Last year, when I interviewed John Doershuck—State Archaeologist of Iowa—he recalled entering the field as a professional just when NAGPRA was made the law of the land:
I was in grad school at the time [of NAGPRA’s passage] and it was very much on our minds as new PhDs going out into either the academic workforce or the consulting workforce, asking ourselves, “what was this going to mean?” I remember vividly one professor a year or two before NAGPRA was passed, who was just an absolute doomsayer, you know, “this is the absolute end of archaeology.” But then there were also others who very much saw it as an opportunity. The majority of the young professors coming into our grad program were embracing NAGPRA, saying “it’s going to happen, we need to make the best of this.
John’s Professor was no doubt a member of the Society of American Archaeologist (SAA), a professional organization that actively lobbied against NAGPRA.
What a difference a generation makes! In September of this year, the SAA—the very same group that 20 years ago predicted “the absolute end of archaeology” with the passage of NAGPRA—wrote a letter in support of the Water Protectors at Cannonball, ND.
In their statement of solidarity, the SAA spoke firmly and frankly about the Army Corps of Engineer’s apparently slipshod approach to green-lighting the pipeline:
“After review of many documents associated with DAPL (see below), we conclude that there are unresolved questions regarding whether the USACE has fulfilled their Section 106 responsibilities in relation to the NHPA.”
The letter does not make for light reading; it is grounded in a very detailed analysis of both archaeological impact and statute law.
Aerial view of Lynch Knife Flint Quarry. This North Dakota Site was surveyed and confirmed by Metcalf Archaeological Consultants, resulting in its nomination for becoming a National Historic Landmark.
Yet at its core it shares the SAA members’ genuine outrage at the events of September 3, 2016 (described in “Repatriation as the Whole Story”), which included “recent grading of previously surveyed land” that contained burial sites. To the archaeologists, it seemed clear that the DAPL contractors were in violation of the law:
. . . rare traditional cultural properties of singular spiritual value have been, according to the September 4, 2016 court deposition of cultural resource manager Tim Mentz, Sr., completely graded by Dakota Access as of September 3, 2016. The deposition, as well as tribal sources cited in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s request for a preliminary injunction, note that these stone formations may not be apparent to archaeological surveyors who lack the benefit of complete tribal consultations. The USACE may not have taken the consultative requirements of Section 106 sufficiently so as to avoid such events as have been documented over the last two weeks.
They also expressed dismay that their review of the Corps’ application materials demonstrated what they called “an apparent clear conflict between the USACE’s finding of “No Historic Properties Affected” for ten of eleven crossings of waters” along the pipeline’s route.”
In his conversation with me, John Doershuck observed, “Native American empowerment kept expanding after NAGPRA.” The result was
the creation of tribal historic preservation offices (THPO, pronounced “Tippo”) which parallel the state historic preservation offices, and those THPOs more and more became the voice of tribes in the compliance activities that are governed by the NHPA What we’ve seen in the last ten yours is that, as more and more THPOs are out there, there are more and more people to go to and talk to directly about a particular discovery of ancient human remains.
At Standing Rock, the THPO did indeed protest the Army’s fast track plans, arguing that surveys suggested historic sites might be disturbed. The Corps plowed ahead anyway. This is what spurred the SAA to cite possible legal issues.
Water Protectors face off against grading equipment. Note the amount of damage to the area such construction causes.
In the twenty years since the passage of NAGPRA, preservation of cultural traditions have come full circle, with tribal officers leading the way for academic archaeologists to challenge indiscriminate development of sensitive sites.
The SAA letter concludes:
given the events of the last two weeks, SAA has concerns that it is possible that there may have been violations of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, as well as North Dakota State Law 23-06-27 (the “Protection of Human Burial Sites, Human Remains, and Burial Goods” section of “Care and Custody of the Dead”). It behooves USACE to investigate whether development activities have violated these laws. As should we all, the USACE hopefully does learn from past errors in dealing with cultural heritage, human remains, and sacred traditional cultural properties. The SAA reminds the USACE that early missteps in following legally mandated procedures with regard to the Kennewick Man discovery continue to resonate to the detriment of the USACE decades afterwards. We therefore sincerely urge the USACE to consider how best to comply with all aspects of Section 106, as well as how to design large-scale projects such as DAPL so as to minimize the problems, delays, and unresolved concerns of descent communities so amply in evidence at Lake Oahe today.
