I get really excited or really passionate about something, I tend to talk very, very, very fast. So that was, that was a hard one for me to learn. h
00:28:03
Speaker
It's also, I think, I don't want to say one of the more insidious ones, but it's it's also
00:28:13
Speaker
Telling them no, telling travel reps no in formal consultation can be really, really tricky because in certain cases, it could be seen as denial of their sovereignty, denial of their history. And so instead of a spot out refusal, it's, well, OK, you need to find a middle ground.
00:28:43
Speaker
you you know, okay, we can't do this, but I'll look into doing this, you know, stuff like that. So I want to, I think first of all, that those were some very helpful specifics for somebody that was new to this type of work. But I also want to get into what kind of work were you doing in general while you were in that position? I started out as just kind of a, but my position was NACRA analyst.
00:29:12
Speaker
which meant I did a lot more of like the kind of background administrative work. I was helping with research. I was scheduling the consultations, doing trouble outreach, kind of being the the first person. Trouble reps would talk to when they wanted to have NAGPRA consultations or do a visit. I drafted the NAGPRA notice of inventory completions, notice of inventory notice of intent to repatriate. So I would sit in and participate in travel consultations, but I started out doing a lot more of the kind of documentation and record keeping aspect of it. And then my, my manager left, uh, after about a year of me working there. And so I,
00:30:09
Speaker
She had been there see dinnerner before I got hired. yeah but Yeah. No, no, no, but I mean for you. Yeah. And so I i then had to take over leading the NACPA consultations and leading repatriations and coordinating with um other state agencies, with museums, with universities, and just kind of expanding everything I was doing to more or less overseeing the day-to-day operations of ah repatriation.
00:30:46
Speaker
it was it was a lot but it was I don't want to say it was it was fun because it's extremely stressful, um you know having to learn as you go, being thrown into the deep end. But in in a certain light, it was
00:31:05
Speaker
yeah i can't think of a better word than fun but fun is not the correct word. It was encouraging. yeah um I made a decent amount of mistakes. I won't pretend like i I didn't. I was new to this. I got you know handed a bunch of responsibility all at once, and I was still trying to just kind of figure out how natural works in the broader scheme of things when this happened.
00:31:37
Speaker
but At the same time, i as you know it was never brought to my attention that any of the tribal reps had a ah ah complaint about me. They never had any negative things to say about me. I you know i mean, if if there were, then it was, again, it was never brought to my attention, but it was it is very encouraging for me to you know realize after a while Okay, I feel like I'm just barely spreading water, but the tribes that I'm consulting with by and large seem at least ah amiable with how I'm doing things. So maybe I'm not entirely wrong in how I'm approaching this.
00:32:37
Speaker
So.
Impactful Moments with Tribes
00:32:40
Speaker
So is there something that happened in that position that you're most proud of or, or something that stands out to you from that work? I mean, I think looking at it solely from a metrics perspective, it would be, you know, what was the, in terms of volume, the largest repatriation.
00:33:05
Speaker
ihell with or you know, what was the most like emotionally impactful one, which you can't, you can't quantify. That's absurd. But for me, I think the most impactful moment from like, but again, for me was
00:33:41
Speaker
We had some tribal representatives doing a site tour of our holding facility, ah which ah being the California State Parks is a repository for all the California state museums across the state. And then there's a section specifically for the ancestor room, and then that's core thats completely separate. And then there's an area for belongings and so we had some travel representatives visiting and we were looking at some of the basketry and one of the representatives saw their family's design on one of the baskets which was
00:34:39
Speaker
heartbreaking. I still, it's um it's, it's hard to not, not cry when I think about it. But, you know, we we did, you know, kind of separated ourselves from the rest of the group, but I got to hear stories about their family and about how the other design came to be what it means, what it represents. And I got I was I was able to get that kind of the the more intimate context and the the history behind the basket. And that's every, every, every belonging has a story, every ancestor has a story. And being trusted enough with that
00:35:40
Speaker
information and being in a position where I'm allowed to learn about that was really, really special to me. The other thing about cyber consultations with NACRA is, you know, there's, you, you also need the perspective of you are asking somebody or multiple people
Transition to In Context and Tribal Liaison Role
00:36:12
Speaker
to sit down and openly delve into family and generational trauma. it's the The requirements for NACRA preclude people to be very open and frank about
00:36:40
Speaker
their trauma in revealing hurts and wounds that have not had a chance to heal. And there's a lot of ah respect on on the non-tribal end that needs to go into that, that there is an implicit level of trust necessitated in that. And but betraying that are not respecting that and not keeping that in mind. It has, has the potential to ruin everything. Yeah. That's wow. That's a powerful moment and so quite a spot to end this segment on, but yeah, I'm very excited to come back and hear about how all of this transitioned into the work that you're doing today. So,
00:37:38
Speaker
Let's talk about your current work with, in context. So what, what is your position there? So he said, uh, introduction. I'm the, I'm the tribal liaison and the, the manager of our project support team, which is kind of a weird, uh, weird way of saying that I, I managed the,
00:38:06
Speaker
the project managers.
