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Native Cosmology with Johnney Valdez - Ep 116
658 Plays10 months ago
Today we interview, Johnny Valedez, an influential speaker and advocate for his native heritage. He hails from Colorado and is discussing the various issues he has dealt with in his work around the world. His ethnic ties are with the Ute and the Pueblo peoples of the high county and the American Southwest. He is very versed in the cosmology of the Native world. A fascinating interchange. You'll enjoy this.
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/rockart/116
Contact
- Dr. Alan Garfinkel [email protected] Dr. Alan Garfinkel’s Website Support Dr. Garfinkel on Patreon
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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.
00:00:21
Speaker
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 Guard, of which there are many, and diverse. 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 open to give me a call, 805-312-2261. We would welcome sponsorship or underwriting 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.
Johnny Valdez: Preserving Sacred Sites
00:01:38
Speaker
And we're going to have Johnny Valdez, who's a prestigious and high-ranking Native American affiliated with the Ute and Pueblo people in the American Southwest. And he's going to talk about his role and his history as biography and the kinds of work he's doing to preserve, protect,
00:01:56
Speaker
and introduce the general public to the sacred sites, the significant artifacts, and other elements of the special perspective on art and archaeology.
00:02:14
Speaker
out there in archaeology podcast land this is your host Dr. Alan Garfinkel for episode 116 of your rock art podcast and we're blessed and honored to have Johnny Valdez of the Paiute Shoshone nation a highly placed
00:02:32
Speaker
and sophisticated gentleman who's going to share insights and wisdom on the nature of his background and the perspective that Native people have on the heritage resources. Johnny, are you there? Yes, I am. So I know that you had said you'd like to kick us off with a bit of a blessing. Yes, let's do that. So I am Johnny Valdez. I am Moana Panakwesut. I am
00:03:01
Speaker
father of lightning. I have spent a great deal of time with the Ute tribes. My heritage is Southern Ute. I am also Pueblo on my mother's side, so a lot of rich history. And I would like to start us off with a little blessing I have
00:03:18
Speaker
I've heard so many of the podcasts, and they're wonderful. But one thing I've always hoped that people would do is give a blessing, not just to the things that we're going to address, but to all the people that are out there listening, too, that we started out in that way. And we start our blessings like this. Moana, grandfather, in a good way, we come together to speak about things that are so important to us.
00:03:45
Speaker
about lives and people who came long before we did, the great peacemakers and warriors of the past. They've touched our lives and we appreciate what they've done to bring us to where we are today. We also want to say good blessings to those that we've taught who will take it on to the future, who will take all the things that we've ever learned and improve them, help us to understand them,
00:04:14
Speaker
And we know they struggle, all of these young ones now, because they have a real difficult time. They're living in multiple cultures at one time, so grandfather in a good way helped them. And to all those people that are listening and all those people who hear this in years to come, I hope that you get to hear this in the best way that you can and realize that we are native people and we are still here.
00:04:39
Speaker
and that we have good love and we think good things of people that we don't even know. All of you are important to us too, because you're part of the world of the great spirit. And we appreciate all that you have to offer as well, as much to learn from each other. So thank you, grandfather, in a good way, the way.
00:04:59
Speaker
Oh, thank you. And that's all. Amen, Johnny. Thank you, creator. And thank you for the blessing of you being with us. And I humbly appreciate your reaching out to me because I know you have quite a distinctive background and a lot to share with our listeners. So why don't we kick it off, Johnny, with maybe a bit of a short bio telling people about your background and what your role is with the Native nations.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Family History and Cultural Contributions
00:05:29
Speaker
I am from what we call the cloud family. Wachuka is how you say it in Southern Ute. We are Ute OS Tekken, so it's a little bit different in Mountain Ute and Northern Ute and Paiute and Shoshone. But when I say Wachuka, people recognize that that means cloud.
00:05:50
Speaker
My family, my great-grandmother and great-grandfather, was two very interesting people that you've probably seen on television shows or movies. Pictures of this big, handsome black gentleman standing next to Native people is John Taylor. He was my great-grandfather. He was a warrior from the days of the Civil War. He fought for the 118th colored infantry of Ohio.
