What Is A Tribal Cultural Resource?

“Tribal Cultural Resources” (TCRs) entered the lexicon in California environmental law in 2014 through the passage of Assembly Bill 52, which mandates Tribal consultation when development projects threaten Tribal cultural resources. However, there is an ongoing dispute in planning efforts about how to interpret this term, with implications for what and how these resources are protected. My research reveals that agency planners tend to interpret TCRs narrowly, as sites and artifacts of archaeological interest, while Tribal authorities tend to use a more capacious definition that includes anything Tribes determine to be of cultural significance. In this broader semantic range, TCRs can include ceremonial sites, gathering areas, viewsheds, watersheds, and other landscape features that exceed the limitations of the word “resources.”

This paper investigates how TCRs are being operationalized in ways that overcome the epistemic violence and injustice of cultural resource management policies. Through semi-structured interviews with Tribal Chairs, Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPOs), agency planning staff, and archaeologists, I describe ongoing conflicts of interpretation between Tribal and agency approaches to state-run cultural management. Despite applications of the term that perpetuate colonial legacies by attempting to limit Indigenous relationships with the Land, Indigenous groups routinely reappropriate this and cognate terms (such as Tribal Cultural Properties, Cultural Landscapes, and Cultural Places) to advocate for their cultural heritage and the biotic health of their communities. By comparing how Tribal and agency authorities in California interpret cultural resource protection policy and, especially, the language of “cultural resources,” I offer critical insight into how conflicts over land and resources are meted out through rights-based legal structures.

After describing the legal process by which Tribes have the ability to influence development and defend TCRs, I use the interviews to illustrate different interpretations of the term and draw out the implications of these differences. I then suggest how the agency planning process can be adapted to better accommodate Tribal areas of significance, which consists in transitioning from seeing TCRs as historical “things” in the ground to understanding how landscape features of traditional use and contemporary practice interrelate. In this way, TCRs present an opportunity for Western land use and development to learn from and incorporate elements of traditional ecological knowledge.

Some sample quotations I’m working with:

 “And when people think of Cultural Resources, we’re not specifically looking at archaeological sites. We’re looking at those things that impact who we are and how we are able to interact with the environment” (THPO).

“If it has potential for burials, if there’s potential for ancestral habitat, settlement, you know, if there was a place people were living. If it’s more than just a trail camp or a hunting camp or you know, the small scale kind of places, but if it’s the homes if it’s the burial grounds, if it’s the dance grounds, then that yeah, this might qualify as a TCR. But the place where they killed a deer and resharpen some tools once or twice or 1000 times. hunting camp. Maybe not a TCR.”

“Historical resources are ceremonial locations, prayer seeds, trails, viewsheds, landscapes. If we all agree that those are valid resource types under CEQA. Well, I can’t find those. None of us in this room could go out there and find the sacred trail to burrow peak, or the plethora of trails because you know what, when you get out there and a guy says there it is, do you see it? No, I don’t see it, Bob. He says yeah, I know. It’s not a trail, it’s a route. They go up through the hill right here.”