This month we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of
the National Historic Preservation Act.
As part of our celebration, each month we will highlight a forest archeological project.
Be sure to watch for these on our Website.
In the Southwestern Region we manage a landscape of diverse cultures, and thus some of
the most important and spectacular archeological sites in the country.
These sites have drawn visitors and researchers to the area
for more than a hundred years.
But much more importantly, these sites are part of the living Native American culture of
the Southwest, as well as the cultures of all the rest of us that are here
in the Southwest.
We have many types of cultural resources on our Forests, ranging from small artifact
scatters to log cabins to large pueblos and cliff dwellings.
Fifty years ago Congress made us a full partner and leader in historic preservation
with the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act.
But we in the Forest Service have actually placed value on archeological and cultural
resources long before the passage of the Act.
Preservation of cultural resources has been one of our core values
since the early 1900s.
Happy birthday National Historic Preservation Act.
My name is Rita Skinner and I'm current the Chief of Staff
of the Southwestern Region.
I had the privilege of serving as an archeologist for the first ten years
with the Forest Service.
I cherish that time, because when we talk about caring for the land and serving the
people, the archeological record provides an invaluable perspective related
to human use of natural resources.
For thousands of years people have been an integral part of the environment.
And lucky for us they left important evidence for us to examine, to better understand
how they survived, where they lived, the resources they used.
On a quiet day in the field you can clear your head
and the centuries melt away; a landscape comes alive.
You can almost hear voices of past inhabitants.
Through ensuring protection of our past, the National Historic Preservation Act allows
us to better understand the present and consider wise options for our future.
Happy Birthday.
Hi, I'm Heather Provencio, Forest Supervisor of the Kaibab National Forest.
I began my career as an archeologist.
My favorite part of the job was and still is interacting with the many tribes
of this region.
Tribal partnerships have taught me how to collaborate in meaningful ways to partner in
caring for the amazing resources we steward.
The tribes' perspectives and deep connections with this landscape,
their long oral history of these places, all inspire me.
The beauty of these sites, the stories they tell us about how people lived in the past,
and the beauty in the artifacts; whether paintings on pottery, extraordinary
architectural style, or finely made arrow points spur strong connections to public lands
and promote the desire to personally steward and protect these special places.
So I became an archeologist because one summer I went to Mexico and one of
the classes I took was an anthropology class, and I was completely hooked.
Archeology has its roots in anthropology, which is the study of human kind; which is
very broad, but it's all about people, it's all about culture, it's all about patterns of
behavior, it's all about the arts and crafts and the artifacts that people produce as
part of the way they live.
And I've always been intrigued by that.
When you live in the Southwest you're really in some ways in a very unique position to
meet with people who are still very much part of a traditional culture and a life way
that has roots going back not just hundreds of years but thousands of years.
The legacy of Spanish and Mexican land grants is also very much alive in the Southwest.
And many of the activities that Hispanic people continue to pursue today, everything
from ranching and collecting medicinal plants, and using the forest the way they do,
really dates back to the original settlements; the private land grants, as well as the
communal grants that they were granted by the king of Spain.
So I'm really very excited to be a part of Preservation50.
We have a unique role in our ability to not just work to conserve the remnants of
historical and prehistoric sites on the National Forest lands, but also to help people
know how much of this is still a part of the way people live today.