00:06:19
Speaker
And he moved into our area. He was a Buffalo soldier, eventually, in the 1860s and 70s. And eventually, he met up with my great-grandmother, Kitty Cloud, color Carmita. She was part Spanish and Ute, and just a wonderful woman, and was the chief's adoptive daughter.
00:06:43
Speaker
Her parents, Black Cloud and Pink Cloud, were very interesting people living in that era that we hear so much about between the 1830s and the 1870s. And their father, my great-great-great-grandfather, Cuegret, and his wife, Boet, they signed treaties with Mexico in 1848 and then again with the United States in 1849.
00:07:09
Speaker
So I have a pretty rich history in that background there. My great grandfather, John Taylor, was an interpreter for the Utes, helped them with a bunch of the water settlements and land settlement deals, and also with organizing the way that they operated with the government interactions between the tribes and the Indian agents of the time.
00:07:33
Speaker
And then his, their daughter, Kitty and John's daughter. The Terpy Taylor was my grandmother who was a wonderful woman. She was born in 1899, passed away in 1993 at 94 years old. And I got to know her very well. I was born in 67, so her and I got to spend quite a bit of time together. And she was a wonderful woman with all kinds of cultural history and just a beautiful understanding of many cultures
00:08:02
Speaker
She spoke Spanish and English and Ute and moved in and out of all of those cultures very easily and very fluidly. She was a cattle and sheep person and took care of a ranch that my father did most of the work for. And so she was on many committees for our tribe.
00:08:23
Speaker
and helped with enrollment and membership but she was also one of the very first council members of our female council members of our tribe so very interesting and powerful woman one of her sons so one of her younger sons was my father Sylvia Valdez he passed away just a few years ago we had him for 91
00:08:45
Speaker
years and 11 months. Incredible man. He was a 30 year chair of the committee of elders. He spent a lifetime working for the government. He grew up in in government schools and then he stayed there and and helped kids transition and he taught guitar and basketball and all kinds of sporting stuff. Baseball, incredible coach.
00:09:10
Speaker
And he was even more so a connected person to people. He spoke seven languages because of his time at the boarding schools. He could turn and speak to somebody in Pueblo, turn around, speak to somebody else in Ute, turn around, speak to someone in Navajo, and then talk to his friends in Hopi, and then return around and talk to me in English. So just amazing. So I come from a very rich history. I was a little kid that sat at all the fires and listened.
00:09:41
Speaker
sing songs and start to learn, you know, what it was to be a Ute. Even though I'm one-eighth and not an official tribal member, I'm a tribal person. I just had my descendants hunt and got my elk on Christmas Day. So that was good. And I took my three children, my son Jesse, my eldest son, then my younger son John.
00:10:06
Speaker
My daughter Elizabeth, they all came with me and helped harvest it and take care of the animal and do our blessings and prepare it to provide to all of our family and friends. And so, because of all those things, my dad said one day, hey John, you know, Chairman Matthew Box, he's the chair now and he's a young guy, he's about your age, and he asked me,
00:10:33
Speaker
He didn't ask you. He asked me if you would be the executive officer of the tribe. And he said, I told him you would do it. And he just looked at me. And I said, of course I will. Of course I'll help my friend. And of course I'll help my tribe. And so I spent a few years doing that job, which was really rewarding, difficult, but a beautiful job of trying to help people understand each other and
00:11:02
Speaker
work in and out of their history and the understanding of other cultures as well and try to bring people together. In many years, my chairman started working more with government, getting the governor of Colorado come down to our reservation. It hadn't been down in many years, so it was really nice to get all of that done and be part of that.
00:11:27
Speaker
What is the geography or the area of your ancestry in what parts and states?
Ancestry and Heritage Discussions
00:11:35
Speaker
Well, the three Yuc tribes, there's three of them. So it includes Colorado, about a quarter of northern New Mexico, all the way down to Abbequ. It includes about a third or almost a half of Utah, the eastern side of the state, and up into about a quarter of Wyoming.
00:11:57
Speaker
So about 40 million square miles. Huge. Yeah. How many native people still live on the reservation? Well, about 700 live on the reservation. There's about 1,450 or so. There's about that many that live on this reservation. On our sister tribe, the Mountain Utes, they have about 3,000. And the Northern Utes up in Utah have about 4,000 or 5,000, somewhere in there.
