Patricia L. Parker (anthropologist)

Patricia L. Parker (anthropologist)
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Born	(1943 -04-16)April 16, 1943 Quincy, Massachusetts
Died	(2014-12-16)December 16, 2014
Alma mater	University of California Berkely San Francisco State University University of Pennsylvania
Occupation	Cultural Anthropologist Historian Government Executive
Spouse(s)	Thomas F. King

Patricia Lee Sires (Hickman) Parker (April 16, 1943 – December 16, 2014)

Patricia Lee Sies (Hickman) Parker, known professionally as Patricia L. Parker, is a prominent cultural anthropologist. Parker made her career largely in the National Park Service (NPS) focusing primarily on Indigenous law and policy. Parker is most well known for her work with Tribal Cultural Resource issues in various NPS programs, her advocacy for tribal land and resource rights, her advisory roles in intergovernmental and international councils, and for her contributions to National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) Bulletin 38 guidelines. Parker worked with Indigenous communities throughout the US, the Micronesian Islands, and Australia.

Biography

Personal life

Howard E. Sires and rancher -rodeo star, Billie Louise Schnebly married in 1941 after meeting at college in Pullman, Washington. The two gave birth to Charlotte, ‘Cherie’, and later Patricia Lee Sires, the latter on April 16, 1943, in Quincy, Massachusetts. Howard joined the Navy and became a Naval Aviator. At the close of WWII, Lt. Howard E. Sires was pronounced missing in action after he piloted a Navy Liberator bomber on a patrol mission in February 1945. He and his crew disappeared over the South China Sea. Billie later remarried Navy Chief Petty Officer Griffith H. Parker, from whom Patricia received the surname, ‘Parker.’ Griffith and Billie would go on to have three more children, Griffith III, Juliet, and Stephen.

Patricia Parker graduated from San Diego, California’s Claremont High School, where she was described as confident, bright, social, and a natural leader yet open minded. Parker and her sister Charlotte attended college together at the University of California Berkely, where they both met their husbands. Patricia Parker married attorney John Hickman; they eventually divorced, but Parker published several notable works under the Surname ‘Hickman.’ After graduation, she worked as a high school teacher in Marin County, California for nearly a decade. In 1974, she enrolled in graduate studies in Anthropology at San Francisco State University, and then obtained her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania under the guidance of Ward H. Goodenough. She worked for over two years in Chuuk, where she learned the language and engaged in intensive participant-observation research into Chuukese land law and the impacts of successive colonial administrations. In1977, she married fellow anthropologist Thomas F. King, with whom she often collaborated on research and writing projects in historic preservation. King and Parker in time had a son, Thomas Sires King, and for a time became second parents to Pastor Katin, grandson of Pat’s adoptive Chuukese father, Katin Nikkichinnap. Pastor came to live with their family and attend school in states eventually returning to Micronesia.

In addition to being a dedicated mother and grandmother, Parker enjoyed music, cooking, and fine needle work that she learned from her mother. Parker was active in the Takoma Park Horticultural Club and arranged networking luncheons for women working in government agencies and cultural resources. She was well traveled and fluent in Chuukese and Spanish, also learning some Italian, Turkish, and Chinese. Parker was also a devoted stepmother to King’s children Rachel, Joshua, and Madera.

Death

Patricia L. Parker passed away at the age of 71, on December 16, 2014, at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. Up to the time of her passing, Parker worked tirelessly as the Chief of the NPS American Indian Liaison Office, promoting co-management of National Parks by and leading NPS Foundations of Indian Law and Policy workshops.

Education and Research

Parker received a bachelor’s degree and California teaching credential at the University of Berkeley where she studied European and American history. After nearly a decade teaching high school, Parker returned to school in 1972 at San Francisco State University, where she received her master’s degree in Anthropology. While working towards her master’s, Parker studied archaeological and historic studies in California, working closely with visual anthropologist John Collier and archaeologist Michael Moratto. Parker’s masters research looked at prehistoric and historic archaeology of the California coast and desert range, and specifically delt with Spanish colonial history, ethnohistory, and the impacts of the mission system on Native Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Parker later attained her Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 where she studied under Ward Goodenough, a linguist and applied anthropologist working primarily in the Pacific Islands.This work involved researching Chuuk land laws and their operation using ethnography and oral history as well as research into the archives of the various colonial administrations.

