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Our research assesses the efficacy of the National Historic Preservation Act's (КИРА) Traditional Cultural Property or Place (TCP) construct in facilitating Native American engagement with aboriginal lands now federally governed. We analyze how federal agencies can implement effective consultation to lessen inherent power imbalances in the legal framework. From July through December 2014, we conducted eleven semi-structured interviews with participants involved with five TCPs in the United States Pacific Northwest and Great Basin and fourteen individuals involved with other TCPs. We identified three themes in the results: (1) ensuring government employees have the proper skill sets, particularly with communication and cultural competency; (2) incorporating the ways tribes understand the landscape into consultation and management practices; and (3) proactively building relationships outside the compliance context. We argue a more collaborative approach to the historical designation and management of TCPs, which counteracts inequalities in the legal framework, will facilitate better relationships, fewer conflicts, and mutually agreed upon land management decisions for both tribes and agencies. These lessons learned have implications for political ecology discourse on how sociopolitical actors influence land management decisions in contexts of power.
Key words: traditional cultural property or place, protected and conserved areas, Native American, consultation, best practices
Introduction
Native Americans may have a particularly strong interest in federal land management given their extensive history and cultural connection to these lands compared to the general public (Carpenter 2006). Many nations or tribes view place-based knowledge and practices, such as stories and ceremonies, as necessary for sustaining the land's spiritual and biological health and serving as the basis of cultural identity (Lewis 1995; Spoon and Arnold 2012). However, the 567 federally recognized tribes currently retain only about 2.7 percent of their traditional territory (HAC 2013).
In the 1990s, amendments to National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) regulations and the National Park Service's (NPS) issuance of policy facilitated tribes' increased use of NHPA to regain access and management of traditional places, defined as Traditional Cultural Properties or Places (TCPs) (King 2003, 2005).1 Federal policy describes TCPs as places associated "with cultural practices or beliefs of a living community that (a) are rooted in that community's history, and (b) are important in maintaining the continuing cultural identity of the community" (Parker and King 1998:1). Although the...