00:12:24
Speaker
And we are the people who dominated the central part of the Rocky Mountains. We are the mountain people. There's no doubt about it. And we worked a lot of treaties to have other tribes come in and use the land.
00:12:40
Speaker
and provide services back and forth to each other and do trades. And we treat it all the way out into California. That's kind of how I got in contact with you. Yeah. What's your current role, your responsibilities, title, or the activities that you're engaged in for the tribe?
00:12:59
Speaker
Well, right now, I just do contracting for the tribe, so we do all kinds of stuff. Anything from fixing roads and doing all those types of things. But I do a lot of work on the side of the tribe myself. Myself and my brother, we've done a lot of work around the world helping with sovereignty. We've become experts in sovereignty and trust and native finance. And we've helped tribes all over America.
00:13:27
Speaker
all over Canada in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. So yeah, it's been quite a trip. That's amazing. Yeah. And I've given speeches and discussion about the people in England and France, Italy.
00:13:45
Speaker
everywhere I've ever gone and through Central and South America. I know we were going to talk about perhaps some of the heritage values and the relationship you have with various cultural resources including archaeological sites and rock art and other sacred sites or places of great importance to your tribe.
00:14:08
Speaker
Right. You know, I've heard so many of the different podcasts, some of yours and others as well, but yours are very good because I like to listen to what's being said about the sites. When you talk about Little Lake, when you talk about Petroglyph Canyon and the different places that you've gone and the different people you've worked with, whether it's the Shoshone or the Kawaiasu or who you're talking to,
00:14:34
Speaker
not only the petroglyphs and the pictographs but the basketry and the pottery and etchings on hides and all the things that you go into and the detail that you provide reminds me that it's such an important discussion that we as natives have with each other in our trade work and in just our discussions in general.
00:14:58
Speaker
We had throughout history, our tribe and other tribes would have certain dances that were sacred just to us and only our people were invited to. But most every tribe had dances that were community dances, dances where you invited other neighbouring tribes. You might not be in conflict with the Apache or the Navajo, for example, and they would be invited to come to the bear dance. That's a very cultural dance.
00:15:25
Speaker
Chairman Matthew Box. He is the current and has been the Bear Dance Chief for many years and his grandfather was before him. Yeah, Johnny, good stop there. That's a good place to stop. And in the next segment, we can get into some of the greater details and the unique perspective Native people have on these treasured, sacred, and very significant resources. See you on the flip-flop, gang.
00:15:53
Speaker
Well, welcome back gang to the Rock Art Podcast. This is episode 116 with Johnny Valdez.
00:16:03
Speaker
a prestigious and incredible resource for the native nations, the Ute and the Pueblos in the Colorado and larger environs. Johnny, we were just getting into talking about some of the unique ways that we have to deal with cultural resources and the understanding the theology or the
00:16:27
Speaker
unique perspective of Native people, in contrast to the Western industrial Cartesian perspective. I know offline we had a lot of discussions on that. Yeah, absolutely. As I was saying at the end of the last segment, my friend and chairman, Matthew Boxes,
00:16:47
Speaker
was one of these guys who was just so incredibly into who he was as a Native person, for his culture, for the people around him, and bringing people together. And it's such an important part of all the things that you talk about on this podcast. And what's so interesting about it is we had a lot of difficulties.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, but let's talk about that. And those difficulties revolved around what particular subjects or issues? Well, one of the most difficult was around repatriation.
Challenges in Repatriation of Native Objects
00:17:19
Speaker
And repatriation, for those who really don't know what that is, is basically NAGPRA, this act that was put in place many years ago, that was just a situation where museums and private collectors and anyone who had found native objects or people
00:17:38
Speaker
that needed to be taken back to tribes could be done and there was a process and a procedure for doing that.
00:17:45
Speaker
But in that vein, there's a lot of people who won't give back these cultural people back to the places they belong. And you're talking about universities and colleges. Johnny, so these are both artifacts, their imagery, their ritual and ceremony and sacred objects. They're artifacts from an archaeological standpoint, but to a native standpoint, they are
00:18:16
Speaker
living beings with agency and aesthetics and power. Absolutely. And actual bones and skeletons as well, some that were quite literally persons in the sense that we as basic humans understand what a person is, but there's personage as you're pointing out in everything.
