That "Tribal Relationships" Conference at Harvard

A week or so ago, there was a posting on Facebook about an upcoming conference on building tribal relationships, to be held at Harvard University and involving TransCanada, the outfit that’s behind the Keystone XL Pipeline.  The posting noted that no tribes had been invited to the conference.
 

I reposted the item, saying it looked like business as usual.
 

Today I got an email from Lou Thompson, Manager of Tribal Relations for TransCanada.  He said:
 

I noticed on Facebook that you had some concerns about the Think Tank at Harvard. Having worked in Indian Country for 2 decades I can fully appreciate your concern and passion for native people. I am aware of some of your work and admire your contributions. As a point of clarification here is an excerpt from the letter that Harvard sent me:
 

In the case at hand, the upcoming Forum will bring together 25 selectively invited individuals representing the Harvard research team, federal policymakers, senior managers and decision makers from relevant sectors including finance, construction, land and property development, resource extraction, law, and policy. The May Forum will be followed this summer by a separate Forum for tribal leaders and policy makers, with the overall process leading to revision and release of the final White Paper as a useable source of practical approaches for all “sides of the table”.
 

So as you can see, cultural resources are certainly not the main focus of this forum. As you can also see, there will be a separate forum for tribal leaders. My invitation stems from the fact that they were searching for a company that has current substantial collaboration with tribes. For me this is an opportunity to learn how to better work in harmony with tribes not to present myself as a subject matter expert. I would enjoy meeting you sometime to discuss all of your efforts in working in Indian country. Please feel free to contact me should you ever have concerns about TransCanada’s approach to cultural resource identification and protection.
 

So, Lou, we’re to understand that Harvard cooked up this conference all on its own, and invited TransCanada?  That TransCanada had nothing to do with setting it up and organizing and funding it?  Just got an invite in the mail and said “Oh, that seems like a nice idea?”  Honestly, give me a break.

And what does it matter whether “cultural resources” are the session’s focus?  Do you think that’s all tribes are concerned about?  If so, your twenty years in Indian Country haven't taught you much.  Do you think it's all I'm concerned about?  That's more understandable, but it's jumping to a large conclusion that I find rather insulting.

That said, I’m not personally offended (though many tribes understandably are) by the idea of holding a conference on tribal relations without tribal participation.  When I’ve taught classes on tribal consultation I’ve often been most comfortable when tribes aren’t represented, because I can get down to brass tacks with the company and agency representatives.  I can acknowledge that what a tribe or tribal elder says may seem crazy to a white guy, that tribal governments aren’t necessarily paragons of virtue, and that even Indians can lie.  Having thus broken the ice – much harder to do with tribal people in the room – I can try to get a discussion going on the practical implications of treating a tribe like its members are nuts, ill-governed, or crooks, or conversely of choking down one’s suspicions and treating the tribe with respect.  I’ve found this to be a fruitful pedagogical strategy, and maybe that’s what Harvard and TransCanada are up to in this case.

Maybe.  But even giving them this benefit of the doubt, how naïve does the University or company have to be to think it makes sense to put on a confab like this at the very time the president is (ostensibly) pondering whether to let the pipeline go forward, when the EIS on the project is being held up as a classic example of crooked science and Obama administration hypocrisy, and when Idle No More and other groups are demonstrating at every opportunity?  And what kind of naïf are you to suggest that it’s OK because it’s not about “cultural resources” and because unspecified “tribal leaders and policy makers” will be invited in at some later date?  If I were considering an investment in TransCanada or sending a grandchild to Harvard (I’m considering neither), I would not be encouraged by this example of either entity’s political acumen.

You want to meet sometime, Lou?  Well, maybe our paths will cross, but I don’t plan to go out of my way to make them do so.

 

A Letter to the Secretary of the Interior from the Coalition for Cultural Justice

Over the last few months I’ve become involved with a group of academic and non-academic practitioners of historic preservation, planning, sociology and other fields, whose members are concerned about where historic preservation in the United States is going.  Calling itself the Coalition for Cultural Justice, on April 9 the group sent the following letter to the new Secretary of the Interior.

The Honorable Sally Jewell

Secretary of the Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20240

 Dear Secretary Jewell:

 

Congratulations on your confirmation as Secretary of the Interior.  We hope we can look to you for innovative and creative leadership in the coming years.

Among the less-known functions of your department is the leadership role Congress charged it with providing in historic preservation.   Under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA), the Secretary of the Interior sets standards for historic preservation throughout the country, oversees the State and Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, maintains the National Register of Historic Places, and is a member of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), advising the president, congress and federal agencies on ways to conserve the cultural heritage of the nation and its diverse communities. 

There is widespread support throughout the United States and across the political spectrum for historic preservation as part of a program of flexible, humane heritage conservation. What’s more, there is mounting evidence from public health and other fields that heritage conservation benefits communities, neighborhoods, Indian tribes, and citizens in general – if it is responsive to public needs and values.

But in recent decades, historic preservation has been bureaucratized to the point where it often seems to serve the needs of government officials and consultants more than those of citizens. Too much power has been concentrated in official bodies both within your department and on the state and local levels.  These officials tend to be preoccupied with bureaucratic survival, leading them to serve development and real estate interests with little accountability to ordinary citizens affected by their decisions.  Or they become rigid in their interpretation of technical guidelines and unyielding in their exercise of control, to the detriment of socially responsible planning and public engagement.

Meanwhile, preservation practice has come to be dominated by specialists trained in narrow professional fields, especially architectural history and archaeology. As a result, the systems and programs overseen by your department often focus on places and things valued by specialists, rather than those held dear by the public.  This has particularly unfortunate implications, both for environmental impact assessment (EIA) conducted under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and related state and local laws, and for historic preservation activities carried out under state and local laws. With regard to impact assessment, much time and money is spent analyzing impacts on places and things that meet professional criteria but may be of little importance to the public, while environments of true cultural value to citizens are ignored and destroyed.   

The fact that development project sponsors pay for and direct most EIA work biases the system against conservation and deeply compromises the integrity of historic preservation, environmental protection, and community planning. With regard to local historic preservation, the deference accorded to the National Register and the Secretary of the Interior’s standards by many local ordinances amplifies the impact of too-narrow judgments at the top: these reverberate down the preservation ladder, leading local commissions to be less responsive to local needs than they should be.

The department you now head, sadly, has failed to combat or redirect these tendencies.  DOI’s legal mandate can, and we think should, be interpreted as one of promoting broad, flexible heritage conservation with sensitivity to all affected communities and interests.  But in recent years the DOI has focused too narrowly on technical matters like documenting and registering historic buildings and archaeological sites, giving little consideration to heritage from a community perspective. 

Historic preservation has become a cul-de-sac, isolated from broad streams of thought and action in fields like environmental conservation, social work, public health, community planning, public history, and community arts, as well as from the most innovative thinking in academic disciplines like geography, anthropology, and sociology.  It has become a bureaucratic exercise pursued by government officials and profit-seeking specialist consultants, disconnected from communities and the cultural heritage they value.  This is not only wasteful of money, historic properties, intellectual capital and other resources; it is fundamentally unjust, depriving the nation’s communities of the ability to use federal law to preserve what they think is important to maintaining and revitalizing their cultural integrity..

As a group of academic and non-academic practitioners of historic preservation and related fields, we are deeply concerned about how historic preservation has drifted, and urge you to take action to give its practice new life and direction.  Specifically, we urge you to:

•  Take a hard look at the National Register of Historic Places, which has come to be dominated by narrow quasi-academic interests and the economic priorities of developers seeking investment tax credits, often at the expense of community values. Consider what can be done to reorient the National Register to serve as a useful tool in community planning and heritage management; if it cannot be such a tool, perhaps the time has come to devise a better one.

• More generally, re-think the role of the National Park Service (NPS) in the national historic preservation program.  Consider whether the external preservation functions of NPS should be reorganized and re-tasked to relate creatively and with understanding to the world outside the parks.

·         Re-think the emphasis NPS insists that State and Tribal Historic Preservation Officers and Certified Local Governments give to National Register nominations and technical oversight of compliance with regulatory requirements.  Seek to encourage attention to the genuine heritage concerns of citizens and communities.

