Foundations for Indigenous Heritage

Indigenous History
Written By Preservation Austin

BY ROCIO PEÑA-MARTINEZ

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Indigenous heritage sites in the United States are often targeted for vandalism, theft, or destruction. Research and education is needed to understand this large part of United States history and identity, however, information provided for educational purposes may instead be used to cause harm. We are aware and concerned about this possibility. We rely on the personal responsibility of anyone choosing to engage with this information to act conscientiously. The best practice for engaging with Indigenous artifacts is not to disturb, touch or remove them. For our part, our organization will not share known burial grounds or exact addresses.

Indigenous peoples and their histories have been and continue to be diverse. There is no easy answer or single source of truth for understanding these histories. A couple of recommended books relevant to Indigenous heritage and preservation are Say We Are Nations by Daniel M. Cobb and Prophets and Ghosts by Samuel J. Redman. 

Figure 1. Interpretive marker at the Texas Historical Commisssion’s French Legation site. Markers for major sites in Austin tend to paint Indigenous peoples as enemies. More recently there is acknowledgment of Indigenous contributions, but they are anonymous and relegated to the past.

This article is the first attempt by Preservation Austin to honor Indigenous histories in Austin. This reflects both the evolution of preservation as a movement and how long Indigenous heritage has been overlooked. The information provided here should serve as an introduction to understanding Indigenous heritage and an invitation to fill in the gaps. 

The term Indigenous is used here to refer to ethnocultural groups that developed in what we now call the Americas before disruption by white settlers. Other terms are commonly used, including Indian (preferred by the federal government) and Native (preferred by some members of the community.

While site-based preservation works well for other histories, Indigenous heritage is not often contained by buildings or documented events. Indigenous heritage is imbued in entire landscapes and systems - the places before places became what we understand now. Therefore, some context is necessary for the site-based research that follows.

In Austin there are 467 markers and memorials registered in the Historic Markers Database. At the time of this writing, only 20 of these markers refer to Indigenous peoples (4%). Of these, the majority of markers memorialize violence against an Indigenous person or entire group. Although we know logically this reflects bias, these markers and their narratives are the evidence available to anyone interacting with local preservation.

At Shoal Creek, a location that holds extraordinary Indigenous history in relation to the City of Austin, there is a marker that states Indigenous people committed a massacre near Seider Springs. The marker is inaccurate, but it represents the ways historic preservation can serve to vilify Indigenous peoples. A similar marker exists at Mount Bonnell casually mentioning the killing of an unnamed person. No reason is given for the noteworthy killing, all we are told is that the person killed was ‘Indian’ - we are meant to understand that is reason enough. In 2020, a companion marker was erected acknowledging that the site selected for the French Legation was a hilltop extensively used by Indigenous peoples. The marker does not identify these peoples further, even though archeological evidence places them at this site for thousands of years. 

When Indigenous people are identified more specifically in preservation contexts, there are often inaccuracies or omissions of the basic details of personhood. In 2023, Comanche Peak near Lake Travis received a historic marker which is unique in that it acknowledges a specific group, the Numunu, as well as their contributions to our modern relations to geography. However, the only individual recognized by name is a white man. This marker is, “the only peak, and maybe the only natural feature (not a man-made thing, e.g. street, subdivision) named for an American Indian tribe in Travis County.”

Part of the issue is problematic sources. Most of the materials relied upon as primary sources for Indigenous history have been authored by people who are not Indigenous. Both historical and current accounts overwhelmingly come from parties actively invested in the removal, subjugation, or extermination of Indigenous peoples - an obvious conflict of interest. The motivation for sources can also be problematic. Historically, the sensationalism of Indigenous history has proven more profitable than nuanced factual retelling [Figure 2a/b].

Figure 2. Depredatory history materials have been very popular, and profitable, among non-Indigenous people. 

Our most relied-upon academic sources come from the field of salvage anthropology. Salvage anthropology is an academic study that assumed Indigenous people were going extinct and were not capable of preserving their own histories. Time has proven these assumptions wrong, but salvage anthropology already collected and hoarded cultural ephemera from a very narrow period of Indigenous history (the period surrounding the Trail of Tears). These collections are the basis for many primary sources in Indigenous heritage research today. Besides the inaccuracies inherent in these collections, the idea behind this kind of Indigenous heritage preservation is that Indigenous culture and people cannot ever change from this recorded period. Any changes are read as a loss of culture or authenticity. The same cultural absolutism does not apply to other cultures. We are then left to interpret an interpretation, possibly based on a questionable translation, and a warped game of telephone ensues. 