00:18:40
Speaker
in all of the items, the work that went into it has created that into something different. The use of a rock, the use of arrowheads, an arrow, a bow, a staff, but also basket tree and pottery. They're built by hand. They're a living object and they are repatriated back to Native nations. And the difficulty is that a lot of times
00:19:05
Speaker
states, state of Colorado, state of Nevada. These places have a difficult time letting go of those things. They're held in museums, they're in universities and colleges, they're in schools, they're in classrooms, they're in museums for people to come and look at.
00:19:22
Speaker
And in some ways, there are some things when they're done well that really make sense. And there's some where when you're a native person, you walk in, you just cringe. That's not honoring that person. That right there is a bone all made out of human bone. I mean, what are you doing? And it's really difficult because it mixes in all of these other things that
00:19:50
Speaker
that we as Natives have to be involved in, which is fighting for your sovereignty and the repatriation of your people and their sacred objects back into their land, into their homeland. And you see this happen quite a bit. So when you say sovereignty, help the listeners to understand what that means, what that implies.
00:20:12
Speaker
Yes, sovereignty, and of course with native people we're quasi-sovereign, I'll explain that. But sovereignty means that you basically are your own country. You do all of the rules, everything is done within your own reservation or your reserve.
00:20:31
Speaker
within your place your rules are what are followed your culture your spirituality is honored in that area and other groups outside of you say the state of colorado or the united states protects your sovereignty as a as the youth tribe for the southern indian tribe for example or or the um the akama pueblo and so
00:20:57
Speaker
The difficulty there is that sovereignty means that you get to take care of yourself, you're self-governing, and you do it all within your beliefs.
00:21:11
Speaker
But we are also imposed beliefs over the top of our beliefs by the United States government because all of these tribes in America are within the United States. So we have to follow those rules as well. So we are what is called quasi sovereign. We're sovereign within our own borders, but then
00:21:28
Speaker
we also have these other rules that we have to follow so it makes it confusing and difficult and because it's confusing and difficult sometimes other people will take advantage and say well I'm not going to provide it back to them because I don't really know if they know what they're doing I don't know whether they have a way to take these
00:21:47
Speaker
artifacts or cultural pieces or these persons back and rebury them or do something with them. We don't know how to handle that. And so over the past 20 years or so, it's gotten so much better. So many different universities and colleges are bringing back rock art and things that we'd never thought. And they're like, oh yeah, my grandfather
00:22:11
Speaker
I got this off the Colorado River near Grand Junction, you know, almost 100 years ago. There's a picture of him standing next to it in this place. And then they send it back to the tribe and say, could you please take this back? So we've had all kinds of repatriation issues. There was a wonderful lady who collected arrowheads. And the reason she collected these arrowheads, she was a school teacher, I don't know her name, but she was from Washington state.
00:22:37
Speaker
or her family was anyway but she came down and taught school you know probably a hundred miles away from here in Alamosa Colorado and then she went up into the mountains near Silverton Colorado in the in the 1920s and 30s and she would go on mining claims and pick up these big beautiful arrowheads spearheads some of your paleo I mean there are many many generations that spanned all kinds of
00:23:04
Speaker
of arrowheads. She just loved collecting them because she knew they were going to get destroyed in the mines because the mining people were just digging up all the gravel and crushing everything up. So this lady took it upon herself just to come out and kind of claim jump and steal these arrowheads off of other people's property so they wouldn't get destroyed. And she just had them hidden away and wrote nice little notes about them. And then her family sent them back to the tribe.
00:23:33
Speaker
So it was a really wonderful repatriation that happened. But there's difficult ones too. Someone's building a road somewhere and they just hide it under the road because they don't want to go through that process because it sometimes can be time consuming and archaeologists have to come and people like yourself. Doc, I know that you do some of this out in California. It is costly, yes.
00:23:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's costly and time consuming. And so these people don't want to do that. And I'm just like, you know, you have to. This was not your place. It was someone else's place. And unfortunately, we have to go and do this. And so the state of Colorado has done a very good job. I believe the US government has as well. There are some funds available for people.
00:24:20
Speaker
to repatriate things. You know, you kind of have to know the ins and outs of it and talk to somebody like me and get your point in the right direction. And then they can get some funding to get things back to where they belong and the long process that's involved. Now, how do you and your kindred folk think about rock art, about the paintings and the rock drawings
00:24:46
Speaker
that are in your area.
