Tribal Historic Preservation

Tribal Historic Preservation - As a Federally Recognized Tribal Government, Chickaloon Village Traditional Council has a designated Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO) to preserve our cultural heritage and protect our sacred places.  Utilizing a knowledge base of Ahtna language, values and traditions, the THPO consults with local, state, and federal agencies to ensure our cultural resources are not negatively impacted by projects. In addition, the THPO promotes inclusion of Tribal sites on the National Register of Historic Places and serves as an invaluable repository for cultural resource reports, archaeological records, and historic building archives.

The THPO acts as an extension of our sovereignty and is heavily involved in planning and compliance with federal agencies to ensure their undertakings comply with the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and other applicable laws. Examples of federal agencies include the US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Department of Agriculture, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, the Department of Housing and the Department of Transportation.  Chickaloon Village Traditional Council’s THPO reviews project proposals and engages in government-to-government consultation on projects like highway road construction, community site development projects, and other economic endeavors.

Implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is yet another vital responsibility of our THPO.  The act addresses the lineage rights of Indian Tribes and Native American cultural items. These include human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and articles of Tribal inheritance. Chickaloon Village Traditional Council’s THPO oversees repatriation activities from museum and agency collections and when there are incidental discoveries of culturally significant items on Federal and other lands.  In this role, the THPO works with other officials to return Ahtna ancestors and objects to our homelands for traditional burials.

CVTC Historic Preservation Plan

Goal 1: Protect and preserve cultural resources in CVTC’s area of influence. Increase knowledge and understanding of Chickaloon Village Traditional Council’s (CVTC’s) Dene heritage and how this knowledge intersects with history to provide a material basis for self-determination and holistically connect to our Indigenous cultural identity.

Objectives:

1. Engage with Elders, Spiritual Leaders, and Culture Bearers to develop a multifaceted understanding of our histories, landscape, and traditional ways of being.
2. Recover knowledge and materials on Dene Heritage from cultural sites, interviews, collections, archives, and oral histories.
3. Advocate and create educational opportunities for Tribal citizens, local communities, and visitors to raise awareness and promote the history and culture of the Dene including interactions and interconnections among Indigenous Peoples.

Goal 2: Identify new, and strengthen existing, relationships to preserve, protect, educate about, and advocate for cultural resources

Objectives:

1. Identify and strengthen relationships globally with other Indigenous Peoples, cultural groups, organizations, non-profits, institutions, and governments.
2. Expand opportunities for collaboration with Indigenous Peoples and their communities, cultural groups, organizations, non-profits, institutions, and governments.
3. Encourage coordination, cooperation, and collaboration with Tribal, local, state, federal, and international government agencies regarding consultation, reclamation, reparations, representation, and research design on projects regarding cultural resources. This coordination, cooperation, and collaboration will incorporate the framework of current historic preservation laws regarding compliance including the Alaska Historic Preservation Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and advisement from the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

Goal 3: Identify, document, and designate CVTC Dene cultural resources

Objectives:

1. Improve and expand cultural resource inventories. Conduct surveys and inventories proactively for Tribal use with the ethic of environmental and cultural resource stewardship. Cultural inventories shall document interactions between our people with animal habitats, vegetation, minerals, and within the waters, land and sky. CVTC reserves the right to utilize survey methodologies in line with Indigenous protocols, landscape knowledge and wayfinding. Surveys shall recognize relational geographies through investigations including but not limited to:

• trails and trail connectivity
• seasonal cycles
• vegetation
• culturally modified trees
• habitat
• animal use and animal behavior
• areas of harvest
• landscape
• viewsheds
• soundscapes
• spirituality and renewal
• ceremony sites

2. Prepare more relevant historic context. Highlight Indigenous knowledge and displace colonial constructions of time, place, and narrative with Dene-centric terminology including relevant cultural resource documentation.
3. Increase Significant Site listings. Increase cultural resource site recognition on the CVTC site geodatabase and Alaska Heritage Resources Survey where appropriate including but not limited to trails, culturally modified trees, settlements, landmarks, hunting and gathering places, and significant landscapes. Nominate for listing on the National Register and as Traditional Cultural Properties, Spiritual and Cultural Landscapes, National Historic Landmarks, and National Monuments.

Goal 4: Reclaim CVTC’s cultural resources.

Objectives:

1. Encourage appropriate treatment of cultural resources that are curated in cultural collections (physical and virtual/digital) with a stewardship ethic following appropriate ancestral traditions and protocols.
2. Identify and develop ways to respectfully protect our cultural heritage threatened by natural and manmade causes.
3. Position historic preservation to be more fully integrated into federal, state, local, and Tribal governments for land use decision making processes.
4. Develop and implement appropriate curation and collection standards with guidance from Tribal Elders, Culture Bearers, and Spiritual Leaders.
5. Develop a curation and repository facility for CVTC and Dene cultural heritage.
6. Develop and implement appropriate repatriation standards and policies on items of importance to the Dene with Tribal Elders, Culture Bearers, and Spiritual Leaders. The CVTC THPO recognizes the process of repatriation includes cultural heritage and human remains:

• Disturbed, recovered, or salvaged during cultural resource management project activity,
• Currently curated at collections facilities around the world,
• Institutions that have requested a response,
• Human remains related to CVTC family who are currently interred in a context for which a Chickaloon Native Village Tribal citizen did not consent,
• Regaining and acquiring research and research samples from previous studies conducted at various institutions.

Goal 5: Help CVTC Tribal citizens thrive by increasing awareness of the

environmental and social benefits of historic preservation.

Objectives:

1. Promote cultural and heritage sites to sustain site preservation.
2. Emphasize the environmental benefits of historic preservation.
3. Promote and illustrate the sociocultural positive impacts to well-being related to historic preservation

Goal 6: Strengthen Indigenous preservation efforts.

Objectives:

1. Assist Alaska Native governmental and non-governmental organizations with their preservation efforts.
2. Encourage state and local governments to address Government to Government issues including but not limited to consultation for state and federal permits and projects.
3. Increase training among the diverse professionals involved in historic preservation and cultural resources including Tribes in the identification, documentation, and designation of cultural resources.
4. Increase Tribal coordination and training for working with Section 106 and improving Government to Government consultations.