This project investigates how the HCPO manages Hopi cultural knowledge resources, given the differences between Hopi notions of navoti (“traditional knowledge”) and Euro-American understandings of intellectual property.
The study is led by Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma, the Director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office (HCPO), and IPinCH Associate Justin B. Richland, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago, working with Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, Susan Secakuku, and many others.
Hopi philosophy situates cultural knowledge as unique and sacred; no two Hopi villages will possess the same navoti. Nevertheless, the HCPO has established itself as the leading tribal institution policing the ways in which Hopi culture is represented and transmitted, sparking criticism from both Hopi and non-Hopi sources. As such, how are the concepts of navoti and "intellectual property" deployed in the actual discourses and processes that constitute the central work of HCPO’s cultural management activities?
This study focuses on the issues of competing epistemological demands and the responses to them that sit at the very heart of the everyday practices of cultural heritage protection work. At once historic and ethnographic, this study draws on a methodology of archival research, oral history interviews, focus group interviews, and participant observation of the history and current operation of HCPO.
It is aimed at understanding how the Office’s principles, protocols and practices have shaped the ways in which Hopi cultural heritage has been managed in the 24 years of its existence. At the heart of this study is a central question – How has the HCPO managed to navigate between the radically different conceptualizations of cultural knowledge and its access between Hopi epistemologies and those that inform the long history of Euro-American interest in Hopi cultural heritage, and the regulatory regimes which govern how HCPO engages with its non-Hopi counterparts.
The goal is to produce not only new academic research but also a Hopi Cultural Preservation Protocol and Manual for use by Hopi members pursuing cultural heritage maintenance. Other benefits and results from this project include:
- Establishing key partnerships between the Hopi Tribe, the HCPO, and like-minded Non-Governmental Organizations, especially the Hopi-based nonprofit organizations like The Nakwatsvewat Institute, and The Hopi Foundation;
- Establishing and strengthening key partnerships between the HCPO and non-Hopi, non-indigenous research institutions, including the Museum of Northern Arizona, the University of Chicago, the Field Museum of Chicago, and IPinCH;
- Establishing a working group of CPO personnel, tribal members, and Hopi and non-Hopi professional allies in the planning concrete steps to improve and expand the Hopi Tribe’s cultural resource protection and maintenance capacities;
- A comprehensive inventory of projects, archives, and materials addressed by the HCPO over its history;
- A comprehensive picture of HCPO organizational structure, distribution of work-flow, and scope of authority.
To date, the team has sifted through the various acts of Hopi tribal law that have, since the creation of the Hopi tribe in 1936, played a role in Cultural Preservation work. This has included identifying those Tribal ordinances that are deemed the most significant for the current practices of the HCPO — that is, the ones they rely on in their practices of permitting research, consulting with non-Hopi agencies, and other forms of engagement around cultural preservation activities.
In addition, the team has developed a timeline that outlines the sequence of events, before and after the creation of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, that have been identified as key moments in the history of Hopi efforts to protect their cultural patrimony into the foreseeable future.
In addition to writing up this history, the team is undertaking an analysis of the contemporary practices of the HCPO. This includes collecting and transcribing audio recordings of interviews with current staff. In addition, they are observing the efforts of the current Cultural Preservation Office (CPO) through what they are calling “CPO ride-alongs.” To date they have undertaken four of these:
- observing HCPO staff in a Traditional Cultural Property Consultation with US Forest Service Archaeologists in Tonto National Forest, in Central Arizona;
- observing HCPO staff in two Repatriation Consultation Meetings at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, IL;
- observing several monthly meetings of the HCPO’s Cultural Resource Advisory Task Team as it hears presentations from Hopi and non-Hopis undertaking project work related to Hopi cultural property on and off the Hopi Reservation; and
- observing HCPO Director, Legal Researcher and other staff as they prepare and deliver testimony in arbitration proceedings about access to eagle collection sites.
The analysis of these data are on-going, and the team intends to supplement their observational materials with transcriptions of audio recording made from some of these meetings, coupled with interview, archive, and additional legal research to understand the complex regulatory scheme within which these consultations and activities take place.
The team is committed to developing protocols that will provide HCPO staff with some general frameworks for how their work is undertaken, and how it can be passed on to future staffers who are brought in to continue the important work of cultural preservation. To that end, the team has already begun to share findings with and seek feedback from HCPO staff.
The hope is that, over time, the lessons learned and processes initiated in this project will continue to enhance the cultural heritage protection capacities of the Hopi Tribal Nation, as well as other indigenous peoples as they undertake similar efforts to secure their unique cultural resources.
As a related initiative, IPinCH team member Jane Anderson is working with Susan Secakuku, Executive Director of the Nakwatsvewet Institute and Justin Richland to extend an emerging conversation about the ownership of tribal cultural heritage that is being digitized and circulated online. This work included delivering a workshop on Local Contexts and the TK Labels in July 2015.
Final Report in preparation.
Photo: courtesy NAU Special Archives and the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office.
