A04_SOW_Ethnographic_Study_Arrow_Canyon_FINAL_REVISED.docx

U.S. BUREAU OF LAND MANGEMENT

Las Vegas Field Office

Ethnographic Assessment of Arrow Canyon

STATEMENT OF WORK

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this Ethnographic Assessment is to identify Native American places of cultural and spiritual significance, traditional practices, and cultural features associated with Arrow Canyon. The outcome of this project will be a written ethnographic overview for Arrow Canyon that the BLM will use to:

· Identify historic sites and areas of traditional importance.

· Understand the context of such sites within the larger region.

· Assist with the evaluations of eligibility for such sites to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).

· Assist with the assessment of effects to historic properties from future undertakings, including the management of sediment accumulated behind Arrow Canyon Dam.

· Provide a better understanding of the breadth and nature of tribal associations, TCPs, sacred sites, traditional use areas, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge to ensure that management decisions comply with Section 106 of the NHPA, NEPA, AIRFA, FLPMA, Executive Order 13007, and other legal authorities.

BACKGROUND

Arrow Canyon is located in northern Clark County, Nevada, approximately 123 miles northwest of the unincorporated town of Moapa, Nevada. The Canyon follows the course of an intermittent stream, Pahranagat Wash, that flows from northwest to southeast, perpendicularly across the Arrow Canyon Mountain Range. The upper portion of the Canyon extends approximately 1.5 miles from Table Mountain through a wide flat-bottomed valley approximately 650 feet in width to a Civilian Conservation Corps era dam called Arrow Canyon Dam or Arrowhead Dam. Below the Dam, the Canyon becomes a deep, narrow, slot canyon that extends another 2.5 miles downstream. The Canyon bottom, several side drainages, areas above the rim of the Canyon and associated side canyons, and Table Mountain are part of the cultural landscape of interest for this project.

The Canyon, and its tributaries contain a large number of archaeological sites and areas of cultural and spiritual significance to several tribes within the region. Its geographic location is only a few miles upstream of the Moapa River Indian Reservation, but tribal affiliations with Arrow Canyon extend beyond the Moapa Band of Paiutes to groups living elsewhere in Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and California. These include:

· Fort Mojave Indian Tribes

· Las Vegas Paiute Tribe

· Chemehuevi Indian Tribe

· Colorado River Indian Tribes

· Fort Independence Indian Community of Paiute Indians

· Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians

· Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute Tribe (Owens Valley Paiute Benton Reservation )

· Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah

· San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe

· Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians

· Big Pine Paiute Tribe of the Owens Valley

· Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Tribe

· Hopi Tribe

The BLM is currently conducting a BLM Class III cultural resources inventory in upper Arrow Canyon and consulting with tribes on a project to protect cultural features within the upper canyon, manage invasive vegetation, and study the effects of sediment accumulation on cultural features located upstream of Arrow Canyon Dam. This Ethnographic Assessment will provide information that will inform this project, including BLM’s intended NRHP nomination of the upper portion of Arrow Canyon. The Ethnographic Assessment will also help inform any future management actions to address the effects of sediment accumulation behind the Dam and other threats to this important cultural landscape.

ETHNOGRAPHIC ASSESSMENT TASK

The Ethnographic Assessment will focus on the identification of specific places within the Ethnographic Assessment study area and it includes the steps below. All work associated with the Ethnographic Assessment will be conducted in compliance with provisions of federal legislation and policies. These include the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended; National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, as amended; American Indian Religious Freedom act of 1978, and Presidential Executive Orders (EOs) on consultation and sacred places (e.g., EO 13007 and13175), and Presidential Executive Memorandum on Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Federal Decision Making.