00:38:10
Speaker
So we have but like we have the the field coordinators and field directors and then we have the more admin office end project coordinators, project support. And so I kind of just manage them while also being a project manager. It's fun. The way you said that does not convince me.
00:38:34
Speaker
wows Have fun. it's i um I mean, this part this far is not the record, but but like I got hired as the as was the communication director, and then Saoirse and I were were talking about it, and she was like, ah actually, you're really good at doing this. And so I kind of want you to do more of this. And I'm like, OK, but that kind of defeats the purpose of my and job title being communications director. just like you'll keep the parts of it that I don't want to do. hu so hes Which I guess is ah when you work for your mom, I guess you can't really say no to that. Yeah, there's that.
00:39:23
Speaker
but yeah so yeah that's that's That's off the record. Back to back to what we were saying. Yes. Okay. So there's the project support side of things. What about the tribal liaison side? So the trend liaison side, I haven't really had to build too much and into that since we got, since I started, I've only been working here since June of this year. So a lot of, a lot of our,
00:39:58
Speaker
work has been contract consultant work. And so the lead agency usually takes, usually it usually handles the tribal consultation. But so of what I've been doing mostly is reaching out to ah tribal representatives, to tribes to see if there's any way that we could help them either with capacity building or with like archaeological, like monitor training or, you know, there there are some tribes where ah a firm or, you know, a government agency will have a project and then ask if the tribe has
00:40:55
Speaker
a preference for who does the the survey or stuff like that. And just kind of building building connections and relationships with scribes,
00:41:08
Speaker
and because Scrisch has a lot of experience. Scrisch being my boss and the CEO of In Context um has a lot of experience working with tribes. And so I'm kind of just coming in and picking up that and moving forward with it. so kind of you know the The company wants to move in and in a direction that's, we're already pretty tribal oriented, but I think there's a want to work more directly with tribes and to be more accessible for tribes. We would like the company, one of the directions that the company moves
00:41:56
Speaker
board to be an advocate for tribes. I know that in California, there's some conflict, I think, between CRM firms, anthropologists, archaeologists, and tribes. And what I would like for the company is to work to bridge that gap and to sew through action and lead by example that this aggrandizing behavior absolutely does not need to exist and that it's actually very, very possible for the CRM world
00:42:54
Speaker
and the the the academic anthropology, the archaeologist world, like these worlds to work in tandem with tribes. That there doesn't need to be this antiquated separation of this is science and this is, you know, spiral perspective. It's, again, it's antiquated, it's, you know, anti-Indigenous from a certain lens, and it's ridiculous. So,
00:43:25
Speaker
I think I'm in a very specific position with my previous work experience to come into the CRM world and say, okay, well, hold on. Your approach is this and the trite and tribes are responding like this? Okay. How about we do this instead? I'm going to do it this way. And if tribes respond more positively,
00:43:56
Speaker
Then we move that direction, which Trish is 100% on board for. So obviously, I don't want you to throw anybody under the bus. Could you like either paint a picture of kind of what it looks like with the antagonistic side of things and what you're more hoping to move towards? like Either kind of a general picture or a specific example. You know you can obviously not do names, but
00:44:28
Speaker
I feel like it maybe is a different situation in California. So I'd be curious to hear more about like the current situation between CRM firms and tribes and like how you think it could be better, I guess.
Challenges with NAGPRA and Academic Critique
00:44:44
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, California is, there's a lot with California to to speak more broadly, federally, you know, one example would be the ACHP's recent comments about Stippo's-Tippo's tribal consultation, the the value of tribal elder, tribal traditional, tribal ecological knowledge. I mean, I can't speak a lot towards it because I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, but the,
00:45:25
Speaker
yeah, there's those recent changes to the ACHP that but very much devalue tribal knowledge,
00:45:36
Speaker
which kind of, you know, by saying this matters, this perspective matters less than, quote unquote, you know, truth that inherently creates, you know, a sense of superiority, some antagonism, stuff like that. In California, there's ah there's There's Cal NAGPRA, which is California's version of NAGPRA. And from that, ah the the recent ah hot button legislation is AB 389, which directs the California State University system to develop NAGPRA guidelines, NAGPRA policy, and then a policy on ah research
00:46:28
Speaker
and study, basically prohibiting using ancestors' belongings for the purposes of studying and research, unless with you know freely given prior informed consent by potentially affiliated tribes or known tribal, or not tribal descendants. Cut that if possible, please. um And the language is very it's It's still in draft language, but the. The language can easily be misinterpreted to, you know, to to go into hyperbole to effectively ban. A section of but anthropology departments from teaching but again, it's that's.