·         Work with the ACHP, the Council on Environmental Quality, and the Environmental Protection Agency to rework the rules governing EIA, emphasizing true consultation with affected communities, tribes, property owners and other citizens and greater responsiveness to cultural heritage concerns; at the same time seek ways to counter the natural influence of development interests on the consulting firms they hire to conduct EIA work.  Encourage similar reforms by state governments.

·         Direct Interior agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Fish and Wildlife Service to build model programs of community-oriented, culturally sensitive EIA.

·         Encourage state, tribal, and local governments participating in the national historic preservation program to carry out projects linking the conservation of heritage – including but going beyond historic preservation – with community planning and social service agencies, so that heritage conservation serves as a component in building and maintaining strong communities.  Evaluate, document, and disseminate the results.

Almost fifty years ago, Congress enacted and President Lyndon Johnson signed the NHPA into law, with its finding that “the historical and cultural foundations of the Nation should be preserved as a living part of our community life and development in order to give a sense of orientation to the American people.”  DOI, together with the federal and state agencies assigned duties by the NHPA, have drifted very far from that worthy, community-oriented goal. 

We urge you to conduct a full review of the national historic preservation program with the aim of bringing it back to the intent of its founders, as that intent relates to the imperatives of the twenty-first century.  We would be pleased to do whatever we can to assist in such an enterprise.

I signed the letter, as did: 

Ned Kaufman, PhD, Professional Consultant in Heritage Conservation,   

Daniel Bluestone, Professor of Architectural History and Director, Historic Preservation Program,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville,

David Rotenstein, PhD, Historian and Historic Preservation Consultant,

Michael R. Allen, Director, Preservation Research Office, Washington University in St. Louis,

Michael Nixon, Cultural Resources Lawyer and Consultant,

Peter A. Primavera, Managing Partner, Peter Primavera Partners, President, National Landmarks Alliance, and Managing Partner, Garden State Legacy,

Danielle Del Sol, Managing Editor, Preservation in Print Magazine and Adjunct Lecturer, Tulane University,

and Tufts University graduate students Andrea Devining, Alix Fellman, Maurice Robb, Merik Ugdul, Annie McQuillan, Claire Nellisher, Osi Kaminer, Umayank Teotia, Shane McCabe, Frederick Wolf, Blayne O’Brien, Laura Casas Fortuno, Francine Morales, Umi-hsi Chao,

The letter has received no response, and it’s not clear what the Coalition will do next, but its membership rolls are open and I, at least, find it encouraging that people are thinking about and discussing such matters.

 

Historic Preservation in Cuba: a First Impression

In the late 1950s – probably like every other high school kid not immersed in sports and cars (I was into pothunting and chess), I dreamed of joining Fidel Castro’s cadres in Cuba’s Sierra Maestra. Had I only been a couple of years older, with better eyes, been a better shot, more able to roll my “r’s”…..

The aspiration was soon enough forgotten as I went off to the Navy and then to college, and as Cuba found itself with no choice but to align itself with the Soviet Union. But its memory echoed around in my head last week as I visited the island nation with my wife, daughter, and son on a Smithsonian Institution “People to People” tour. Such tours are among the several ways that U.S. citizens can now visit Cuba, despite our continued idiotic embargo (the Cubans call it el bloqueo – the blockade). Keeper of the National Register Carol Shull was on the same tour with her husband Joe; we carefully avoided philosophical discussions.

The tour – well organized, well directed, jam-packed and exhausting – wasn’t particularly focused on historic preservation, but naturally I paid special attention to the historic fabric of the places we visited – several parts of Havana, Matanzas, Cienfuego, Trinidad, the reforested 19th century coffee plantation at Las Terrazas. And came home with a range of impressions and puzzlements.

I don’t pretend to have become in any way expert – or even knowledgeable – in Cuban historic preservation, but such deficiencies have seldom prevented me from expounding on a subject, and the visit certainly provided lots of food for thought. So here are some first impressions.

What they say about Cuban historic architecture is true; the major cities at least are amazing mélanges of Neoclassical, Baroque, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Moderne, Moorish, and the well-named Eclectic styles. Lots and lots of elegant, handsome buildings, quite a few of them very well preserved, restored, or rehabilitated.

But the well-preserved or fixed-up buildings are mostly major government and ecclesiastical edifices, high-end house museums, places entered in the World Heritage list and getting help from UNESCO or ICOMOS, and/or hotels and restaurants attractive to tourists. And even many of these show the sad fruits of much-deferred maintenance. I saw several major rehab projects – facademized gut jobs, often – abandoned in mid-career, scaffolding festooned with vines. I failed to ask, but my guess is that these were underway in the early 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba, deprived of its major trading partner, descended into the profound economic crisis now referred to as the “Special Period.”

In the neighborhoods, the graceful little houses and streetscapes that reflect the lives and values of ordinary people are pretty uniformly rotting and weathering away.

So I found myself puzzling over what a country like Cuba could possibly do – if it wishes – to maintain its historic character, respect the traditional cultural values of its people and communities and neighborhoods as expressed in architecture, while staying true to its socialist principles. I reached no very useful conclusions.

Just “opening up” to its northern neighbor (casually referred to as “the Empire”) is surely not the answer. That way has to lie a return to the days of Batista and his cronies, or rather to their steroid-infused ideological descendents on Wall Street and K Street and Miami’s Calle Ocho. But that’s clearly what a lot of people expect and want to see happen. “Five years,” crowed our airport shuttle driver in Miami (himself a fairly recent immigrant), “and then it’ll be wide open; you’ll be able to do ANYTHING!”

Yes indeed, and we can imagine what that anything may look like, both in socioeconomic terms and in terms of the historic, cultural, and social fabric of neighborhoods.

So what devices might Cuba employ to preserve its character while improving the lives of its citizens and achieving some sort of détente with the Empire and the rest of the capitalist world? And are such devices anything that we elsewhere in the world ought to consider emulating? We were shown a couple of maybe-models.

Art in support of preservation

We visited an art studio in a private home. Mimes performed outside – to expose the neighborhood to culture, we were told, in which its residents must have been perceived to be deficient. Proceeds from the sale of the art in the studio go – in part, I assume – to preserving and “restoring” (stabilizing?) the picturesque ruins of an old slave-operated sugar mill out in the country.

The president of the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) lived in a vernacular wooden house across the street with a weathered, unpainted facade; its residents and those of neighboring homes watched both the mimes and the tourists with what appeared to be studied impassivity.

It struck me that the model of using art to support preservation had promise, but I wondered if – especially for consistency with socialist principles – it couldn’t be reoriented somewhat. If one wants to involve the neighborhood in the arts, why in the world use the proceeds of your sales to preserve some ruin out in the bush? Why not use them to help the people fix up their houses, which are just as much a part of Cuba’s cultural fabric as are collapsed sugar mills? Wouldn’t this be truer to the spirit of the Revolution, and build a better relationship with the community?

There probably aren’t enough artists or art buyers to have a huge impact on the deterioration of Cuba’s unique architecture and neighborhoods, but it could make a modest contribution. And the model is doubtless exportable; I found myself imagining something similar being done in a pueblo in the U.S. Southwest, with pottery and weavings substituting for studio art. I don't know about the mimes.

Microbrigades

Our very accomplished guide, Amircal Salermo Llanes1 (who thoughtfully goes by “Cal” among yanquis) told us about the “microbrigades” that in the 1970s built a good many of the apartment blocks around Havana and elsewhere. In essence, those who were going to live in them built the structures, using standardized plans and with supervision by a core of trained builders.

The structures are pretty ugly, though Amircal, who grew up in one, says he loved it and its community of residents. They not surprisingly reminded me of the brutalist slab-like structures you see all around Beijing, and that I understand are common in Moscow and other cities that fell under the humorless sway of the USSR after World War II. But the notion of investing sweat equity in building one’s own place is a widely attractive one, that a lot of governments (one thinks of Israel) have used to good effect.

In the midst of one group of Microbrigade apartment blocks there was a massive old building – I don’t know what it had been, but it was a handsome neoclassical masonry pile, about the size of the apartment buildings – standing vacant, windows and doors blown out. “Sadly,” Cal said, “there’s no use for it.”