STEP 1. IDENTIFICATION OF TRIBES AND STUDY AREA; FORMALIZATION OF

INVOLVEMENT

The ethnographers, using communication protocols agreed upon by the BLM, will contact each tribe to determine if they would like to be directly involved in the Ethnographic Assessment, or if they would defer to another tribe to provide input. This initial effort will also include a preliminary elicitation of information regarding locations of traditional practices, places of cultural and religious significance, sacred sites. The Ethnographic Assessment study area will include upper Arrow Canyon, Table Mountain, and surrounding areas considered part of the Arrow Canyon landscape including important side canyons, including Hidden Canyon (aka War Shield Canyon) and lower Arrow Canyon.

Once a list of involved Tribes is determined, ethnographers and Tribal representatives will negotiate what level of involvement each Tribe will have. Key questions for Tribes with regard to involvement, which must be answered before interviews begin, include:

· Are there Tribal members who are present, able, and willing to participate in the Ethnographic Assessment who are knowledgeable about the Ethnographic Assessment study area? Participation would include being interviewed about features present within the Ethnographic Assessment study area, providing comments regarding concerns for the protection of features and the landscape, public use of the area, the effects of Arrow Canyon Dam including sedimentation and flood control.

· If interested and able, participation on the part of the Tribal representative may also include a site visit to the Ethnographic Assessment study area.

· Through what channels of communication should the ethnographer go to contact potential Tribal participants for interviews? Historically, leaders of Elder committees, Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, Tribal council members, or other Tribal representatives have served as “gatekeepers” or have otherwise recommended who should be involved in Ethnographic Assessments. The Tribe must determine what the proper channel is for communication so that expectations are clear and Tribal participants (typically Elders) are not bothered by multiple interview requests.

· To what extent does the Tribe want to review the results of the Ethnographic Assessment? By default, all Tribal participants interviewed as a part of the Ethnographic Assessment will have the opportunity to review field/interview notes related directly to their participation (i.e., notes from their interview and/or site visit). However, Tribes may want to involve larger review panels for the draft document. A period of review (e.g., 14 days, etc.) will also need to be determined.

· To what extent does the Tribe want BLM staff present during interviews?

Due to the sensitive nature of the information shared during the interview process, individual Tribal participants may not feel comfortable discussing places of cultural and religious significance with more than the ethnographer/interviewer. This may be particularly true when discussing concerns about anticipated project impacts and/or suggested treatment and mitigation measures. The Tribe (likely in conjunction with the Tribal participant to be interviewed) will need to clearly specify who is allowed to be present during interviews used to inform the Ethnographic Assessment.

STEP 2. ARCHIVAL AND LITERATURE REVIEW

The ethnographers will conduct a literature and archival records review of previous ethnographic research, as well as general ethnographic sources specific to Tribal groups affiliated with Arrow Canyon. The background review will utilize work compiled by other researchers in the region and will focus on identifying documented places of cultural and spiritual significance, traditional territories, and locations of traditional beliefs and practices that might be affected by the sediment accumulation or other impacts of the Arrow Canyon Dam, the proposed project to protect cultural resources, the NRHP nomination, visitors to public land, vegetation management or other land management actions.

The ethnographer will ascertain if there are any data gaps, conduct the necessary archival records and literature research to gather additional data, and synthesize the information in the ethnographic overview. Where data are available, the document will include a general description of the traditional geographic range and any anthropological, archaeological, biological, folkloric, geographical, historical, kinship, linguistic, oral, and/or other evidence that suggests a connection between the various Tribal groups and the ethnographic assessment study area.

STEP 3. FIELDWORK AND INTERVIEWS

The ethnographer will develop an interview protocol and will coordinate and conduct interviews and site visits with Tribal participants to identify and document places of cultural and religious significance and locations of traditional beliefs and practices that might be affected by the proposed project. The number of interviews and site visits will be determined according to the level of Tribal involvement, although the following are some assumptions for cost purposes based on BLM coordination with Tribes in this region:

· Many Tribes defer to the Moapa Band of Paiutes for consultation with BLM for projects in close proximity to the Muddy River Indian Reservation. The majority of meetings will be with members of the Moapa Band of Paiutes who have customarily preferred in-person meetings. On-site or in-person meetings with Tribal members from the Moapa Band of Paiutes should be anticipated.

· However, Arrow Canyon is important to several other Tribes who may have members interested in participating. It is likely that coordination meetings with most Tribes can be virtual, but participation by some Tribal members may need to be in-person. Visits to each Tribal region (southwestern Utah, northeastern Arizona and southern California) should be anticipated, as well as travel for Tribal members to Arrow Canyon for site visits.

Ethnographers will use a formal interview protocol, take notes during interviews, and, if permission is granted, the interviews will be digitally recorded (audio). The interviews will not be fully transcribed unless requested by the Tribe, but relevant quotes will be selected for inclusion in the draft document. All identified places will be recorded on appropriate forms and locations will be plotted using geographic information system software and in a format that meets the BLM-NV cultural resources standards found in the BLM-NV Guidelines and Standards for Archaeological Inventory (2019).

The interview protocol will be developed by the contractor, with BLM input and approval, and will include a number of questions, the exact language of which may or may not be used during the actual interview process. Depending on the nature, location, or people involved in the interview, the questions can be developed at a more personal level, eliciting more open responses. The questions included in the protocol should act as a foundation for questioning and are meant to be customizable to the point of personalization during the actual interview event. For example, “Does it have clear boundaries?” should be presented in the interview event while discussing a trail as, “Does this trail have clear boundaries? Or a clear starting point and end point?” At this point in the process, however, it is impossible to list all foreseeable permutations of questions to be used in the semi-structured, open-ended interview and the list in the interview protocol should be considered a starting point for the interview questions.

Participation on the part of the interviewee is entirely voluntary. Informed consent is a critical component to ethical inclusion of participants in this study. Therefore, prior to data collection, the researcher will, at minimum, review with each participant the research objective and purpose, research parameters, participation expectations, and how the information will be used. Persons choosing to participate in interviews will be asked to sign a release form authorizing the use of the interview information in the Ethnographic Assessment. This release form will also include permission to use images of the interviewee and permission to audio record the interviewee for the purposes of writing the Ethnographic Assessment; a wider distribution of the digital audio files is not planned, and the release form will explicitly state that a wider distribution is not permitted. An honorarium for interviewee participation is allowable and must adhere to the BLM policy for inclusion. Honoraria will be at the ethnographer’s expense.

STEP 4. DRAFT REPORT PRODUCTION

Preliminary results will be presented to representatives from the involved Tribes at organized meetings. The purpose of these meetings is to present the study results by the team and provide Tribal members with an opportunity to provide a first round of informal feedback and to suggest if anything vital is missing from the site visits or descriptions. Using the information collected during Steps 1 through 3, an Ethnographic Assessment will be prepared, to be excluded from public distribution, that discusses the following:

1. General ethnographic and ethnohistoric background of the Native American people who inhabited or otherwise utilized the ethnographic assessment study area.

2. Summarization of previous ethnographic research in the region.

3. Results of fieldwork, including the identification of places and a discussion of environmental concerns for specific places of cultural and spiritual significance and traditional beliefs and practices.

4. Summarization of other Tribal concerns not focused on specific properties.

5. Mitigation and management recommendations provided by the Tribal respondents.

The Ethnographic Assessment will also include an evaluation of Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs), if any are identified. The TCP evaluation will discuss (a) the specific places and the individual criteria that make that place/resource eligible for listing on the NRHP. This includes:

1. Establishing that the resource being reviewed for NRHP eligibility is a tangible “property” and defining the property’s boundaries in consideration of the traditional cultural uses identified.

2. Identification of the Native American Tribes or groups that ascribe traditional cultural significance to a proposed TCP site.

3. Demonstrating that associations exist between the property and cultural practices and/or beliefs that are rooted in the community’s history and are important in maintaining continuing cultural identity.

4. Discussion of the qualities of the property’s visual, auditory, and atmospheric setting that contribute to its significance.