00:47:24
Speaker
it It takes a very specific reading of the draft to do that. um Looking at it as is, you know i I can very easily see how that is the conclusion some people have come to. Like I said during the the conference presentation though, I think that a lot more comes into play with how universities ah you know, because certain California state universities have announced that they are shutting down the anthropology department. And there are some people who are claiming that it is Al Nagpro's fault, that it is AB 389's fault, that this is happening. But to me, that ignores the larger context of, well, there's more taught in an anthropology department than just California native history.
00:48:21
Speaker
And you also need to look at funding, budget crises, things of that elk. Like there's, there's a lot more that comes into play with the decision to start down an entire academic department than one legislation, one piece of legislation was enacted. And also, I think speaking more broadly, there's always been some antagonism, I think from anthropologists, Ford, MacBook, specifically, you know, you have and famously the Kennewick man, and the all the lawsuits that came out of that. And, you know, everything that the Army Corps of Engineers to try and prevent repatriation. You have there, there are certain
00:49:17
Speaker
professors in different California universities who have come out to be very vocally against NAGPRA, against the concept of repatriation, others who have come out to say that the way things are going now basically removes all authority from CRM firms, the anthropologists, archaeologists, and that to quote ah what one person said about how I went about my job at state parks, bending over backwards to do anything and everything to get a pat on the hedge from tribes. How patronizing. Oh yeah, it was great. It was great to hear that. Even more great that um they never actually reached out to me to to talk about their issues. They just
00:50:18
Speaker
That could be cut.
00:50:23
Speaker
But yeah, so it's it's this false dichotomy of quote unquote real science and quote unquote, you know, religion or cultural beliefs or, you know, any any other such terminology that people use to inherently devalue tribal perspective and tribal knowledge.
00:50:49
Speaker
you know And it's wild to me that people still have this stance when it's like, okay, California is on fire 90% of the year. And tribes and tribal elders have been saying, well, if you want to stop the forest fires, you need to do this. They were ignored. And not that they're being listened to, the fires are a lot more manageable. Like, oh, hello.
00:51:15
Speaker
Maybe they do know what they're talking about. What? No. There's a thought. All the press. Wow. Yeah. Um, yeah for your rep, for your reference, uh, if you want to look into the stuff that that's, uh, Tim White with UC Berkeley and Elizabeth Weiss with San Jose state university, Elizabeth Weiss was the big, big court case. Got a lot of attention. Okay.
00:51:47
Speaker
Man, okay. Well, I wish, I wish we had more time to dive into some of this and, you know, touch back on some of the conversations that had, that were had at the ACRA conference about the, the new NAGPRA regulations.
Future of Tribal Relations and Cooperation
00:52:05
Speaker
But sadly, we are already we are hurty at our time, but I can't wait in the future sometime to have you back on when the Tribal Liaison Program at In Context is is even more developed and you know some of those conversations that you've been having with tribes have more come to fruition and ah we can have you back on as a ah model for other CRM firms. So hopefully you know here, the not too distant future, we'll have that episode. But thank you so much for for taking the time. At least you had a little bit more time to to prepare for this one than the accurate session.
00:52:55
Speaker
Yeah, again, it was it was so great meeting you in person and getting to chat today. And I hope that we get to chat more in the future. Yeah, thanks. It was great having you. Thank you so much for for reaching out. And I, yeah, I mean, for my own job security, I hope that but yes the the tribal whatever work we want to do here takes off, but also I would i would love to i would love to be that. i' love Yeah, I would absolutely love that.
00:53:25
Speaker
Awesome. It's a date. Fantastic.
00:53:33
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Heritage Voices podcast. You can find show notes at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com slash Heritage Voices. Please subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play Music Store. Also, please share with your friends or write us a review. Sharing and reviewing helps more people find the show and gets the perspectives of Heritage Voices amazing guests out there into the world. No, we just need more of that in anthropology and land management. If you have any more questions, comments, or show suggestions, please reach out to me at Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org. If you'd like to volunteer to be on the show as a guest or even a co-host, reach out to me as well, Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org. You can also follow more of what I'm doing on Facebook at Living Heritage Anthropology and the nonprofit Living Heritage Research Council, or on Twitter at LivingHeritageA. As always, huge thank you to Liable Enqua and Jason Nez for their collaboration on our incredible logo.
00:54:39
Speaker
The Archaeology Podcast Network is 10 years old this year. Our executive producer is Ashley Airy, our social media coordinator is Matilda Sebrecht, and our chief editor is Rachel Rodin. The Archaeology Podcast Network was co-founded by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in 2014 and is part of CulturoMedia and DigTech LLC. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.