Significance of Rock Art
00:24:48
Speaker
What is your perspective, be it religious or sacred or however else, about archaeologists and the general public, et cetera? How do we best understand or appreciate how to contextualize those resources? How's that?
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I think what happens here is that people work and the different can, whether it's Ute or Navajo or Apache or any of the individuals, the Zuni, you know, you see all these beautiful art
00:25:21
Speaker
this beautiful artistry that comes from petroglyphs and pictographs all the way in the entire southwest. We certainly have a wide variety. Some of it's exactly as it is out in the coastal range that I've seen, and some of it is a little bit different. But what we do here is we put it into
00:25:43
Speaker
our storytelling, into our hunt stories, into our origin story. It's in the pottery. It's in the basketry. It's in dress. It's on hides. It's painted on your horse. It's in your staff or your arrowheads. It's
00:26:00
Speaker
it's copied, let's say, and to honor those who came before, even though something might be more effective, you know, a different type of arrowhead might be more effective in some certain use, use the most effective one that you can use, but you may have a ceremonial arrowhead that you copy off of a rock art, off of a petroglyph you've seen somewhere because it relates to your family or it's where your clan or your
00:26:30
Speaker
Bend. Lift.
00:26:32
Speaker
And when you go to that area, that is your sacred area. And you know where it is. It's hidden. It's usually someplace that's difficult to find. And that's very powerful. And it means so much to your family and your people when they see you with it, whether it's painted on as war paint on yourself, on your body, on your horse, on a hide representing the hunt. It's just a beautiful thing that it continues to live.
00:27:00
Speaker
through all of the art that we provide here as youths. So these pictures on the rocks are, as you put it, stories and also commemorations, memorials, two individuals, two episodes of history, and also they would have religious and ceremonial implications, yes?
00:27:27
Speaker
Yes, and I would say the most powerful thing about that is they are living stories, right? So they didn't tell the story just so it could be a one-time discussion and something to walk away from. It's living, so it's telling a story of how it happened, how it's going to happen,
00:27:47
Speaker
and what the future is of that story and so that it can be added on to. Many times if you look at petroglyph sites and I've seen you standing next to pictures of these sheep and one sheep is clearly older than the others,
00:28:04
Speaker
You can see that somebody added to that story. There were only this many sheep before, but now we have had an abundance and there is now this many sheep. And other places, you see where they've been picked off the rock because they're not there anymore.
00:28:20
Speaker
And that's really painful. And sometimes that's not damage done by outsiders or people who are causing a mess. Sometimes it's by the natives themselves saying, look, this is what happened. And this is how it has affected us. They're sacred drawings, very much like
00:28:39
Speaker
The discussion you had a month or so ago with the individuals from Australia, they're sacred drawings. It's hard to call them pictures or pictographs, but they are pictographs. They are petroglyphs, but those things are sacred drawings.
00:28:58
Speaker
And they're living, they're alive, and they have a spirituality. The stories are on the land. Absolutely, absolutely right. The land itself is alive. And so those stories, some creation stories and other episodes are there. And as you're saying that, in part, I guess they, I call it, what is it? Personal
00:29:27
Speaker
memorials. There are sometimes, you know, commemorations of individuals that have passed, kin and ancestors, and history. Am I correct? Absolutely right. You know, it's such a history. I think about my daughter who's this great artist. She's a great artist. And when she draws something compared to somebody else,
00:29:49
Speaker
It's as if the campfire is dancing behind her as she's making the drawing. She's in that place and she sees it in a good way. And that is what's powerful about these drawings, this artistry. Yeah. What would you like to tell our listeners that may run across archaeological sites and artifacts or see or want to see these native
00:30:18
Speaker
paintings or rock drawings. How would you want to communicate with them? What would you tell them? What I would say is to really enjoy them and see beyond what is just painted on there. Obviously you can take a picture but blur your eyes a little bit. Look at what they were seeing. Take that
00:30:38
Speaker
photograph and and pretend that you're dancing under a beautiful full moon with the firelight around and your best friends there and someone's telling the story and remember that you're part of the story even though you're you may not be native
00:30:59
Speaker
You're part of the story. You're part of humanity. You're part of history. You are alive as it is alive. And as you honor it and look at it, it's honoring you back with this story that's just uniquely yours. Natives are still here. We may have a completely different worldview
00:31:19
Speaker
But we're here. Yeah, you're still here. Well, we're going to have you back for the next episode, Johnny, and we'll give you the full hour. But on this one, we're going to call it quits at this point and pick it up on the next episode. Johnny, I really am honored to have you. Thank you. It was a great honor. Thank you. And at the next segment, we'll have a chance to reflect and collect and talk about some of the other things that I'm involved in. See you on the flip flop, gang.