“Huh?” I thought. Why couldn’t it be – have been – rehabbed as an apartment building along with all the new (sic) construction? Of course, I don’t know the particulars, but suspect that it didn’t fit into the Microbrigade program because it wasn’t amenable to (re)construction following cookie-cutter plans. But surely it could be rehabbed, and there’s no intrinsic reason why a Microbrigade couldn’t do it. Is that a model worth considering? Put people to work rehabilitating usable old buildings under modest professional supervision? Would such a model make sense in the U.S., too? A sort of neighborhood-scale urban homesteading program? One couldn’t expect rigorous attention to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation or their Cuban equivalent, but it would surely be better to get people comfortably housed and retain good old buildings than to be sticklers for principles that, on the whole, are most meaningful to preservation specialists.

The Old Havana section of downtown Havana has been, on the whole, handsomely maintained and/or restored, as has the Plaza Major of Trinidad, with a good deal of help from UNESCO. All well and good, but I have to wonder whether there’s a tendency toward all or nothing – either preserve/restore fully or ignore. It’s an easy tendency to adopt. One of our fellow Yanqui tour participants engaged me in conversation and brought up the Old Post Office in Washington DC – as an example of poor preservation because it’s been converted to federal offices! Never mind what Donald Trump’s going to do to it, but my oh my, have we so badly failed to alert the public to the acceptability and practicality of adaptive use?

I continue to ponder lessons learned, or at least glimpsed, in my brief introduction to Cuba, and certainly have no answers. I just hope that someone is thinking creatively about its remarkable urban fabric, and how to preserve and make good use of it as the doubtless inevitable opening up proceeds.
----------------------

1. amiricalsalermo@gmail.com; HIGHLY recommended to anyone seeking a guide or translator in Cuba.

Of Aimless APEs and Pedestrian Profiteers

I am just back from a conference of the National and California State Associations of Environmental Professionals (NAEP/AEP) in Los Angeles. I believe it will be my last professional conference. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the major one is that I just find the things too bloody depressing.


I was there at the invitation of Kurt Dongoske, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO) for the Pueblo of Zuni, to take part with him and Theresa Pasqual, Acoma HPO Director, in a session on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and tribal concerns. That session didn’t depress me; I thought it went pretty well, and was well enough received by the 30 or so people who attended.


But beforehand I wandered the display area, where environmental consulting firms display their wares. The exhibits pretty uniformly advertised work under NEPA and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and almost every one touted their “NEPA/CEQA Documentation.” Documentation. Not analysis, not conflict resolution, certainly not consultation or creatively addressing public concerns. Only one ad I saw even alluded to “compliance.” Nope, crank out those documents, that’s what we do. That’s why you pay us the big bucks.


That, however, was not the most depressing aspect of the conference. That distinction was reserved for a session on “Cultural Resources in Large-Scale Linear Projects.”


I should’ve known better than to attend. I should’ve gone to something on wetland delineation or air quality.

One of the papers was about evaluating historic highways, and it just struck me as silly. Lots of stuff about historic contexts and what gives an old road integrity in the eyes of – well, somebody; exactly who was never specified, but it seldom if ever is. Another was about an interagency effort to “streamline” (God, I am sick of the Cult of the Streamlined) review of projects to refurbish existing railroad facilities. This struck me as a lot of strained labor to give birth to gnats, but it did offer a few modestly clever ways to reduce time wasted on pointless paperwork. And since the poor devil had all the usual dead weights to contend with – Advisory Council, National Trust, State Historic Preservation Officers – glacial progress was the best one could hope for.

But then there was the one on archaeological surveys of linear projects like pipelines and transmission corridors, in which we were told that:


1. The area of potential effects (APE) of a linear project is the area subject to ground disturbance; and

2. “Cultural resources” are identified in these APES through the conduct of “pedestrian surveys” – i.e. archaeologists walking the ground – sometimes augmented by shovel testing (digging holes).


Why was hearing this so depressing? Well….

First, when my colleagues and I came up with the idea of APEs, during the mid-1980s rework of the Section 106 regulations, I feared that the deadhead archaeologists who even then were coming to dominate practice under the law would interpret it as meaning “duh, where you’re gonna disturb th’ artifacts.” So we tried to make it pretty clear, in the regs and in various pieces of guidance, that the term means just what it says. The area of potential effects is the area (or areas) where a project may have effects on historic properties. Physical effects, sure, but also visual effects, auditory effects, olfactory effects, socioeconomic effects – effects of any kind. The reason we define APEs is – I thought, back then – so we’ll think through what effects are likely, make projections, and try to examine the potentially affected environment in a thoughtful way. It was clear from the presentation in L.A. that this simple, obvious notion – the only one that relates plausibly to the purposes of laws like NEPA and the National Historic Preservation Act – has been entirely lost on the mindless automatons that pass today for “cultural resource consultants.”


Second, while pedestrian survey is one way to identify archaeological sites (though not the only way; see below), it is at best a very poor way to identify quite a wide range of other types of historic property – notably cultural landscapes and traditional cultural properties. It is even worse as a means of identifying “cultural resources,” which by any sensible definition may include culturally valued animals, vegetables, and minerals, water, viewsheds, atmospheric phenomena, and such wholly intangible things as language, songs, and stories. Sure, some of these “resource” types may not be much prone to effect by pipelines or power lines, but some of them very likely are, and they’re supposed to be considered under NEPA. And an archaeologist strolling along digging holes isn’t going to find them.


How do you find them? First by defining your APE broadly enough to allow them to be sought – for example, by including areas from which your transmission line will be visible, or your pumping plant will be audible. Second, by recognizing that some “resources” – like water, and songs – may not have very point-specific geographic references but still may be affected by changes in the landscape. At least from the perspectives of some people, some citizens – for whom, after all, Congress made laws like NEPA and Section 106.


And third, by talking with people! The tribes, the ranchers, the artifact collectors, the hunters, the local archaeological and historical societies, the residents. Asking them what they think of a pipeline or a row of transmission towers running through their viewshed, or along their country road, or across their swimming stream or through their forest. Asking them what, if anything, they know or think about the area’s historic resources, and what, if anything, they value in the affected environment. Asking people about their concerns, and about what constitute “resources” in their eyes, is a fundamental part of Section 106 review, and good practice under NEPA.


So I asked a couple of questions.

1. Did the presenter have some regulatory or other basis for his definition of APE (since it certainly didn't have anything to do with NEPA or Section 106)? Well, he responded, it wasn’t for him, the consultant, to question the responsible agency. Odd, somehow I thought the business of expert professional consultants was to apply their expertise to the formulation of advice to their clients. Counsel, as it were. Somehow I’ve allowed myself to be misled into thinking that a consultant ought to know the regulations he’s being paid to help implement, and act as his or her client’s expert advisor. Silly me.


2. Had he talked with anybody? He smiled a bit lopsidedly and said that while federal agencies were usually OK with his talking to the public, private clients generally weren’t; his team’s job was to walk their routes and dig their holes in secret. Thus defeating the public purposes of the laws, and depriving themselves and their clients of the data they would need in order actually to comply with those laws, but oh well.


I know, sadly, that there’s nothing new or unusual in what I’ve just reported. Surveys by pedestrian archaeologists in narrowly defined APEs are standard practice, widely if stupidly thought to satisfy the regulatory requirement for a “reasonable and good faith effort” to identify historic properties (never mind “cultural resources”). And this, I suppose, is the more personal reason the NAEP/AEP session left me so discouraged. Because since 1998 I’ve published some six books and who knows how many journal articles, government guidelines, and internet postings about Section 106 review, many if not most of which explore what an APE ought to be, and what constitutes a reasonable and good faith identification effort, and almost all of which rail on and on about the importance of consultation. And here we are in 2013, with well-dressed consulting archaeologists explaining to NEPA consultants that the law’s really satisfied through the conduct of secret surveys by pedestrian archaeologists in narrow little corridors. Books? Papers? Guidelines? Who reads any of that stuff? We consultants know what the law really requires – it really requires whatever it is that we’re comfortable doing, that makes us a lot of money, and that facilitates our clients’ projects. Ours is not to question what our clients tell us to do, or to advise them about how best to comply with the laws – or even to know what the laws require. Ours is to receive our orders, walk our APEs, dig our holes, keep secrets, and collect money.

What a fine industry we’ve created.

Roll On, International Rivers!

