Historical artifacts are preserved to maintain their existing state primarily to protect the historical narrative’s integrity for future generations. The responsibility to safeguarding the treasures is generally carried out covertly by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) which seeks to advance global peace and security. This essay adopts the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe, investigating how the administration can meet the UNESCO criteria while reconstructing the site for relevance. The primary goal is to examine all the regulations and determine what appropriate actions should be taken within the legal, moral and economic context. The discussion aims to demystify how the regulations support each other, contradict each other and the most informed course of action for the NPS to optimize the site’s value. Similar to other prehistoric sites across the world, there is a workaround that would allow the administration at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park to meet the intent of the regulations but satisfy the need to show a site worthy of World Heritage designation.
The UNESCO Criteria
The management of Hopewell Culture National Historical Park shall take 10 provisions under the UNESCO selection criteria into account. Explorers should ensure proof of excellent prehistoric human works since the site must first represent a masterpiece of human creative brilliance. The location must demonstrate a significant exchange of human values on advancements in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning, or landscape design over time or within a particular cultural region of the globe. Similarly, the administration must position the site to provide a unique or at least extraordinary testament to a live or extinct civilization, cultural heritage, or both.
The fourth criterion asks the management of the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park to show that the park is an excellent example of a kind of building, architectural or technical ensemble, or landscape that depicts important junctures in human history. The location must be an exceptional illustration of a traditional human habitation, land usage, or marine use that reflects culture, culture, or human connection with the environment, particularly when that environment has become fragile due to irreversible change. Similarly, UNESCO demands that the site be directly or visibly linked to historical occurrences, contemporary customs, concepts, or beliefs and to exceptional works of literature and art with global value.
The location must meet the seventh selection criterion, which calls for it to have exceptional natural occurrences or regions of great natural beauty and aesthetic significance. The location must also exhibit exceptional originality in depicting crucial epochs in the earth’s history, such as the record of life, significant ongoing geological processes in the formation of landforms, or noteworthy geomorphic or physiographic characteristics. In a similar vein, the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park ought to make an effort to demonstrate its ability to represent important ongoing ecological and biological processes in the growth and evolution of terrestrial, surface water, seaside, and underwater ecosystems, community members of plants and animals. The site must have the most significant and vital natural habitats for the in-situ conservation of biological diversity, especially those home to vulnerable species that have exceptional importance from a scientific or conservation standpoint.
Evaluating Hopewell Culture National Historical Park against the UNESCO Criteria
Hopewell Culture National Historical Park meets most of the UNESCO selection. For instance, per provisions I, III and VII of the UNESCO criteria, the site is characterized by evidence of a sophisticated culture that met two thousand years ago to perform religious rites and rituals important to their community. They constructed a massive earthwork structure covering over 130 acres at this location (NPS, 2022a). An enormous holy area with 29 burial mounds was surrounded by an earthen wall over two miles long. Countless works of exquisitely produced art made of rare elements were interred here as part of ceremonial funeral rites. In the late 1800s, the archaeological field had never encountered the civilization unearthed at this site (NPS, 2022a). Previously undiscovered civilizations are often given their original location’s name.
Similarly, under provisions VI and VIII of the UNESCO Criteria, the site has evidence of agricultural land, which at the time belonged to a young man named Mordecai Hopewell, which was thus chosen as the inspiration for the culture’s appellation. In honor of a primarily unknown Chillicothe landowner, a spectacular American Indian culture that is said to have spanned from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico was named (NPS, 2022a). Although the tribe names of these people have been forgotten through the ages, the prehistoric American Indians who constructed this massive edifice were a part of a cultural heyday in this area beginning in A.D. 1 through 400 (NPS, 2022c). A zenith of success in the disciplines of art, psychology, arithmetic, and manufacturing, the equivalent of which were rarely again shown through eastern North America, may be found in the enormous structures and treasures of the Hopewell tribe.