00:31:50
Speaker
Welcome back to the Rock Art Podcast, everybody. Episode 116. I'm Chris Webster, and I'm usually the producer here, and sometimes I'm my co-host. And we just wanted to come in on a third segment on this show because, you know, it's not really a topic for an entire show, but a lot of people always wonder, you know, how do archaeologists actually make a living, right? What do they actually do? And Alan has got his hands in so many different things, like a lot of people do.
00:32:15
Speaker
there's never like any one thing, especially for somebody who's got such varied interests, right? So we just wanted to talk about what actually, what pays the bills over here? What does Alan do and what does he offer the world as far as being an archeologist and a consultant? So let's just go through the list, Alan. Well, I think I'm a little bit different from many other archeologists, but some are the same and some are different. My greatest strength
00:32:42
Speaker
has not been the fieldwork side of the exercise of archeology, but the writing and research and publishing aspects. So often my role is to take the data that's been acquired and then develop narrative surrounding it. Sometimes it's a scientific article, sometimes it's a book, and I'm also approached
00:33:11
Speaker
by individuals who are not archaeologists themselves, but would like to be perceived as professionals, as scholars, as having expertise in this subject or related subjects. So, for an example, I did a book with two individuals who were collectors of sorts in Native American
00:33:36
Speaker
Basketry, California, the prestigious, beautiful masterpiece, Basketry. It took 10 years to create the book. I was involved with it for four or five years, and I was the editor. It cost a quarter million dollars to produce the book, and I was paid $25,000 to be their editor.
00:33:59
Speaker
The reason that they needed me as an editor is they themselves did not have expertise in the anthropology, native theology, the linguistic prehistory, and the ethnic affiliations, and the symbolism of the basketry. So all of that I brought to the table and had to help them. Really, the purpose of the book became to honor
00:34:24
Speaker
and acknowledge these fabulous artisans who produced world-class objects which now are in museums or private collectors. What we did there was we had the photographs and the baskets, both historic photographs and contemporary photographs. I act as an editor often and also composing the research itself.
00:34:53
Speaker
I'm also approached by others who want to be perceived as professionals but don't have the credentials. And so they piggyback on my credentials.
00:35:05
Speaker
And then we approach various subjects that they have a passion for. I have a general contractor out of the Bay Area who came to me and wanted to write scientific articles to get some gravitas and prestige and recognition in the profession. He went overseas in Germany.
00:35:28
Speaker
and examined their California Indian material culture collections and came back with photographs and massive amounts of information.
00:35:39
Speaker
And we took that and turned it into an article that appeared in the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. And I was paid a tidy sum for that particular expertise. It usually takes about a year or two to really do a good scientific article and to do a book
00:35:58
Speaker
like the kinds of books I do, I would say a minimum of four years, two to four years to put a book together. On the other side, independent of the people that come to me for my expertise in publishing books and scientific articles, I do get retained on a contractual basis
00:36:19
Speaker
to do, as you call it, cultural resource management, environmental compliance, either in California for CEQA or in the federal realm for the National Historic Preservation Act and NEPA.
00:36:32
Speaker
We put rock guard sites and other sites on the National Register of Historic Places or evaluate them. And we then also develop conservation packages, interpretive packages. And we do this on contract for substantial amounts of money in the tens of thousands of dollars for particular projects where we
00:36:56
Speaker
provide the expertise to recognize these resources. Does that make any sense?
00:37:05
Speaker
Yeah, it does. And it's such a, I guess, wide area of expertise because you wouldn't say that most academics could do anything in CRM. They're just not qualified from a permitting and regulatory standpoint. They're qualified from an academic standpoint, but not from that standpoint.
