Beyond Bulletin 38 Comments on the Traditional Cultural Properties Symposium

A s co-author, with Patricia L. Parker, of National Register Bulletin 38 (Parker and King 1990), I am much cheered by the preceding papers. As did the symposia that produced them, they show that traditional cultural properties have become the focus of intellectual ferment in and around historic preservation. Moreover, they illustrate a kind of cross-cultural ferment that should be healthy for preservation and intercultural communication alike. In commenting on them, I do not propose to pick nits. Instead, I will focus on a few of the major issues that they raise, and offer some observations on them from my peculiar perspective. Many of the papers point to the issuance of Bulletin 38 as a pivotal event, before which traditional cultural properties were widely ignored, after which agencies began to take them seriously. We intended for Bulletin 38 to have an impact, so it is good to learn that it apparently has caused people to sit up and take notice. It may be worth stressing, however, that Bulletin 38 did not in any way expand or otherwise change the National Register or its criteria for inclusion. Nor did Congress, when in 1992 it added Section 101(d)(6) to the National Historic Preservation Act, explicitly stating that Native American sacred sites (a particular kind of traditional cultural property) may be determined eligible for the Register. Traditional cultural properties have been included in the Register, and determined eligible for inclusion, since the Register's earliest days. My first Section 106 case, back in 1971, involved a traditional cultural property that was included in the Register— Tahquitz Canyon in Palm Springs, California. Tahquitz happened to have archeological sites in it, but it was the canyon's role in the cultural traditions of the Cahuilla Indian people—as their origin place and as home to the spirit Tahquitz—that impressed the Advisory Council when the Corps of Engineers' plan to throw a dam across the canyon came up for review. In the mid-1980s we observed that agencies, SHPOs, and others were becoming confused about whether and how traditional cultural properties were eligible for the Register, particularly where such properties were significant " only " to Native American groups, lacked architectural or archeological signatures, and had religious connotations. The infamous case of the San Francisco Peaks (c.f. ACHP 1985:65) was particularly persuasive in demonstrating that something had to be done. After some political pushing and pulling, Bulletin 38 was what …