Tribal Heritage Management in Action at the Gila River Indian Community, Arizona

Summary

Many Native American communities have developed their own archaeology programs and taken over management of cultural resources from Federal agencies. The formation of Tribal Heritage Management programs has increased interactions between non-tribal archaeologists and members of native communities, and resulted in greater numbers of Native Americans becoming trained archaeologists. This synchronism has fostered new understandings of the past and has led to research that is scientifically valid while also reflecting tribal cultural concerns. Archaeologists have benefited from increased exposure to traditional knowledge and beliefs, and Tribes have developed new avenues for communicating their knowledge of the past in ways that will reach a broader audience. This paper provides an overview of the diverse investigations undertaken by the Gila River Indian Community’s Cultural Resource Management Program and Tribal Historic Preservation Office in south-central Arizona. These two tribal departments developed out of a program that began 20 years ago under funding by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Other papers in the symposium examine recent findings from archaeometry investigations, controlled experimental studies of traditional technology, wildland fire archaeology program deployments, rock art preservation efforts, and large-scale cultural resource management investigations.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Tribal Heritage Management Programs in Action at the Gila River Indian Community, Arizona   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage