Original Document: If folks could pry themselves out of their pits and forget the spurious equations of "cultural resource" with "archaeological site" and of "significance" with "research value," I think the validity of "banking" might be easier to grasp, PARTICULARLY with respect to tribal concerns. Imagine, for instance, that a tribe has a number of sites that it would really, really like to bring under its own protection -- major ancestral places, really vital spiritual places, and so forth. Imagine that it forms a program to acquire these sites, maybe bring them into trust. Imagine then that an agency that wants to destroy another site that's less vital to the tribe -- not of no importance at all, but one that's not likely to be preservable in the long run and that's just not as central to the tribe's identity as those in its "banking" program. Imagine that the agency can then contribute what it would otherwise pay to dig up the not-so-vital site to the tribe's site-banking fund, to be used to acquire vital sites. We've done such things on a case-by-case basis, using site-acquisition and donation to tribes, and contributions to tribal cultural centers and museums, as ways of mitigating impacts on traditional cultural places; I don't see why -- in theory -- it couldn't be done programmatically.
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This page last updated on 12/17/2005 04:34:49 AM |
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