Hopewell Archeology is per Provisions VII and X
Hopewell Culture National Historical Park has extracted evidence of artifacts that demonstrate compliance with provisions VII and X of the UNESCO Criteria. For the benefit of the American people, the National Park Service is responsible for handling the nation’s priceless ecological and historic treasures. Several scholars working for Hopewell Culture National Historical Park are responsible for preserving the commemoration, instructional, analytical, and customary cultural qualities of archaeological treasures for future generations. The data from their studies is used as a resource for accurate and precise public interpretations; their work is a vital component of park management and improves the park’s resources.
Hopewell Materials As Evidence for Compliance with UNESCO Criteria VI
UNESCO criteria VI requires that the site demonstrates tangible ties to great, universally significant works of art and literature, historical occurrences or ongoing traditions, ideas or beliefs. Hopewell Culture National Historical Park has evidence that the People of the Hopewell civilization-built earthworks as meeting spots and ceremonial sites. Archaeologists frequently discover objects within and around these structures that had probably great significance to the individuals who set them there. Intricate ceremonial artifacts were made from these components 2000 years ago (NPS, 2022e). Individuals who belonged to the Hopewell Culture travelled to and from what is now Ohio, carrying these “mysterious” elements with them (NPS, 2022e). They met individuals from various native civilizations as far north as the upper peninsula of what became the state of Michigan and as far southward as the Gulf of Mexico as they journeyed on foot and by watercraft as far west as the Rocky Mountains.
History and Culture
Similarly, following selection criteria VI and IX, the park preserves the ancient artifacts of vibrant social and cultural phenomena that thrived in eastern North America’s forests between 200 B.C. and 500 A.D. (NPS, 2022d). Various Native American communities’ shared economic, governmental, and spiritual ideas and practices are referred to as “Hopewell” in this context. The building of enclosures with earthen walls, which frequently have geometric shapes built in, and heaps of varied incarnations are characteristics of the civilization. The people of this culture were connected to other cultures through a network that spanned the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic coast (NPS, 2022d). The Hopewell gathered various objects, including mica, shark’s teeth, obsidian, copper, and marine shells, because of their network of connections.
Legal, Moral and Economic Justifications for Reconstruction
Despite meeting most of the UNESCO selection criteria, Hopewell Culture National Historical Park fails to satisfy prevision I, which requires the site to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius. UNESCO acknowledges the need for reconstruction of the site to demonstrate evidence of works of genius that might be beyond imagination from the current setting. Native Americans want accessibility to and restoration of cultural objects and ancestors’ remains that are crucial to the well-being of their communities. The impact of Hopewell Culture National Historical Park on local and international communication provided a basis for reconstruction that could be justified from the legal, moral and economic perceptive.
Legal Justifications for Reconstruction
The Hopewell Culture National Historical Park administration needs to recognize that the U.S. government has several statutory provisions that demonstrate official guidelines and legislation, especially regarding safeguarding historical and ecological resources. These laws and regulations also call for regard to the potential effects that governmental actions may have on these resources. The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) highlights the need for establishing national guidance in furthering historic preservation as an essential American policy (Redaelli, 2021). The NHPA gives the federal government the mandate to oversee the national welfare model in collaboration with state and municipal governments, promoting the protection of historical and archaeological treasures.
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
Native Americans based on cultural items must be returned to grandchildren and ethnically associated American Indian tribes, Alaska Native villages, and Native Hawaiian groups under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which applies to all governmental institutions and agencies that receive government funding (Williams, 2021). Skeletal bones, funeral things, religious goods, and cultural heritage items are all examples of traditional items (NPS, 2022b). The repatriation process is accompanied by a government funding program and institutions that do not comply with legal risk fines from the Secretary of the Interior. On government or tribal properties, the NAGPRA specifies protocols for the unintentional discovery or deliberate extraction of Native American cultural artifacts (NPS, 2022b). The collecting requirements of the Act may apply to Native American cultural objects if they fall under the control of an organization that gets federal support, even if these restrictions do not extend to finds or explorations on government or private property.
The law makes an effort to resolve a substantial conflict between the communities’ collective interests in treating their departed relatives and associated cultural objects with respect and the scientific community’s interests in studying those same human bones and objects. The statute establishes two fundamental categories for how American Indian body bones, funeral artifacts, holy objects, and cultural heritage objects should be handled (NPS, 2022b). Federal officials must seek advice from potential lineal descendants or American Indian tribal representatives as part of their compliance obligations under the unintentional exploration and scheduled archaeological dig element of the Act and regulations if they believe that operations on national and tribal lands may have an impact on American Indian burials.
