The SAA Archaeological Record March 2011 : Page 23
CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY the fieldwork on our Tribal land, and oversees our larger projects to ensure that they are accomplished to our Tribal standards. Our NAGPRA and Repatriation Officer brings home our honored dead and reburies them according to their original wishes. The Historic Sites Keeper monitors and maintains historic and archaeological sites on our Tribal land. We have an Assistant who helps where help is most t needed. And finally there is me. I administrate and super-vise, and I get to do a little bit of everything. There is no such thing as a typical day for me. On any given day, I may be doing archaeological fieldwork; consulting with some federal agency about site investigation or protection; teaching a class on Cherokee history or culture; visiting sites of ongoing Cherokee archaeology; lobbying tribal, state, or r federal politicians; paying the light bill; or any number of f other tasks. Some days, I end up having to do all these tasks, one after the other. I rarely know what my work day may con-sist of, or where it may require me to travel, but the job stays interesting and rewarding. The job may not pay a lot, but it is truly personally gratifying. As a Cherokee, I feel that almost every aspect of my job allows me to preserve some vital piece of our unique Chero-kee identity. For those of you who are not Cherokee, that may y not make much sense, but the fact of the matter is that Indi-an tribes have had to fight, struggle, and sacrifice to remain in existence. If we lose those things that make us uniquely y Cherokee, then we betray all that our ancestors suffered to give to us. I would be ashamed not to contribute to their long battle to remain Cherokee. Our unique identity is the gift the Creator gave to us and it would be very rude not to carry it t forward. My most rewarding experience to date has been my associa-tion with the Ravensford Project. As I began this job, the EBCI and the NPS were beginning what would become a long and bitter negotiation over land that had been promised to the tribe in 1940, and was now needed for construction of f a new dynamic three-school campus for our Tribal children. The details of this negotiation and resultant land exchange are too involved to detail here, but in the end, the EBCI suc-ceeded in obtaining the land known as the Ravensford Tract. Archaeological sites had been identified on the property and federal law would require the Tribe to mitigate damages to those resources before school construction could start. The THPO, in consultation with the NC SHPO and National Park Service, developed an archaeological scope-of-work to the highest standards. We included research questions that specifically targeted Cherokee Tribal interests. Finally, the Tribe paid for the totality of the fieldwork at a project price of f over seven million dollars. The Ravensford project has become the largest archaeological project in North Carolina history, and it has truly been a Cherokee project. The icing on the cake...I got to become good friends with Bennie Keel of the National Park Service, the very archaeolo-gist whose book on Cherokee archaeology put me on the road to where I am today. Sweet, sweet, serendipity. DERRY, from page 20 < resource management operate was a valuable lesson that t helped me land other positions, including jobs in three more state preservation offices. These public sector jobs taught me that archaeology is very dependent on public support, and yet t we archaeologists are generally unprepared, upon gradua-tion, to deal with the public. So never stop learning. The most valuable training I received came to me after I began my current job. Frustrated by how w little I knew about communicating effectively with the pub-lic, despite having been involved in “public archaeology” for decades, I enrolled in certification programs offered by the National Association for Interpretation (NAI). NAI is the main professional organization for park interpreters, but t also they are willing to teach boring archaeologists how to emotionally and intellectually connect various audiences with cultural resources. I believe that all archaeologists in whatever area they practice would benefit from learning how w to communicate interpretively. I suppose I knew this intu-itively when I was six, after that park ranger at Mesa Verde, undoubtedly an interpretive ranger, captured my imagina-tion and set me on my archaeological path. It only took me 50 years to fully understand. March 2011 • The SAA Archaeological Record 23
Publication List
Using a screen reader? Click Here