I’m really glad to see the latest issue of World Rivers Review devoted largely to what’s wrong with Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).  See:

http://www.internationalrivers.org/world-rivers-review/world-rivers-review-%E2%80%93-march-2013-focus-on-environmental-impact-assessments,

http://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/wrr-commentary-from-the-technical-to-the-fundamental-7881

http://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/why-environmental-impact-assessments-fail-to-protect-rivers-7885, and

http://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/talking-to-the-experts-can-we-improve-the-esia-process-7886

A lot of what the Review – the newsletter of the international NGO International Rivers – discusses in an international and mostly dam/reservoir context is much like what I’ve railed about domestically but with reference to all kinds of projects for the last several years, particularly in Unprotected Heritage (Left Coast Press 2009):


• Highly technical analyses that dodge the big issues;

• Impermeability to the public;

• Failure to consider broad community/cultural concerns (in the US, substituting a narrow focus on compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act);

• EIA performed by servants of development interests, who can be fired if they don’t whitewash a project’s impacts;

• And more.

I hope International Rivers keeps up the campaign, and that more groups joint suit.

Friends in the upper echelons of the mainstream EIA community express fear of acknowledging the problems with EIA, thinking that if we do we may “lose it all.” I don’t buy it. We’ll lose it all if we let the system continue to erode. 

Smart reforms – that create an honest EIA regime that’s simpler and more accountable than the present one – ARE possible if we put our minds to it, and might even find broad political support if carefully designed.

Bulletin 38 vs. Brief 36

A few days ago, I spent the afternoon on a phone/internet connection waiting to testify in a case before the California Energy Commission (CEC). The project in question, the Hidden Hills Solar Solar Electric Project – just across the state line from Pahrump, Nevada – will if approved plant solar collectors in a valley that is reported (by Paiute people and ethnographers) to lie athwart the Paiute Salt Song Trail corridor. It’s also a landscape that’s valued for other spiritual/cultural reasons by the Pahrump Paiute and others. And it’s in the viewshed of the Old Spanish Trail/Mormon Road, a prehistoric/historic travel route associated with, among other things, the enslavement of Paiute by early white settlers, and that’s the subject of a management plan being developed by the National Park Service (NPS).


Obligatory caveat here: I have no beef with solar power, and in fact support it, but I don’t think solar (or wind, or other “green”) projects ought to be put in without honestly considering their environmental impacts, including their sociocultural impacts. Or without considering alternatives that may have smaller impacts. And if in the end it’s necessary in the public interest to screw up a tribe’s (or anyone else’s) culturally valued landscapes, the government ought to be honest enough to acknowledge that this is what it’s doing, rather than determining on esoteric administrative grounds that the landscape isn’t truly important to the people, or that the impacts of the project aren’t really serious (c.f. pee-snow on the San Francisco Peaks).

I (as disembodied telephone voice) was on a “cultural resources” panel with tribal representatives and two professional experts – Tom Gates representing the CEC staff and Lynne Sebastian speaking for the applicant. I can hardly recall a discussion that’s left me more profoundly depressed than did the exchange of views between my two colleagues.

Lynne did her usual shtick – shucks, folks, it’s too bad, but however sincerely these poor benighted tribal people might believe in their cultural landscape, it just doesn’t meet the rigorous standards of the National Park Service, so it’s not a National Register-eligible traditional cultural property (TCP). She went into considerable detail, citing National Register Bulletin (NRB) 15 as the “bible” on which she relied, with occasional out-of-context quotes from NRB 38 – the Register’s guideline on TCPs, drafted back in the 1980s by Pat Parker and me.

And Tom did something I’ve heard him do before and have yet to understand – saying that in essence he didn’t want to talk about the landscape as a TCP but as an “ethnographic landscape,” per NPS Preservation Brief 36. He went into considerable detail about how this qualified the landscape as an “area” as opposed to a “place” under standards he said had been promulgated for evaluating things for the California Register of Historic Resources (CRHR).

Confused yet? I would have been if I hadn’t seen this tired ground tilled altogether too often before. I felt pretty sure that the eyes of the Commissioners receiving the testimony were rolling back in their heads, so when it came to be my turn to talk, I just said how disappointing and depressing it was to hear such a lot of meaningless nitpickery masquerading as expert testimony on cultural resource management.

I said I did not believe that Congress enacted the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in order to provide opportunities for quasi-academic specialists to engage in pedantic debates about words use in technical publications. NHPA was enacted, I think, to ensure within reason that government would respect the cultural values citizens ascribe to their surroundings. In the 1980s, seeing such values becoming subordinated to the narrow interests of archaeologists and architectural historians, Pat Parker and I proposed, and with the support of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) and ultimately NPS, wrote what became NRB 38. A few years later, another arm of the NPS cultural resource program (an organism with many arms but no brain) issued Preservation Brief 36 about the care and feeding of cultural landscapes. Unsurprisingly, nobody in NPS tried to coordinate anything about the two publications, which created a fruitful field in which to grow pickable nits and splittable hairs. So now we are back again to a situation in which specialists can expend their often well-remunerated time expounding on technical irrelevancies, while the public and its representatives nod off or grope for understanding.

So what’s the relationship between Bulletin 38 and Brief 36? They describe overlapping types of historic property. Some TCPs are cultural landscapes; some aren’t. Some cultural landscapes are TCPs; others aren’t. This shouldn’t require dissertation research to sort out.

There’s some good stuff in Brief 36 that we didn’t think to cover in Bulletin 38 – notably the acknowledgement that plants and animals, both wild and domesticated, can contribute to the significance of a place. If one is evaluating a landscape that’s likely to have traditional cultural significance, it’s wise to derive guidance from both publications.

There seems to be some perception that TCPs are smaller than cultural landscapes, but there’s nothing in either Bulletin 38 or Brief 36 that says that. Since some of the examples discussed in Bulletin 38 are pretty expansive chunks of land (e.g. mountains), one might think it obvious that a landscape can be a TCP, and vice versa. If it’s not obvious, let me clarify: there is no specified size limit for a TCP, and there is nothing to keep a landscape from having traditional cultural significance.

I told the CEC, in essence, that they ought to ignore the nitpicking and recognize the obvious fact that in the Hidden Hills landscape they had a place of great expressed cultural significant to Paiute people and others. This is what they should factor into their decision making about whether to allow the solar project to be built. Whether it’s called a place, an area, a property, a district, a landscape, a TCP or a pink rabbit is beside the point. Tribal representatives then took the floor and spoke eloquently about the area’s significance and the impacts of the proposed project. Whether any of this resonated with the Commissioners remains to be seen.

Gang Green

People concerned about the impacts of wind and solar energy projects on the environment have, I understand, coined a term for the cabal of developers, Big Enviro organizations, and Obama administration lackeys pushing industrial solar and wind energy development on our public lands, offshore, and elsewhere:

“Gang Green.”

I realize that the term also refers to a 1980s hard rock group and to fans of the New York Jets, but it seems especially appropriate when applied to the self-interested sunny-windy enterprises busy industrializing some of the nation’s most pristine environments. Especially, perhaps, to the president and his erstwhile Secretary of the Interior, who mouth platitudes about respect for Indian tribes and then pretend that they’ve addressed tribal concerns through sham "consultation" and by “avoiding” archaeological sites. Not a bad name, either, for the environmental impact assessment and cultural resource management companies that enrich themselves by abetting this enterprise, or for the major environmental organizations that buy into the game with never a peep of protest, suppressing the objections of their own members.

Gangrene, Wikipedia tells us, is “a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies.” Not a bad metaphor for what’s being perpetrated on the California desert and other places thought ripe for wind and solar development.

Maybe it’s necessary; maybe it’s the only way to get out from under our dependence on fossil fuels. The trouble is, we don’t know that. We haven’t tried, or even seriously considered, such seemingly simpler, less destructive, less expensive alternatives as:

• Subsidized (or not) large-scale deployment of high capacity solar arrays on the flat roofs of warehouses, industrial facilities, and parking structures;

• Placement of such arrays over canals, as is being done in India, thus gaining extra bangs for the buck by cutting down on evaporation;

• Shading parking lots with solar arrays, again multiplying advantages by gaining relief for people parking there from the sun and weather;

• Construction of wind and solar facilities in highway medians;

There are probably lots of other possibilities. But despite the seeming requirements of law and regulations, agencies like the Bureau of Land Management stonily refuse to consider such alternatives when they pretend to analyze the impacts of wind and solar projects on public lands.  As far as I know they’re not being considered elsewhere, either – except perhaps in other countries that still have functional, semi-honest, and intellectually viable environmental impact assessment systems. Ours has become a joke, perpetuated as usual on us.