Take, for example, the remarkable photograph of a child in traditional wear below [Figure 3]. This photograph taken around 1890 is featured in the Portal to Texas History library collections as “Portrait of Comanche Boy, Sherman Poco”. It is one of very few examples in the collections of an Indigenous portrait with identifying information and a known photographer which is also clear, undamaged, and digitized. It is part of the collection “Rescuing Texas History” and features portraits with tribe names scrawled on the photographs. However, this same photograph is cherished as a childhood portrait of Kiowa historian, preservationist and activist Guy Quoetone. The photograph is well known throughout Kiowa Nation and Oklahoma as belonging to the Quoetone family’s ancestor, and has been featured in local preservation publications [Figure 4]. This discrepancy points to a lack of care and attention given to well-used Indigenous primary sources. 

Figure 3. “Portrait of Comanche Boy, Sherman Poco” by Alice Snearly and Lon Kelley is actively being used as a primary source and may be inaccurately labeled.

Figure 4. The same portrait is known widely in Oklahoma history collections as belonging to a prominent Kiowa family. Families impacted by inaccuracies in Indigenous Heritage work bear the brunt of the repercussions.

The relationship between Indigenous peoples and historic preservation has been fraught thus far, and understanding how preservation affects Indigenous peoples’ lives is an essential component of heritage efforts. Historically, preservation has intentionally excluded or manipulated Indigenous history, to the benefit of non-Indigenous groups establishing themselves in what is now the United States of America. Historic preservation has helped validate non-Indigenous peoples’ identity as belonging to Indigenous lands (in our case Texas), while simultaneously removing Indigenous peoples from a collective narrative. This is directly related to the physical removal and cultural erasure perpetrated upon Indigenous peoples. 

It is also doubly harmful to Indigenous peoples who have inextricable connections to both Indigenous histories and collective American identity. Archeologist Dr. Joe Watkins explains in his chapter of Values in Heritage Management, “The heritage management system in the United States developed out of an intention to ‘save’ things of importance to US history. That history more often revolved around great individuals involved in creating ‘America’ out of wilderness or wrested from other colonial powers… Native American involvement in heritage preservation is not likely to be fully realized until heritage managers are willing to give up control over the management of tribal heritage and allow tribes to manage their heritage in a manner befitting specific tribal ideas.” Acknowledging these difficult realities is the first step in establishing a different relationship between Indigenous heritage and historic preservation. 

Contemporary best practices across disciplines related to historic preservation and Indigenous heritage agree on moving towards a more accurate direction that involves Indigenous peoples in telling their own stories. In 2022, the Executive Office of Science and Technology and the Council on Environmental Quality released a guidance document for integrating Indigenous Knowledge (IK) into federal decision-making. Indigenous Knowledge is the intergenerational information stored by Indigenous people in living manifestations such as oral histories, traditional practices, and understanding influenced by culture. We understand it comparatively to documentation, which is the storing of valued information in a material manifestation such as disk drives, books or art objects. Indigenous groups also value material documentation of their knowledge, but those documents have been and continue to be targeted for theft or destruction, so Indigenous Knowledge remains a wealth of preserved valuable information. 

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation is currently developing a policy for IK as well. This policy will inform the work of the National Register of Historic Places, the Department of the Interior’s Professional Qualifications Standards, and the Interagency Sacred Sites Memorandum of Understanding. 

At the City and County levels, we have the opportunity to adopt these best practices with the benefit of a localized scope. Some strategies for this practice include prioritizing relationships over bureaucracy, educating oneself on cultural practices for respectful interaction, and removing barriers for knowledge-holders to participate. It is also necessary to consider identity politics, and how sources with no or limited Indigenous experience may benefit from positioning themselves as sources of Indigenous knowledge. The developing state of preservation today, with expanded emphasis on undertold stories and cultural heritage, allows for Indigenous heritage to finally be included. That requires new practices. 

I leave you with this quote from Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) preservationist and former Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, W. Richard West:

“To understand the Native American concept of ‘historic preservation,’ one must see time and space as integral, mutually dependent, and whole. For us, time is neither linear nor segmented, but rather an uninterrupted continuum where the past, present, and future seamlessly intersect where the past is as real as the present.

The Native American concept of place is analogous to our concepts of time. Place is essentially whole— that is, there is little difference between the built and non-built environments. They are not apart or separate from each other, not the former in spite of or in conquest of the latter, but inextricably linked in both a physical and metaphysical sense.”

Funding for Preservation Austin’s Indigenous Heritage Internship is provided by the City of Austin Planning Department, Historic Preservation Office.

Preservation Austin exists to empower Austinites to shape a more inclusive, resilient, and meaningful community culture through preservation. Support this work by donating or becoming a member today.

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