Cultural Resource Management and Compliance
00:37:20
Speaker
And then, you know, on the other side of things, people who are in CRM aren't typically writing a lot of books and that sort of thing. So it's nice to have the
00:37:30
Speaker
I guess the varied skill set, and that's what this really requires. So I live in multiple worlds. I'm employed formally as an employee from several three different environmental firms. They also help me to get the contracts, but I also do work independently.
00:37:48
Speaker
as a consultant for my own sole proprietorship. And I have the nonprofit California Rock Art Foundation that has sort of as an umbrella for a number of these contracts that we then either document the sites and place them on the National Register or evaluate them for the potential for the National Register or figure out some way to better
00:38:13
Speaker
document and archive their imagery, state-of-the-art technology, and develop particular measures to protect them, called cultural resource management plans. I did that way back in the 1970s, when I became a temporary employee for the Bureau of Land Management
00:38:34
Speaker
and did my master's thesis for the National Register nominations of the Fossil Falls Little Lake area, and then also the Protection Plan and interpretive brochures that went along with that, and they implemented all of that for the management of that resource. Does that make any sense? Yeah, it does. That's really awesome. And now you have this platform as well to do that sort of public outreach.
00:39:00
Speaker
Yeah, is that something common to many of the people who have programs on the Archaeology Podcast Network or not?
00:39:09
Speaker
Honestly, I don't think I would say so. I mean, a lot of people, they're only like creative and I guess public outreach outlet is the podcast that they host, right? A lot of times, but we have some academics, some pure academics on the show that aren't in CRM and we have other people who are in CRM and that's what they do. And the podcast is their one like unifying thing, but I wouldn't say that they keep their toes in both worlds necessarily. The academic and the CRM or professional side of things as much as
00:39:38
Speaker
as much as you do or other people like that. So yeah, it's really interesting. And then you got the California Rock Rock Foundation, like you said. Right. And we have we have cultural tours and seminars and we twin them with field trips. So the other thing that I like to do is make myself available to lecture. And I've been a guest scholar to universities across the globe in Mexico and in India.
00:40:05
Speaker
to lecture and I'm compensated and they pay my travel costs and I go there for a couple of weeks and present and meet with both the academicians, the professors, but also the students. It's a tremendous honor and a privilege
00:40:24
Speaker
to sort of have that niche. I've also done the same thing for other organizations like the Utah Rock Art Research Association, or UC Santa Cruz also had me there as a guest scholar. So I guess there's kind of many different platforms that I pioneer. And then with you, Chris, we've done webinars on the podcast network, haven't we?
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And those past webinars can be found actually there. Some of the stuff can be found on the archaeology podcast network, YouTube page. So just look for that. But then also for members of the archaeology podcast network, our past videos and webinars and everything we've done have always been right there available for members. So, and Alan, I think some of the stuff's available on your YouTube page as well. Some of the things that we've done. So yeah.
00:41:15
Speaker
Yeah, we'll go ahead and wrap it up there and mention that look in the show notes for this, because Alan's email address and his website, dralag graphicalgold.com, are both linked on the show notes. They're actually linked everywhere in the show notes. If you're listening to any episode of the Rock Our Podcast, you can find that contact info and you're more than happy to respond to somebody and have a conversation with them. So anything else you want to wrap up with?
00:41:38
Speaker
I would invite anyone who has an interest in perhaps producing a scientific article or a book. We could explore it together and see if that would work. I recently got several phone calls and contacts with a woman who has a private land that she owns where they found an enormous cash
00:42:03
Speaker
of obsidian bifaces, projectile points, and other related numbering 600 individual objects that are smeared with red ochre. And she's been after me for years to write that up. So I'm finally beginning to correspond with her and work with her on that project. It'll take us a couple of years to put that one together.
00:42:28
Speaker
Nice. Awesome. Well, thanks for that. And for everybody else, we're going to have Johnny back on on the next episode. So stay tuned for that. He's got a lot more to say. And so I'm looking forward to that. And with that, we will see you next time. Take care. See you on the flip flop, gang.
Episode Credits
00:42:50
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.com forward slash rock art. Thanks for listening and thanks for sharing this podcast with your family and friends.
00:43:22
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his 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 chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.