Endorsements

I really appreciate all the endorsements people have been giving me on "LinkedIn," but I gotta say:

(a) Despite a couple of endorsements on the subject, I hardly even know how to spell "GIS." Unless the acronym means Gobbledigook In Spades, in which case, yeah, I'll claim some expertise;

(b) On the other hand, doesn't anyone want to endorse me for "writing?"  Should this tell me something?

The Perils of Pahrump

Introduction

The California Energy Commission is considering a new solar energy project in southeastern California, extending across the state line near Pahrump, Nevada.  A local citizen concerned about the project's cultural impacts, Cindy MacDonald, asked me to review pertinent documents and write up some comments for her to pass on to the Commission.  Because the case seems to be another one in which a "green" energy company and its cultural resource management consultants are making a mockery of good faith impact assessment, with Ms. MacDonald's permission I thought I'd share my comments.  Here they are.

Review of cultural, historic, and visual resource assessments,

Hidden Hills Solar Electric Generating System

Thomas F. King

February 4, 2013

At the request of Ms. Cindy MacDonald, I have examined the "cultural resources" and "visual resources" sections of the Final Staff Assessment (FSA) prepared for the California Energy Commission (Commission). I have also examined the testimony of the Commission’s applicant on the same subject.

My qualifications for offering comments on these documents are outlined in the attached resume. In summary, I have worked within and outside government in the fields of cultural resource management (CRM) and environmental impact assessment (EIA) since the 1960s, authored ten books and a large number of professional articles and government guidelines relating to these subjects, and hold a PhD in anthropology with an emphasis on archaeology and experience in the California desert. I have no financial or other interests in the proposed Hidden Hills Solar Electric Generating System or its proposed siting. To the best of my knowledge, all facts contained in this memorandum, and all references to and citations of documents) are true and correct. The opinions offered are my own.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should also say that I am professionally acquainted with both the Commission's ethnographer, Dr. Thomas Gates, and the applicant's ethnographic consultant, Dr. Lynne Sebastian. I have long been impressed with Dr. Gates' abilities and integrity, and have been sadly disillusioned in recent years with Dr. Sebastian's.

Comments on the FSA

There are a number of things in the FSA with which I could quibble, but I generally find it to be quite a thoughtful document, and about as thorough as can be expected given the limited data with which the staff apparently had to work.

Like many documents of its kind, the FSA sometimes confuses and conflates terms like "cultural resource," "historic resource," and "archaeological site;" this tends to muddy its analysis and raise what may be unnecessary questions. It seems apparent from the ethnographic element of the FSA, for instance, that water is an important cultural resource for Indian tribes of the area, but by defining "cultural resource" as "tangible or observable evidence of past human activity” (p. 4.3-3, underscore added) the FSA seems to exclude water from consideration. "Historic (or "historical") resource" and more especially "archaeological resource" have statutory and regulatory definitions that rightly or wrongly suggest association with human activity. “Cultural resource" is not defined in law, and by conflating the term with those that do have explicit legal definitions, the FSA risks leading the Commission into ignoring serious impacts like those on the cultural value of water.

I also cannot tell why the staff has defined the Pahrump Metapatch Mesquite Woodland-Coppice Dune Landscape as "archaeological,” while characterizing and describing it largely with reference to ethnographic, geomorphological and hydrological variables. Nor do I understand -- given the unavoidable presumption that the "archaeological resources" of the area were the creations of Paiute ancestors -- why the staff does not seem to have felt it necessary to consult the tribes of the area when evaluating these resources. The tribes were very responsibly consulted in preparation of the "ethnographic" sections of the FSA, but seemingly not in addressing the “archaeology.” This seems strange and rather arbitrary, and may give the Commission a false impression of the area's cultural, historical, and archaeological significance. A more holistic approach might have been more fruitful.

Still, on the whole the "cultural resources" section of the FSA appears to me to be a responsible analysis that reaches respectable conclusions.

The "visual resources" section also appears to me to reflect responsible analysis, but I am puzzled by its rather abstract character. Visual impact analyses in which I have been involved in the past have recognized the seemingly obvious fact that visual impacts invariably involve the operation of eyes and brains. As a result, they have involved actual viewers of actual scenes -- asking people who regularly apply their eyes and brains to a viewshed to say what they value about it, and to react to mock-ups of proposed new constructions within the viewshed. The FSA gives the reader little idea of who regularly looks down onto or across the land where the project is proposed, and what they value (if anything) about the view. I wonder particularly about Native American spiritual practitioners and others who may use the area for religious or inspirational purposes -- do such people exist, and if they do, what burdens might the project place on their practice of religion? Similarly, I wonder who, if anyone, walks, rides or drives the route of the Old Spanish Trail to seek history-based inspiration, and what their impressions of the project's impacts may be. Again, this is not to say that the FSA is irresponsible or poorly constructed in its treatment of visual impacts -- only that it is rather bloodless and abstract, losing track of the viewers in its analysis of views.

Finally with reference to both sections, while I recognize that the Commission’s purview is limited to California, I understand that the project will involve activities in Nevada as well, which will have to be reviewed by federal agencies under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). I wonder how the Commission’s review will be coordinated with these reviews – particularly with the consultation-based review required under Section 106 of NHPA. The potential for costly and time-consuming complications appears to me to be high if provision is not made for coordination, and for ensuring that all studies carried out for EIA purposes are responsive to both state and federal guidelines. I raise this issue because of my concern about the lack of documented consultation with stakeholders – a core part of NHPA Section 106 review – in the FSA’s discussion of “archaeological resources” and of visual impacts.

Comments on the Applicant’s Testimony

The applicant's "cultural resources" analysis contrasts dramatically with the FSA's, and predictably enough seeks to deny any serious cultural value to the areas affected by the project.

This process of denial begins by not seeking anything but prehistoric and historic archaeological resources. As far as I can tell, the applicant's effort to identify impacts on "cultural resources" has amounted to reviewing readily available background documents and sending out archaeologists to perform "pedestrian" (i.e. walking) survey of the land surface, followed by excavation of some trenches to characterize subsurface conditions. Notably, despite a few unsubstantiated assertions to the contrary, I see no evidence that the applicant consulted any of the tribes in the area, or any of the people who may be interested in places like the Old Spanish Trail. The applicant's evaluation of the area's "cultural resources" is in fact an evaluation only of how significant the area's archaeological sites appear to be to archaeologists employed by the applicant.

Discussing the FSA’s conclusions, the applicant first asserts (on page 6) that the FSA simply lacks the "substantial evidence” necessary to form the basis for judging places like the Pahrump Metapatch to be eligible for the California Register of Historic Resources (CRHR). That may be true, but if it is, then surely someone needs to develop such information, and until it is developed, the Commission lacks a complete record upon which to base its decision about the project. I agree with the applicant that it is inappropriate to propose developing such information as mitigation; that would allow the project to be approved and go forward without full consideration of its environmental impacts. Such evidence, if needed, should be gathered and analyzed in advance of the Commission’s decision, to inform that decision.

The applicant also objects (on page 7) to the staff’s “assumptions” about the eligibility of places for the CRHR. I find this rather sadly amusing. In the 1980s I worked for the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), which oversees federal agency compliance with Section 106 of NHPA. In the early 1980s, the ACHP’s regulations followed NPS guidance in requiring that eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) be determined only by NPS, after multi-level review by federal agencies and State Historic Preservation Officers. During a revision of the regulations directed by the administration of then-president Ronald Reagan, and at the request of such disparate agencies as the U.S. Army and the Bureau of Land Management as well as private sector mining and energy interests, we included provisions allowing agencies to assume eligibility for the NRHP. This enabled agencies and applicants to reduce bureaucratic red tape and get on with deciding how to manage significant properties. It appears that the Commission’s staff is merely adopting the same sort of efficiency-enhancing approach to evaluation, and this outrages the applicant – who I assume must think that if it and the Commission just do not assume eligibility for the California Register, they can assume ineligibility and ignore the resources. It doesn’t work that way under the federal regulations, and I do not think it does under CEQA either. I note, in fact, that the State’s CEQA Handbook, at §15064.5(a)(4), says that—


“(t)he fact that a resource is not listed in, or determined to be eligible for listing….,does not preclude a lead agency from determining that the resource may be an historical resource…”

As I read this language, it seems to be consistent with federal guidance and practice. Confronted with a place that may be an “historical resource” per state law, an agency like the Commission can either (a) assume eligibility and get on with its decision-making, or (b) collect the data and go through the administrative processes necessary to formalize its determination. It cannot just avert its eyes and ignore a place because someone thinks it lacks sufficient information to reach a decision.