Land Management Law
Native Americans must be informed of the laws mandating federal property management to create plans for managing resources and the land. The National Forest Management Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and the National Park Service Organic Act (Keiter & McKinney, 2019). All require the creation of planning processes that consider scenic, contextual, and cultural issues in addition to consulting with Indian tribes about their sacred places (Schultz et al., 2019). For instance, the Bureau of Land Management’s directive organization involves Manuals, Handbooks, Guidance Memoranda, and Information Bulletins that outline standards controlling agency processes and Native American engagement procedures.
Actions of Public Administrators on Law
Cultural connections can be demonstrated using a variety of evidence types, such as geographic, familial, biological, archaeological, anthropological, linguistic, oral tradition, historical, or other pertinent data, or expert opinion. To establish that the claimants have a legitimate link to the items, there must be continuity between materials from modern Indian tribes and those from historical or ancient Indian tribes. The advisory board is fully conscious that, when it comes to human remnants and funerary items, it may be complicated, unfair, or even unattainable for petitioners to demonstrate an exact line of descent from modern Indian tribes to older dinosaur fossil continues to remain without some comprehensible gaping holes in the historical or antediluvian record. In such cases, a determination of cultural affinity should not be disregarded only due to discrepancies in the record but should be founded on an overall assessment of the facts. The evidence relevant to the link between the claimant and the claimed object must be interrogated.
Moral Justifications for Reconstruction
Cooperation with Natives
Restoration of the historical glory of a community has a moral angle as it reestablishes a sense of meaning and belonging for the community. In such efforts under the UNESCO provisions, Native Americans must be consulted early in the development’s planning stages and given information about the project’s objectives by federal authorities. Native Americans must be open and honest about their issues to respect their religious and cultural standards so that appropriate action may be taken to address them (Weibel-Orlando, 2020). Whenever a development may impact properties listed in or considered for inclusion in the National Register, a government agency is required to confer with any Indian tribes that may be interested in the project (Weibel-Orlando, 2020). This necessitates a sincere attempt to discover tribes that could attach religious and cultural value to locations on and off-reservation land.
More than just physical harm to the property or its cultural resources might have a negative impact. For instance, it might entail altering the setting’s physical characteristics, such as a visual, acoustic, or auditory intrusion brought on by the building projects of a nearby area cellphone tower or hydropower plant, logging or quarrying of environmental assets, explorative drilling, or even a rise in the number of trucks using roads to transport logs or carry out drilling operations. Without sufficient safeguards for Native American places, the sale, rent, or transference of a property outside of government ownership or control may have unfavorable consequences.
Protecting Native American Resources Against Private Organizations
Protecting native American resources against exploitation by private organizations has a moral impact on the aboriginal communities. There are concerns that many of the laws and rules governing the return of Native American bodies and the preservation of their cultural artifacts have a criminal bent. From amoral perspective, the process of repatriating certain types of American Indian historical items from museums around the world preserves the lineal ancestors and Indian tribe’s dignity (Keiter & McKinney, 2019). Common issues include religious artifacts, items used in burial rituals, human bones, and other relics from past civilizations. The cultural value or rights associated with specific goods can quickly go unnoticed without input.
Before granting a license for excavating or demolition work, a federal public administration must give at least 30 days’ notice to the chief executive officer or authorized tribal representative of any Indian tribe that could regard the site to have religious or cultural significance. Other Native American tribes that the federal land administrator is aware of may also get a notice from the land management to evaluate possibly impacted sites to be of religious or cultural significance (Wilkins & Stark, 2017). In order to address their concerns and potential measures to prevent, lessen, or mitigate any harm or devastation, such as omitting sites from the permission area, leading members of a Native American tribe or group may seek to speak with federal land management in person (Wilkins & Stark, 2017). Any mitigating actions that the management accepts must be outlined in the permit’s contract terms.
