Northern Ethnographic Landscapes: Perspectives from Circumpolar Nations

The creation of this book is a remarkable story worth sharing with its readers. In the late 1 990s, the Cultural Resources office of the U.S. Department of Interior's National Park Service (NPS) in Anchorage, Alaska, considered contracting a junior archaeologist or a graduate student for a fairly standard service: producing an overview of the current literature and policy documents about cultural and ethnographic landscape preservation in some northern countries. Money was available and the terms of reference were clear; nobody believed that it would take more than a few months to produce a 50-60 page report for the agency's internal use only. The NPS' Alaska Regional Office was eager to look at other nations' policies on ethnographic landscapes for several reasons. By that time, several federal and state legislative actions, NPS-led initiatives pertaining to Native Americans' heritage and ancestral lands, had been adopted. Many collaborative projects with Native communities were under way, both in Alaska and elsewhere in the United States. After several decades of protecting '"historic sites" / historic monuments and buildings, battlefields, archaeological ruins, and remains along pioneer trails—the NPS finally acknowledged the need to extend protective status to heritage places that may have, but equally may not have any visible traces of human activities. This recognition opened the way for a new vision of heritage preservation that was far more suitable to the Native American perspective. It included physical landscapes with great value to indigenous people, reflected in their associated myths, stories, rituals, and spiritual practices. As a result, new terms, such as "historic properties," "tribal preservation," and "indigenous cultural (or ethnographic) landscapes" appeared on the Native American public agendas and in NPS documentation alike (cf. Parker 1 990; Stoffle et al. 1 997). In 1 990, the NPS institutionalized a distinct Cultural Landscapes Program that addressed serious inadequacies in national preservation policies, particularly affecting the lands that were of special value to Native Americans (see Norton, this volume). It was clear that this area would require innovative approaches in management and protection. In fact, the new notion of 'ethnographic landscapes' would become one of the most contentious policy issues for years to come.