To rebut the FSA's ethnographic element, the applicant brings in Dr. Sebastian to perform what I have observed to be a common service she provides to clients. This is the third time I have seen Dr. Sebastian pursue what I have come to characterize as "the Sebastian Strategy;" the previous cases were those of the proposed Glamis Gold Mine in Imperial County (under federal law and the North American Free Trade Agreement) and of the proposed Liberty Quarry in western Riverside County (under CEQA). In neither case did her client prevail. The Sebastian Strategy works like this:

Step 1: First, one touts one's credentials (See pages 1 and 2 of Dr. Sebastian’s paper, “Ethnographic Landscapes and the Hidden Hills Solar Electric Generating System: “I am a nationally recognized expert..” etc. etc.).

Step 2: Then, either at the outset or woven through one's analysis, one characterizes the context of regulatory and other official guidance in which the analysis is performed, being very careful to do so in the most narrowly pedantic manner possible and to avoid any acknowledgement of alternative interpretations.

Step 3: Then, one reviews background ethnographic and historical documents, but one never, never in the course of doing so consults with the people upon whose cultural resources and views one is offering opinions.

Step 4: One assures the reader of one's great respect for the people, communities, and cultures that allegedly ascribe value to the project area, but explains, patiently, that:

(a) they simply do not know their own culture and history, and/or

(b) however valid their views may be, those views regrettably do not fit into the context of regulation and official guidance that one has carefully constructed at Step 2.

Step 5: Where the place or places involved comprise a somewhat extensive landscape, one goes on to suggest that even if such places are culturally significant, they constitute such large areas that the proposed project will really have only the most miniscule little impact on them – or that the places of real significance, in terms of the regulations and guidance to which one refers, are really pretty small and conveniently situated outside the area subject to effect.

In this case, Dr. Sebastian devotes much of her Step 2 discourse to a scholastic parsing of NPS guidance about characterizing historic, cultural, and “ethnographic” landscapes, emphasizing that the available official guidance tends to allude to evidence of human modification of such landscapes. Since Paiute communities did not make major, permanent changes to their landscapes (if one ignores things like trails and mesquite husbandry) -- and since those human modifications that are apparent in the landscape in this case have been filtered out of the ethnographic analysis by being characterized as "archaeological resources" -- why then, it's a real shame, but the Paiute just don't have any cultural landscapes, as the NPS guidance describes them.
Dr. Sebastian cannot quite ignore the fact that another NPS guideline document -- National Register Bulletin 38 on traditional cultural properties, of which I am a co-author and upon which my 2003 textbook Places That Count is based -- could give comfort to the notion that even a landscape without visible modifications may be culturally significant. She deals with this inconvenience by counting up the number of times my co-author and I used the word "landscape" in the bulletin. We used the word only four times (contrasted, incidentally, with 17 uses of the word "building," most often when quoting pre-existing NPS documents or in citations). Based on this observation she concludes that Bulletin 38 fails "to provide guidance on identifying and evaluating ethnographic landscapes" (Page 3).

In arriving at this conclusion Dr. Sebastian ignores the fact that as examples of known or hypothetical traditional cultural properties the bulletin includes mountains, lakes, canyons, and other substantial geographic features -- landscapes by other names. Because we did not use precisely the term in which Dr. Sebastian is interested (which as she notes came into use by NPS in 1991, a year after publication of Bulletin 38), Dr. Sebastian apparently finds that Bulletin 38 provides no official basis for the staff’s definition of cultural or “ethnographic” landscapes.
Having thus assured the Commission that there is simply no place in pertinent cultural resource law and regulation for consideration of a landscape like those discussed in the FSA, Dr. Sebastian goes on to assert, as usual, that even if such a landscape were viewed as eligible for the CRHR, it would comprise or be part of something so much larger that it would lose meaning, or the proposed project’s effects would be lost within it.

There may be good reasons to argue about the significance and character of the various cultural landscapes the Commission staff has defined in the FSA. It may be that more "substantial evidence" is needed before their eligibility for the CRHR can be confirmed or disconfirmed. It may be that the project will have little impact on them if they are eligible. There is, however, no basis I can think of for accepting Dr. Sebastian's analysis as authoritative. If the Commission is inclined not to accept the FSA's conclusions, what should be done is to consult more thoroughly, holistically, and systematically with the Paiute and other people who may ascribe cultural value to the landscapes. Only they can say what is significant to them, or what will affect that significance. That, incidentally, is the main thrust of National Register Bulletin 38.

The applicant’s treatment of visual resources suffers from what seem to me to be the same flaws as does the staff’s analysis – i.e. a failure to address the views (sic) of those who actually look at and may (or may not) value the viewshed within which the project is proposed. Predictably, the applicant regards the project’s visual impacts as less substantial than does the staff, but lacking reference to the opinions of actual viewers, I cannot see that either the applicant or the staff has a leg to stand upon.

Congratulations to the Presidio Trust!

I’m delighted to learn that the Presidio Trust, which manages the National Historic Landmark Presidio of San Francisco (California – where hearts are left, etc.) has succeeded in becoming self-sufficient, no longer requiring federal subsidies (See http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Presidio-bridges-gap-to-be-self-sufficient-4266156.php?cmpid=emailarticle&cmpid=emailarticle).  Creating the Trust as the Presidio’s manager, and charging it with gaining self-sufficiency, was a congressional gamble that many in the traditional historic preservation community (notably many in the National Park Service) said would never work.  But it seems to have worked, in that the Trust is now making money through leasing and renting the Presidio’s historic buildings while – not without controversy – maintaining their character-defining features and creating a vibrant, diverse, historically evocative urban space.  There’s plenty of room for argument over individual leasing, rehabilitation, and other management decisions made by the Trust, but overall I think the Trust is to be congratulated on achieving the goal that Congress set for it, and preserving the Presidio as one of San Francisco’s truly distinctive landscapes.

Blessed Decatur

Introduction


David Rotenstein, well known in the blogosphere as “Historian for Hire,” was in town the other day and asked me to look at and comment on the final report of a “Historic Resource Survey” of the City of Decatur, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta).  David has worked in and around Decatur for the last few years and coincidentally, I was born there (fleeing to the west at age four months). The report was pretty sorry, but, I fear, not atypical of what’s being churned out as ostensibly professional products all over the country. So with David’s permission, I want to share the review letter I sent him on January 31.

Dear David,

You’ve asked me to comment on the “Historic Resource Survey Final Report” for the City of Decatur, Georgia, dated September 1, 2009.

My qualifications for preparing such comments are outlined in the attached resumé; I should stipulate that most of my recent experience, and most of my writings, have to do with historic preservation and the broader field of cultural resource management (CRM) at the federal level, not in the context of local planning. However, I was involved in the development of federal standards and guidelines for local surveys imposed on State Historic Preservation Officers and local governments by the National Park Service, and have reviewed scores if not hundreds of survey reports over the course of my career. I should also stipulate that while I was born in Decatur in 1942, I left town with my family in 1943 and have not recently resided or worked there.

I should also say that over the last twenty years or so, I have come to be alarmed at what historic preservation and CRM have become in this country – particularly in terms of their growing disconnection from the living communities that they must serve if they are to make any sense as aspects of public policy. I’ve also been dismayed at the quality of scholarship (if it can be called that) represented by their typical products. My concerns are outlined in the attached chapter from my 2011 reader, A Companion to Cultural Resource Management (Wiley-Blackwell 2011).

The Decatur “Final Report” does nothing to encourage me; it is as classic an example as I have recently seen of what has made historic preservation in this country a pointless, overly costly, elitist, and socially irresponsible activity.