Preserving Historic America
Preserving the history of the country provides a basis for moral principles that could be learnt from ancient knowledge. In preserving the moral insights from history, a property’s historic charm must be given the highest priority. A property’s distinctive characteristics, spaces, and spatial relationships should not be altered or replaced with new, salvageable historical elements. Each piece of real estate should be seen as a tangible record of its place, function, and history. Existing historical elements and characteristics should be stabilized, consolidated, and conserved as much as possible (DeSantis, 2020). The current state of historic features will soon be assessed to determine the necessary amount of intervention (DeSantis, 2020). The new material will be identical in composition to the old when the severity of degradation necessitates repair or limited replacement of a distinguishing characteristic.
Economic Justifications for Reconstruction
Tourism Administration of the Native American Historical Preservation
Improving the economic relevance of archeological sites is critical in the long-term impact of the facility as a resource in the community. UNESCO is a proponent of rebuilding acknowledging the need for economic relevance for archaeological sites for sustenance and relevance. Part of the purpose of the World Heritage Grant is to increase tourism so the experience a person has is as important as the preservation aspect. With locals, tourism frequently leads to conflict and anger, especially once it is actual effects become apparent. Indigenous peoples have seen several instances of tourism’s detrimental effects throughout antiquity, and these effects are still being felt today. The existence of indigenous peoples has been challenged for more than a century in the United States by the establishment of nature reserves, safe havens, and national parks (Nilson & Thorell, 2018). These regions were created with ideas that forbade following customary practices. The people who had long since lived there and conserved the environment were driven from their homes.
Indigenous peoples’ dependence on local resources decreases as a result of tourism, which increases their reliance on a globalized economy. The traditional tourist business has pushed a conditioned emotional on a foreigner, cyclical, season economy, which encourages industrialization, and imports and creates a mechanism for selling community suppliers outside of the community (Nilson & Thorell, 2018). The globalization of tourism puts at risk indigenous peoples’ experience and understanding and proprietary rights, as well as their techniques, capacity to transform, belief systems, holy sites, social, institutional, wildlife, ecosystems, financial systems, and fundamental rights to knowledgeable comprehension. It also turns indigenous peoples into just another consumer good that is quickly running out of resources.
Today, many proponents of indigenous rights think that all progress should be founded on respecting each community’s rights and sovereignty. Additionally, it must be based on a properly informed agreement. As more indigenous peoples get the chance to address these crucial topics together, the discourse is changing. While some indigenous tribes in the North claim to favor adopting the Western way, others make it quite evident that they are opposed to a fair distribution of rewards.
Native Americans are on the cusp of the new millennium with a combination of “modern” and “traditional” understandings. Concerns and knowledge about ongoing environmental degradation are growing. More “development” such as road construction, forestry, oil extraction, and additional tourism is frequently paved over by tourism (Richards, 2018). Health issues are also a problem since visitors expose native people to illnesses like T.B. They should request acknowledgment as legitimate designers and collaborators of conservation and development plans that have an impact on their areas. They are creating global legislation, world-changing suggestions, and educational initiatives. They are dealing with very complicated issues that impact human rights, the environment, biodiversity, and intellectual property protection.
The monetization of culture, land displacement or expropriation, and adjustments to local populations’ values and way of life are all potential effects of tourism and tourist development. When the tourist sector expands, indigenous tribes frequently experience these repercussions. High rate of visitations can lower people’s quality of life by driving up housing costs, restricting their access to employment prospects, and exposing them to improper usage of public places. Tourism has an impact on social transformation, management of natural resources, political economics, and culture and identity (Richards, 2018). Only a small number of nations and civilizations today have not experienced tourism or its effects. As a consequence, tourism is becoming more prevalent in the more isolated locations that generally fascinate anthropologists the most.
NPS and Tribal Tourism
Due to geography, history, and culture, national parks and the stories and traditions of the early inhabitants of the country regularly cross paths in different parts of the United States. Numerous national parks serve as ancestral homes and are crucial for preserving cultural identity (Stoffle et al., 2020). Numerous partnerships between communities and the NPS have recently centered on enhancing native perspectives in park tourist experiences and promoting the growth of tribal tourism.
