SAA

FROM THE PRESIDENT
FROM THE PRESIDENT
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, RPA
Looking back, the late summer was a time
of scholarly meetings and a crisis involving
questions of Section 106 compliance.
Looking ahead, the fall offers you the chance to
volunteer for service to SAA.
Representing SAA at WAC-8 Kyoto
Tobi Brimsek represented SAA at the European
Association of Archaeologists’ annual meetings
in Vilnius, Lithuania, and she and past presidents
Jeff Altschul and Vin Steponaitis represented
SAA at EAA’s Presidents’ Luncheon.
Meanwhile, during the same time span, I traveled
to Japan to represent SAA at the WAC-8 meetings. While
WAC does not have a counterpart presidents’ gathering over a
meal, I was invited to speak for ten minutes at WAC-8’s opening
plenary session. Rather than try to represent SAA’s history and
positions in ten minutes, I spoke of the challenges that global
climate change will present archaeologists in the not-verydistant
future, with some examples of archaeology’s relevance to
planners and to local communities.
DAPL, USACE, and Section 106
While in Kyoto, I was informed that the situation concerning
the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) had reached a very volatile
stage. With members of the Board, I judged that it was appropriate
to send a letter of concern regarding compliance with federal
cultural resource protection legislation, especially regarding
the US Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) use of their Appendix
C variant of Section 106. I asked a fact-finding subcommittee
of Board members with extensive CRM experience to
research relevant background on the DAPL issue and to report
to me, with documentation, on the situation. Based on their
swift and thorough efforts I drafted a letter that was reviewed by
them, Government Affairs Committee Chair Donn Grenda, and
David Lindsay, SAA manager, Government Affairs. The letter as
amended was sent to the USACE Chief of Engineers Lieutenant
General Todd Semonite on September 13, 2016. We share with
the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), which
sent multiple communications to USACE voicing
their concern starting in early 2016, and with
the American Cultural Resources Association
(ACRA) (see their September 28, 2016, statement:
http://www.acra-crm.org/page-18082) a
deep concern about the lack of consistency
between the Section 106 process most stakeholders
know and attempt to follow and that of
USACE. SAA is making clear to ACRA and
ACHP that we are allies in this concern.
Reconciling Office of Personnel Management
and Agency Qualifications Standards
Over the last few years, SAA members in federal agencies have
repeatedly expressed to SAA officers their frustration with a lack
of progress by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in
updating qualifications standards for their Archeology Series
and other positions in relation to standards of agencies employing
archaeologists, museum curators, and historians. OPM was
tasked with beginning this process in 1992. The US Department
of the Interior and the US Department of Agriculture recently
updated their classifications again, and revisions are underway
in the Department of the Army. Beginning in February 2016,
SAA repeatedly prompted OPM to contact agencies to initiate
the process of harmonization of qualifications standards. In a
June 21, 2016, letter and in follow-up communications in
August and September, OPM responded to SAA initiatives. In
September, I spoke with the human resources specialist in the
Classification and Assessment Policy Office, Human
Resources, who informed me that OPM will undertake a complete
qualifications standards review for the Archeology Series,
GS-0193; Museum Curator Series, GS-1015; and Historian
Series, GS-0170 beginning in 2017. This will involve contacting
the federal agencies employing people in these posts. Progress
in such a long-delayed reconciliation of standards is a welcome
development. We are happy if SAA has played a positive role in
moving these classifications up in OPM priorities.
November 2016 • The SAA Archaeological Record
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