On page 2, the “Final Report” says that it was prepared following state and federal guidelines, and specifically cites the National Park Service’s “Guidelines for Local Surveys.” I helped develop those guidelines, and one thing we tried to emphasize was that local surveys must engage and involve the local community – for whom they are presumably done and whose interests they ought to serve. Nowhere in the “Final Report” do I see any evidence whatever of an effort to involve the community, or even to contact and consult with its members. It appears that the “Final Report” represents the work of presumed professionals in architectural history who came into Decatur and decided what they thought was important – never mind what the “locals” might think. I hasten to say that this sort of professional conceit is – sadly – increasingly common in historic preservation practice in this country, but that makes it no less irresponsible.

On page 5, we are told that the surveyors carried out historical research. If they did, it is very thinly reflected in the pages that follow. The focus of the work is overwhelmingly on architecture (itself not discussed in much detail); the social and cultural history of Decatur is scarcely touched upon, unless that history has been bland beyond belief. The “historical context” that begins on page 11 provides no context at all. It merely defines time periods and says the city grew as these periods progressed. Note, for instance, that:

(a) Apparently no Indians ever came close to Decatur; the place has no history prior to the “first European settlers.” One wonders, too, if all these settlers were “European;” I seem to recall that a lot of such settlers were accompanied (willingly or otherwise) by settlers of African origin.

(b) We are given no notion of why Decatur ever came to be; the “Final Report” just accepts that it came into existence and developed quietly thereafter. We are told that it “promoted itself as a quiet, prosperous small town” in the mid-1800s, which “offered a peaceful, healthful, and beautiful place to live.” Was there some economic basis for its prosperity? Some social or cultural basis for its perceived beauty? Some environmental reason for its healthfulness?

(c) Apparently no African-Americans have ever lived in Decatur, or if they have, they are invisible in its history. My family’s lore tells of much-respected African-American women who took care of my elder siblings and me; I wonder where they came from.

(d) Somehow Decatur seems to have escaped the Civil War untouched. I had the impression that Sherman’s army had some effect on the place, but I suppose I (and Wikipedia, for what that is worth) must be mistaken. Sherman’s depredations apparently had nothing to do with the fact that “none of these original historic structures (around the Square) remain.”

(e) Similarly, the difficulties surrounding Reconstruction seem to have had no impact on Decatur. What a blessed town it must be!

(f) Decatur’s growth has apparently been a sort of organic thing, perhaps fueled by photosynthesis. Neighborhoods simply “develop” or sometimes “are developed.” What motivated their development, and hence might have influenced their character, was apparently of no interest to the authors of the “Final Report.”

(g) Nothing seems to have happened in Decatur after the period 1940-60. This may reflect the author’s decision not to consider buildings unless they were at least fifty years old – a decision that may be justified in a mindless sort of way by the National Register of Historic Places’ general exclusion of properties achieving significance in the last fifty years. In most parts of the world, however – at least to the best of my knowledge – history did not stop fifty years ago, and in some places recent historical events have had profound impacts on both historic properties and the communities in which they exist. Apparently not in Decatur, however.

The bulk of the “Final Report” comprises “Neighborhood Summaries” made up of maps and very thin descriptions of Decatur’s neighborhoods, through which are woven largely unsubstantiated statements like “a good example,” “has kept its historic character,” and “not proposed as a historic district.” Presumably these are statements of opinion and intent by the authors – who I find nowhere identified by name, and whose qualifications, as far as I can tell, are nowhere presented.

Nor can I even determine from the “Final Report” how neighborhoods or specific properties were defined and selected for evaluation. For instance, my older sister, who actually remembers Decatur in the late 1930s/early 1940s, tells me of a neighborhood in which African-American families were concentrated. I imagine this neighborhood lost its distinctive character – for better or worse – during the social changes of the mid-late 20th century, but I have to wonder where it was, what surviving properties might be associated with it, and what cultural significance they may retain for Decatur’s African-American residents – who I cannot believe do not exist, despite their total invisibility in the “Final Report.”

In summary, the “Final Report” seems to be to be a deeply deficient product, notably in the following ways:

1. No evidence that the community was involved in any way in its production;

2. A remarkably vague, uncritical, bit of happy-talk about Decatur’s development instead of a useful discussion of the town’s history.

3. No representation of history as a basis for judging historical significance; evaluations were apparently done solely on the basis of perceived architectural merit.

4. Narrowly limited and usually unspecified bases for characterization and evaluation. The perceptions upon which evaluations were based were apparently only those of the anonymous outside professionals who performed the survey, and whose qualifications to make such evaluations are not even shared with those who, we are assured on pages 4-5, will benefit from them. The reader is expected, apparently, to accept these perceptions as gospel truth.

Again, I am sorry to say that in my experience these sorts of deficiencies are not uncommon among survey reports done for local governments, states, federal agencies and non-governmental organizations throughout the country, but in my opinion they are no less deficient for being common. Historic preservation has sunk very low when this sort of report passes for a professional planning document.

I hope this admittedly critical review is of some use to you.

EPA: a Highly Principled Agency

Many thanks to John Parker for alerting me to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) request for comments on its published draft principles for advancing environmental justice among Indian tribes and other indigenous groups.  Below are my comments, just sent to EPA, along with the URLs by which you, too, can access the principles for review.

I am writing to comment on the Indigenous Peoples Environmental Justice Principles and Sub-Principles you recently published on the Worldwide Web, per the instructions in your "outreach letter" (http://www.epa.gov/tribal/consultation/pdf/policy-on-ej-for-tribes-and-ips-working-draft.pdf and http://epa.gov/environmentaljustice/resources/policy/indigenous/2013-01-08-stakeholder-outreach-letter.pdf).

You asked that we respond to five questions, arrayed below with my responses.

Question 1: Do the introduction and background sections clearly explain the rationale (etc.)?

Answer: More or less, but they convey no evidence of appreciation for the urgent needs that exist for actually addressing the concerns of indigenous people about impacts on their environments, which are being effectively ignored by most if not all agencies of the U.S. government (presidential, secretarial, and other official rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding).

Question 2: Are the draft principles and sub-principles the appropriate approach….?

Answer: No. The principles and sub-principles are so vague and abstract that they provide no basis upon which anyone can develop expectations about actual EPA actions. They strike me as a smoke-screen, designed to avoid and deflect criticism rather than actually to accomplish anything.

Question 3: What, if any, changes … should be considered?

Answer: Cut the self-congratulatory gobbledigook and give us some assurance that EPA will actually use its authorities to do something. Particularly in its role vis-à-vis federal agency compliance with NEPA, EPA could do a great deal of good for indigenous people and their environments by vigorously promoting EJ principles and the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (neither of which need further definition, thank you). You ought to develop the staff and other resources to do this, and get on with it, rather than wasting your time and the taxpayers' money formulating and reformulating abstractions.

Question 4: What recommendations do you have on how to best implement these principles…?

Answer: Stop splitting infinitives, but beyond that, see above.

Question 5: How should progress and success be measured?

Answer: They can’t be, because the principles and sub-principles are too vague and abstract. You could do almost anything short of flooding Indian Country with toxic wastes and still be “successful” under these principles.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Thomas F. King

The Mob Revisited

2013 Introduction

The Explorers Club, of which I'm a member, is considering denying support to underwater archaeological projects that include a commercial ("treasure salvage") component.  Expressing a saddening herd mentality, the Club's committee on the subject assures the Club's members that "archaeologists" as some kind of unified body oppose such work.  In gathering together documents to support a doubtless futile effort to demonstrate that a few of us have the capacity for independent thought on the subject -- in which the mainstream profession and the world's governments firmly avoid participating -- I came upon the following posting from 2007, either from this blog or from ACRA-L, which I thought might be worth revisiting.

The Mob

November 1, 2007

Well, the mob is out in full cry, brandishing its pitchforks and cudgels, howling for the blood of heretics.

Or to be a bit less picturesque, the archaeological societies of the nation are joining together to expunge from the discipline all those who might be tempted to work with "traffickers" in artifacts. The latest convert, to judge from the Society for American Archaeology’s latest Archaeological Record (September 2007, p. 10), is the Register of Professional Archaeologists. I suppose RPA can't really help itself, since it's the creature of such mob leaders as the Archaeological Institute of America and the SAA. And the RPA's leader, Jeff Altschul, told me in a recent email that there is "overwhelming support" in his organization for a change in the RPA code of conduct to prohibit registrants from participating in commercial ventures. The new language goes like this:

An archaeologist shall not be involved in the recovery, buying or selling of archaeological artifacts for sale or other commercial activity, or be employed by or contract with a company whose stated purpose is to recover archaeological artifacts for sale or other commercial purposes.