These partnerships may assist Indian Country in connecting its historical perspectives and traditional vibrancy to contemporary settings, exhibiting native viewpoints and stories that are woven throughout the history of the United States. The National Park Service, now in its second century of governance, keeps working with tribal collaborators and assisting native tourism in recognition of the rise in popularity of travel to Indian Country and the advantages of economic growth, and the appearance and retention of native history and culture that follow.
Actions of Public Administrators on Tourism
Although tourism entails advertising places to visit, which helps to tell people about history, it has many disadvantages when viewed from the other side. The job of a public administrator is to listen to public opinion and make sure that their requests find a way to be fulfilled in real life (Baptista et al., 2019). This indicates that from the point of view of tourism, it is better to take into account the opinions of the indigenous population, which are the direct descendants of this place, to ask: is it worth developing tourism in this place? Obviously, this option is the easiest as an additional income because locals just need to equip the infrastructure around the sites. The public administrator must take care that the impact of tourism does not change the atmospheric perception of the sites and does not harm the indigenous people for whom this place is not just a site but part of their culture.
Indigenous people should be interested in promoting a place that means more to other people. The public administrator must make the maximum possible amount of effort so that if they start developing tourism, then such that it does not harm the sites (Baptista et al., 2019). The public administrator must make sure that the territory of the sites is not damaged in any way during the construction of tourism infrastructure; otherwise, this will lead to damage to the cultural heritage, which will lead to resentment not only among the indigenous people.
Funding of Historic Preservation
For a tribe running a tribal heritage conservation office, finance is frequently one of the critical challenges because they are a non-profit corporation. Although the National Park Service offers cash to tribes that adhere to the grant’s conditions and submit a replacement request each fiscal year, the amount of funding is modest (Tyler et al., 2018). Less money is available for each community as more tribes take up the duties of tribal heritage preservation. Tribes must thus take into account financial possibilities while creating their tribal heritage conservation strategy in order to guarantee that they can adequately support the aims of heritage areas; alternative sources of funding do exist (Tyler et al., 2018). To augment funding from the National Park Service, the majority of tribal heritage conservation offices run their programs with alternate funding sources. Various financing possibilities are possible, depending on the objectives of the tribal program.
Numerous initiatives receive partial funding from the tribe for whom they are run. The tribe will eventually decide if financing is available. Nevertheless, the tribe is often ready to pay for a portion of the staff members’ salaries and benefits. If more personnel are obliged to take out the heritage conservation plan and the tribe is unable to support all of the workers financially, there are various alternative sources of financing available.
Tribal Historical Preservation
Cultural and traditional education can be facilitated by tribal heritage conservation agencies for both tribe members and non-tribal members. Programs are utilized to teach tribe members respectful treatment of human remains and non-intrusive archeological techniques (DeSantis, 2020). Elders have the chance to participate in the program through participating in oral history projects. Working with elders gives respondents the chance to interact with different seniors from different groups; as a consequence, investigators learn culturally suitable techniques to ask questions (DeSantis, 2020). Indirect benefits of many tribes’ collaboration with government departments and agencies include the promotion of non-tribal people’s consciousness of and enlightenment about the tribe’s values and culture.
Tribal Economic Development
Although the relationship between tribal heritage conservation and tribe economic growth is not well understood, specific initiatives may have some influence. In indigenous communities, some programs create heritage tourism initiatives (Jorgenson, 2020). Traveling to or stopping by locations that symbolize both past and contemporary cultures can be presented as heritage. These locations could have historical, economic, or environmental values. Providing tourists with a culturally rich encounter that people can only get from that site is the aim of tourism destinations.
Programs can help tribal economies grow, but it is essential to remember that they can sometimes work against them. Many tribes want to maintain and preserve important cultural and historical sites, and therefore occasionally, this desire might get in the way of an economic endeavor (Jorgenson, 2020). This may occur, for instance, if a scheduled forestry wood sale takes place in the center of a culturally significant landmark. If the feature is essential and the tribe wants to conserve it, a sizable portion of the timber sale can be cut out, resulting in fewer acres available for sale and, eventually, less money.
