CONNECTING LANGUAGE, CULTURAL HERITAGE, AND THE LAND. ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROTECTION AND PRESERVATION

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CONNECTING LANGUAGE, CULTURAL HERITAGE, AND THE
LAND. ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROTECTION AND
PRESERVATION

• BETSY BRANDT
• Arizona State University
• School of Human Evolution and Social Change

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Ethics

• Community-based collaborative work with and for
  native nations
• Direct contracts with native nations
• Active engagement with the tribal community
• Community-directed decisions from the beginning
• Constant feedback to the community/tribe on
  progress
• Review and correction of documents produced

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Ethics

• Native staff members and liaisons on the project
• Clear understandings of ethical behavior from
  everyone at the start and throughout a project
• Ethical codes for behavior such as the Principles
  of Professional Responsibility (AAA) or the
  ethical code of the New Zealand Association of
  Social Anthropologists based upon them,
  recommended by Linda Tuwahi Smith in Decolonizing
  Methodology
• Respect for community norms for behavior

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Ethical Concerns

• Few sanctions for ethics violations
• Universities never admit to wrongdoing for legal
  reasons
• Institutional Review Boards are there to protect
  the university and their Federal research funds
  and not the people, or the researchers, in
  general
• Professions not used to considering people as
  anything other than obstacles usually have no
  experience nor ethical codes for working with them

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Control of Knowledge/Information

• Do not disclose what you do not want known
• Do not allow Federal agencies to collect or
  create archives of information for their purposes
• Disclosure should only be on a need to know basis
  and only for key purposes
• Once knowledge is out of your control, it can be
  accessed and used in ways no one intended or
  could even conceive of, especially as information
  technology and search technology advances

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Case Studies The Smithsonian Institution

• A collection of 17 national museums and many more
  affiliates, including the National Museum of the
  American Indian which hold much of the nations
  cultural patrimony
• A semi-exclusive agreement with
  Showtime-Smithsonian on Demand for access to
  holdings for film projects. Pays 500,000 a year
  for 30 years. Limits access to resources paid
  for by tax dollars. Lots of protests on this
  agreement

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Case Studies The Smithsonian Institution

• Agreement with Corbis, a leading global digital
  media and licensing company on January 24, 2007
  to market digital images from the Smithsonian
  Collections for editorial and commercial use
  (Nuti, 2007)
• Provides global desktop access to media such a
  photos
• A search of their site shows 5000 images of
  American Indians to date in their collection and
  they will be adding more from the Smithsonian

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Corbis Agreement

• SIRIS search engine allows anyone to find any
  materials in the collection.
• There are 450,000 photos in the National
  Anthropological Archives in the Smithsonian of
  people, objects of material culture, cultural
  performances, and landscapes
• With Corbis, each photo will have a licensing
  price for use.

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Why?

• Lack of adequate funding from Congress for
  cultural issues has led to these agreements
• Museums are money-losing at any level and always
  need financial support
• Capitalist commodification of cultural capital
• Little or no public input prior to
  decision-making
• Appointment of staff from business backgrounds

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Usefulness

• New technologies allow desktop access which saves
  research funds
• Community members and students have access to
  high quality materials for projects and learning
  about their own and others cultures and
  achievements
• Materials can be used in legal cases to preserve
  sites, land claims, and religious practice cases

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The Ties to the Land

• Indigenous peoples are known for their strong
  ties to their land
• Land is where the sources of life are
• Land is where the stories and wisdom sit
• Place-making and place-naming over the
  generations creates the ties to the land
• It creates a known world of resources, places
  where events happened, and places where persons
  live, both human and non-human

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Culture, Heritage, and Identity

• Traditional knowledge is embedded in language
• Place names show sovereignty and dominion over
  places on the landscape
• Names preserve the history of places and the
  encounters people had with them.
• Places are embedded in songs, stories, prayers,
  orations, chants, ceremonies and other cultural
  performances. Everything happens in places.

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Language and Cultural Heritagepeople are of the
land
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LANGUAGE

• A gift from the creator
• Created and modified by generations of speakers
• Where traditional knowledge resides
• Cultural heritage
• Identity
• Connections to the land-place-making and
  place-naming

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Language and Thought

• It is language that calls our attention to ways
  of seeing and thinking about worlds
• Obligatory categories
• Image schemas
• Rich schemas
• Names of categories influence our perceptions and
  categories
• Metaphors PLANTS ARE PEOPLE/PERSONS

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Language Loss

• When a native language is lost, we lose the
  equivalent of centuries, if not millennia, of
  knowledge
• Most of the languages in the world are small
• Most are endangered
• Languages are dying every day, most of which
  belong to native people

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Language Preservation

• In order to preserve traditional knowledge, you
  need to preserve language.
• Many languages have no young speakers and no
  language program.
• Most language preservation or renewal programs
  are not effective.

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Site Preservation

• Land buy backs
• Land trades
• Congressional action
• No good laws
• Stopping or slowdown projects through legal
  jujitsu
• NEPA, ARPA, NFMA, NHPA, RRFA, ESA, etc.
• Coalition creations

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Navajo Nation et al. v U.S. Forest Service

• On March 12, 2007, the 9th Circuit of Appeals
  found against the proposed use of treated
  effluent for snow-making on the ski area on the
  San Francisco Peaks.
• The decision said that there was no compelling
  interest of the government
• That the Restoration of Religious Freedom Act
  called for the least interference in the practice
  of religion
• That the peak was sacred from time immemorial
  to especially the Hopi, the Navajo and other
  tribes.

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Pushback

• Snowbowls owner has been making the rounds of
  news and television outlets. In an appearance on
  Channel 12 in Phoenix, he stated that the White
  Mountain Apache had a ski area on a sacred
  mountain and used largely untreated sewage from
  the lodges to make snow. He also indicated there
  will be an appeal.
• Chairman Ronnie Lupe of the White Mountain Apache
  Tribe has contested these statements.

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Be Proactive

• A lie can make it around the world before the
  truth can get its pants on.
• The need for effective public relations

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The Verde River at flood on the Ft. McDowell
Yavapai Nation