Reinterpreting Traditional Cultural Properties: A Political Ecology of Emotion Perspective

Abstract

Interpretations of traditional cultural properties in the context of cultural resource management in the US demonstrate little understanding of, or concern for, the affective ecologies of landscapes. Institutional approaches to land development and resource management favor meanings and practices of the dominant culture and political structure that have often had devastating consequences for others, particularly American Indian tribes. In Northern California, Winnemem Wintu ancestral lands along the McCloud River were flooded in 1944 when the Shasta Dam was completed for the federal Central Valley Project. In the late 1990s, the US Bureau of Reclamation began investigating a proposal to raise Shasta Dam to increase water storage capacity, which would flood remaining Winnemem sacred and cultural sites. In Southern California, ancestral territories of the Tongva people were threatened by a proposed commercial development on a university campus in Long Beach in 1992. In each case, the proposed projects would destroy significant sacred spaces, which offer deep emotional connections crucial to maintaining tribal cultural identity and ancestral memories. Through these two case studies, we utilize a “political ecology of emotion” perspective to examine the emotional geographies associated with these ancestral landscapes and sacred sites, and related struggles against hegemonic approaches to cultural resource management. We argue that these intimate links between emotion, memory, identity, and place allow an opportunity for reevaluating institutional approaches to cultural resource management, and the meaning of traditional cultural properties.