Emerging Contradictions
Despite the benefits from reconstruction as recommended by the UNESCO, such efforts contradict some of the legal provisions such as the Archaeological Resources Protection Act. Besides providing guidance on permits, the ARPA prohibits the trafficking of archaeological resources that were removed wrongfully under federal law and makes illegal the trafficking in interstate or foreign commerce of resources which were obtained wrongfully under state or local law. The effect of an elaborated reconstruction is however often preferred over the truthfulness of the underlying sources. Although there are guidelines and charters promoting a good way of documenting and presenting, they are often ignored. Hopewell Culture National Historical Park needs to make deliberate attempts to adhere to the NHPA and the UNESCO provision in managing the site.
Conclusion
The NPS should go forward in restoring the value of the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in accordance with the 10 stipulations under the UNESCO selection criteria based on the proposed legal, moral, and economic perspective. In order to demonstrate that the claimants have a legitimate relationship to the goods, consistency between the artifacts from modern Indian tribes and those from ancient or antique Indian tribes is required. The Working Group is fully aware that, in the absence of any understandable gaps in the chronological or atavistic history of human remains and burial items, it may be difficult, unfair, or even impossible for complainants to demonstrate an exact line of descent from modern Indian tribes to older dinosaur skeletons.
In such cases, a determination of shared culture should not be made solely on the basis of discrepancies in the supporting documentation, but rather on a thorough examination of all the information and supporting documentation relevant to the relationship between the applicant and the object in question. The native population’s concern and perception of the situation at the site should be the public administrator’s main concern. In order for the development of the site to be in line with the locals as direct ancestors, the NPS must continue to communicate with the indigenous people. The indigenous people must have a direct say in this part of the site’s development, and the public administrator must recognize that tourism is both important and contentious.
References
Baptista, J. L., Pocinho, M., & Nechita, F. (2019). Tourism and public policy.Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series V: Economic Sciences, 77-86. Web.
DeSantis, M. (2020). The federal role in historic preservation: An overview.Congressional Research Service. Web.
Jorgenson, J. G. (2020). Gaming and recent American Indian economic development. In American Nations. Routledge. 468-479. Web.
Keiter, R. B., & McKinney, M. (2019). Public land and resources law in the American west.Environmental Law, 49(1), 1-72. Web.
NPS. (2022a). Hopewell culture NHP distance learning program. Nps.Gov. Web.
NPS. (2022b). Native American graves protection and repatriation act (U.S. national park service). Nps.Gov. Web.
NPS. (2022c). Science & research – Hopewell culture national historical park (U.S. national park service). Nps.Gov. Web.
NPS. (2022d). History & culture – Hopewell culture national historical park (U.S. national park service). Nps.Gov. Web.
NPS. (2022e). Hopewell exotic materials – Hopewell culture national historical park (U.S. national park service). Nps.Gov. Web.
Nilson, T., & Thorell, K. (2018). Cultural heritage preservation: The past, the present, and the future. Web.
Richards, G. (2018). Cultural tourism: A review of recent research and trends.Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 36, 12-21. Web.
Stoffle, R., Seowtewa, O., Kays, C., & Van Vlack, K. (2020). Sustainable heritage tourism: Native American preservation recommendations at arches, canyonlands, and hovenweep national parks.Sustainability, 12(23), 9846. Web.
Schultz, C. A., McCaffrey, S. M., & Huber-Stearns, H. R. (2019). Policy barriers and opportunities for prescribed fire application in the western United States.International journal of wildland fire, 28(11), 874-884. Web.
Tyler, N., Tyler, I. R., & Ligibel, T. J. (2018). Historic preservation: An introduction to its history, principles, and practice. WW Norton & Company.
Redaelli, E. (2021). Including preservation in planning: Albina and Portland’s comprehensive plan.Journal of the American Planning Association, 87(2), 266-281. Web.
Weibel-Orlando, J. (2020). The Contemporary Native American Experience. The Cultural Context of Aging: Worldwide Perspectives, 191.
Wilkins, D. E., & Stark, H. K. (2017). American Indian politics and the American political system. Rowman & Littlefield.
Williams, J. (2021). Provinces of Meaning: Determining Cultural Affiliation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.The American Indian Quarterly, 45(3), 272-293. Web.