No doubt RPA will join its constituent organizations in thundering against commercialism, and then pat itself on its corporate head for its ethical superiority. Maybe this is a good thing; it is at least consistent with the Register's primary purpose of making its registrants feel good about themselves. The fact that it will almost undoubtedly accelerate the destruction of archaeological sites is probably beside the point.

Prohibition is a blunt instrument, particularly when wielded by those with no power to enforce it. We all know what happened when the U.S. tried to prohibit the consumption of alcohol. Many of us have had first hand experience flaunting the continuing prohibition on the use of recreational drugs. These prohibitions have had the full force of the state behind them. I wonder what makes archaeologists think they -- with no power whatsoever -- can prohibit the commercial traffic in antiquities.

If forced to answer this question, I imagine an honest supporter of the RPA prohibition would say that it is not meant to prohibit commercial traffic, only to prohibit archaeologists from participating in it. But if that is so -- if it isn't designed to stop the practice that is actually destroying archaeological sites and data, but only to keep archaeologists from documenting those sites and data as they are destroyed, does this not suggest a degree of counterproductivity?

Nations and international organizations -- no more immune to hysteria than professional bodies -- have of course enacted laws and issued declarations against artifact trafficking, and based on their own statistics may be able to report a measure of success. A collection is intercepted in transit here; an artifact is repatriated there; a dealer or digger is prosecuted someplace else. But are these actions making a dent in the international antiquities market? Since we have no real data on that market, we cannot know, but to judge from what we see in the popular media, it appears not. We're told that antiquities looting is rife in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Peru and Chile; it certainly continues throughout North America. Those looters are not looting just for the fun of it; they have people to whom they sell the stuff, and there is -- must be -- a voracious cadre of collectors who make it worthwhile for such dealers to deal. Prohibition of antiquities trafficking, I suggest, has been no more effective than prohibition of alcohol consumption or the puffing of marijuana.

But who cares, really? What's important to a mob is not whether its cause makes rational sense, but how pursuit of the cause makes its members feel. In generating feelings of propriety, the imposition of ethics like that of the RPA are doubtless highly effective. Everyone can feel so good about themselves, so professional, and that's really far more important than the condition of the archaeological record, isn’t it?

When prohibition of alcohol consumption didn't work, governments re-legalized it and sought to control it through various forms of regulation. Some regulatory measures work pretty well; others don't; there's room for productive argument about how to tweak the rules and systems. The U.S. is gradually shuffling its way toward some kind of similar accommodation with regard to recreational drugs. Debate continues about how best to control access to firearms and regulate abortions. Why, I wonder, can't we try something similar with regard to the private ownership of and commerce in antiquities?

I have no way of verifying it, but I suspect that a substantial percentage of the people who collect antiquities would prefer to do so legally, and would more highly value an object with documented provenience than one without. If this is so -- and again I stress that neither I nor anyone else knows whether it is so -- then it ought to be possible, to some extent at least, to co-opt the commercial market, to dry up the market for illicit artifacts by creating one for those gathered using archaeological methods. But such a market could be created, of course, only if we actively engaged with the traffickers, rather than prohibiting such engagement.

Would engagement be a perfect or complete solution to the problem of looting? Of course not -- any more than engagement with those who traffic in booze is a perfect solution to alcohol abuse. But however shocking and saddening it may be to the moralists at the head of the mob, that's the way the world works. Even with things on whose prohibition there is broad popular agreement -- murder, rape, incest -- we find ourselves having to make nuanced distinctions in order to accommodate the shades of gray with which the real world presents us. Is it all right to kill in self-defense? In war? When is sex consensual and when is it not? How closely related can a given couple be, in a given society, and still be acceptable sexual partners? As ostensible social scientists, we ought to be able to work within such imperfect human systems to achieve our goals. But we are not; we are just as simple-minded as any other mob.

So the RPA will doubtless join its fellow acronymous archaeo-organizations --SAA, AIA, SHA, et al -- in prohibiting its members from dealing with commercial interests, and things will go on as they are. Except every now and then some poor dope who thinks he or she can relate to the real world and still be called an archaeologist will get pilloried. The rest of us, I suppose, will just have to call ourselves something else. Or maybe we can just drop the second “a.”

CRM, EIA, and the NRA

I'm working on a new book -- co-authored with Claudia Nissley -- on consultation in cultural resource management (CRM) and environmental impact assessment (EIA).  The final chapter, as currently configured, comprises tongue-in-cheek guidelines for people who want to avoid meaningful consultation.  By sheer coincidence I was working on a piece of this chapter today, and was inspired to write the following:

Expand Alternatives


On the other hand, it’s sometimes helpful to expand the range of alternatives thrown on the table – not for extensive, expensive consideration, but just for discussion – so those that might actually work get lost in the noise generated by impossibilities.

Outside the cultural resources and environmental arenas, the National Rifle Association in the United States is, as we write this (early 2013), giving us a fine example of alternative expansion. Faced by massive popular revulsion at gun violence in the wake of the massacre at Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA is proposing improved mental health as the solution. It’s hardly debatable that improved mental health would reduce the number of nutcases with guns, but fixing the nation’s mental health is a big, complicated job. By shifting the focus from the relatively easy task of banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines to the near-impossible job of curing the mentally ill, the NRA is skillfully muddying the water and, in all probability, once again preserving its members’ ostensible right to own whatever kinds of weaponry suit their fancy.

Now if I could just figure out a way to apply this principle to CRM and EIA.....

No More &^%$# TCPs!

Guest post by George A. Cluster

The National Park Service (NPS), thank goodness, is finally re-thinking its “National Register Bulletin 38,” and inviting people to comment on “traditional cultural properties” and their eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places. Well, here’s my comment, NPS: get rid of them! Jettison the whole idea!

The idea of recognizing TCPs is wrong, inconsistent with the basic principles on which the National Register is based. Forcing federal agencies to think about such places, and worse yet to consider PROTECTING them, just confuses government employees and distracts them from their real work – writing incomprehensible guidelines, enforcing obscure standards, patting each other on the back, winning awards, preparing for retirement.

The trouble with TCPs is that they’re important only to PEOPLE. Just plain people, with no special social status or government position whatever. Oh sure, some of them are important to a LOT of people, but in most cases they’re still just ORDINARY people, in ordinary communities. And Bulletin 38 doesn't even demand that a lot of people care about a place, or that the people be parts of any elite.  Indian tribes and Native Hawaiians have especially beaten their drums about TCPs, which just shows you how far outside mainstream American thinking the whole idea is.

Look, it should be obvious that the National Register is not designed to recognize places important to ordinary people. The whole idea of the Register is to recognize places important to the SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR, based on the judgment of his PROFESSIONAL STAFF – archaeologists, historians, and architectural historians, and of the PROFESSIONALS in the State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs). That’s why it’s the SECRETARY who maintains the Register, and sets standards for listing places on it. That’s why you have to hire PROFESSIONALS to prepare the paperwork to nominate places to it. This is important: the Register makes WORK for these professionals, who might otherwise go unemployed, living under (historic) bridges! Keeping elites and professionals comfortable is the PURPOSE of the Register!

Come on, people, this isn’t rocket science. NPS shouldn’t have to concern itself with the “cultural” interests of ordinary people, in ordinary communities – who probably don’t really have any culture anyhow. NPS and the SHPOs and the preservation professionals in the federal agencies and consulting firms ought to get back to their real work – writing great thick historic context studies, discussing how many pony truss bridges belong on the National Register or how deep an archaeological site needs to be to reach eligibility under Criterion D, and carefully crafting Memoranda of Agreement to file and forget.

Let’s start the new year right by getting back to first principles: historic preservation is about the values of the ELITE, the EDUCATED, the CREDENTIALED, and most especially those residing in NPS and the SHPOs. And it’s about making sure that we elite, educated, credentialed professionals – in government and in the consulting firms -- stay employed and make it safely into secure, untroubled retirement when our times come.

This shouldn’t be a hard call for NPS at all. What to do with TCPs? Forget about them!