5. Assessment of the property’s integrity of relationship and integrity of condition.

6. Evaluation of the property with reference to NRHP eligibility criteria considerations.

The study will be performed by a qualified professional anthropologist, following the style and ethics prescribed by the American Anthropological Association (http://www.americananthro.org/). The principle investigator (PI) on this project must meet the qualifications for an ethnographer, minus the language requirement, as described in Appendix II of the National Register Bulletin #38: Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Traditional Cultural Properties. The PI must have past experience working with the tribes in southern Nevada and knowledge of Arrow Canyon and affiliated areas.

The deliverable shall be consistent with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Preservation Planning, Identification, Evaluation, and Registration (where such standards are applicable), and follow “BLM Manual 8110 Guidance (Identifying and Evaluating Cultural Resources, 2004)” and the guidance in “BLM Handbook H-1780-1 Improving and Sustaining BLM-Tribal Relations" specifically related to the development of ethnographic studies (specifically Chapter IV.A.6.B.). Preferably, this includes ethical standards of practice that includes obtaining written or verbal informed consent for all tribal participants to ensure that tribal participants are aware of the ethnography purpose, methods, use of information, and the parameters of their involvement. All spatial data will be collected as outlined in Appendix F in the current edition of the Bureau of Land Management, Nevada State Office Guidelines and Standards for Archaeological Inventory (Standards). Spatial data will be submitted as part of the final deliverable and in accordance with the current BLM cultural resource management (CRM) data standard and as stated in Appendix C of the Standards.

All materials such as notes, photographs, reports, etc., acquired during the study remain the property of the United States Government and may be recalled at any time for the use of the Department of the Interior or other agencies of the Federal Government.

STEP 5. TRIBAL REVIEW AND FINAL REPORT PRODUCTION

As discussed above, Tribal representatives interviewed will be provided an opportunity to review notes during the fieldwork step. Tribes will need to formalize their expectations for review, but it is assumed here that Tribes will be given the opportunity to review the entire draft document for accuracy. The document will be distributed to the Tribal participants in draft form for review and comment.

Upon receipt of comments and edits from the involved Tribes, and BLM, the ethnographer will make the necessary changes and submit a final Ethnographic Assessment.

PROPOSED SCHEDULE

The Ethnographic Assessment effort will take place over an 25 month period.

Timeframe for each step:

· Step 1. Identification of Tribal participation and Study Area – Month 3.

· Step 2. Preliminary Archival and Literature Review – Month 6

· Step 3. Formalization of Involvement; Fieldwork and Interviews – Month 9

· Step 4. Data Analysis – Month 12

· Step 5. Draft Report Production – Month 16

· Step 6. Tribal Review and Final Report Production – Month 24

DELIVERABLES

· Prework Meeting. The contractor must hold a prework meeting with the BLM to discuss the project and work schedule. An outcome of this meeting will be a project schedule to be approved by the BLM.

· Email Notifications. The contractor shall notify the BLM before commencing fieldwork, and when field work is completed, by emailing the Technical Point of Contact (TPOC) and Contracting Officer Representative (COR). Email notifications to the TPOC and COR shall also be sent when the draft and final reports are mailed to the BLM. Reports shall be delivered to the TPOC.

· Monthly Progress Reports. BLM would like to see an email at the end of each month documenting progress made towards the final product.

· Draft Report. The contractor shall prepare a written report that combines the results of the literature review and interviews and syntheses the information. The draft report shall be digitally submitted to the BLM, in both MS Word and PDF format, for initial review and comment. The BLM will digitally return the draft with comments within a reasonable timeframe, which will be, at a minimum, at least 30 working days after receipt.

· Revised Report. The contractor shall make the appropriate revisions and prepare a revised draft report within 30 days of receipt. A hard copy of the revised draft report will be provided to the tribes that participated for a 60-day review (Contractor to provide BLM with hard copies, the BLM will distribute to the tribes). The BLM will compile comments and digitally return the revised draft to the contractor after the end of the tribal review period.

· Final Report. The contractor shall make the appropriate revisions and prepare a final report within 30 days of receipt. The contractor shall submit one hard copy and one digital copy of the final report to the BLM in PDF format.