Well into her dissertation fieldwork and after becoming fluent in the Chuukese language, Parker worked with her husband, Thomas F. King, to mediate the Chuuk village of Iras and Mechchitiw and the US government about mitigating the environmental, social and cultural impacts of constructing Chuuk International Airport and a local sanitary sewer project. She also assisted with other cultural preservation projects. Preservation goals among the Chuukese and other Micronesian communities also included retention of language, music and dance, oral history, traditional foods and gathering areas, all seeking to preserve the integrity of their culture as a whole. During this time, Parker and King also oversaw major archaeological data recovery in connection with the Chuuk International Airport Project, helping mitigate impacts on the Chuuk archaeological and culturally landscape of Mt. Tonaachaw.

After her doctoral work, Parker intermittently taught classes at the University of Maryland and worked contract jobs for NPS, including the William Keys Desert Queen Ranch Project in Joshua Tree National Monument and the William Forest Park Project in Virginia, where Parker conducted was ethnographic interviews with displaced African American communities and descendants. In 1987, Parker became employed by NPS, responsible for the Micronesian Historic Preservation Program, the Certified Local Government Program, and later tribal programs.

Career and Contributions to Cultural Resource Management (CRM)

Parker established her career in cultural preservation at the National Park Service (NPS). While working for NPS for over 20 years, Parker was involved in international historic preservation programs, creating and implementing American Indian policy, and advocating Native American land use and gathering rights and policy.

Professional Offices and Programs

One of Parker’s first significant career contributions was setting up the Certified Local Government (CLG) Program within the National Park Service. This initiative, sparked by her work in Chuuk, culminated in a series of conferences and a report to Congress entitled the Keepers of the Treasurer – Protection Historic Properties and Cultural Traditions on Indian Land, published in 1990, that provided indigenous perspectives and aided Native American Tribes and Native Hawaiian groups in participating in federal historic preservation programs, helping to clarify their roles. Parker also helped NPS in granting seed money to tribes for cultural preservation projects, developed a brochure that laid out all the available assistance offered by federal agencies to support cultural resource programs and instructions on how to apply for them, and advised on negotiation between tribal groups and NPS over various cultural resource issues and projects.

Parker was instrumental in developing, and in 1995 became the Chief of, the NPS American Indian Liaison Office (as of 2020 this is referred to as the Native American Indian Liaison Office) in 1995, a position she held for over 20 years.

In 1996 at Parker’s urging, the NPS National Leadership Council recommended that Parker and Law professor Charles Wilkinson prepare and present specialized trainings called the Foundations of Indian Law and Policy workshops. Over the next 17 years, Parker and Wilkinson, featuring tribal speakers, led numerous workshops that trained nearly 1000 individuals involved in park planning, land management, law enforcement, and more.

Parker was involved in discussions regarding World Heritage List designations including strategy meetings in for the Pacific Island Regions, the Australia Kakadu National Park Mine expansion, and the Uluru site.

National Park Service Projects and Programs

• Parker advised the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians in litigations over land-use rights and gaming operations within the Everglades National Park boundaries, leading to designation of the Miccosukee Reserved Area Act (1998) which allotted 128 acres of reservation land to the tribe.
• Parker played a pivotal role in establishing a homeland for the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe in Death Valley National Monument. This led to the historic Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act (2000), drafted by the tribes and the Department of Interior’s attorneys, which withdrew land from the NPS and turned it over as a trust to the Tribe recognized land-use rights within and beyond the park boundaries.
• Parker helped draft a special regulation for providing for Hopi ceremonial rights in Wupatki National Monument, though it was ultimately unsuccessful.
• Parker defended the Great Smoky Mountains Land Exchange Project to reclaim 168 acres of ancestral Cherokee land in which to build an educational campus, against the opposing white-settlers who claimed their ancestors too gave up farmland to the Park Service. This effort was successful, and an educational campus opened in 2009.
• With assistance from NPS, Parker supported plans for the proposed tribally operated Ogalala Lakota National Park, a portion of the Badlands National Park. Today this portion of the park is managed by NPS in collaboration with the Oglala Lakota Nation.
• Parker also collaborated with the Lower Elwha S’Klallam Tribe on a dam removal project on the Elwha River in Washington and was involved in a six year legal case for a land transfer from Olympic National Park the Hoh Tribe after riverbank erosion and sea level rise forced the relocation of a tribal village.
• Up to her last days, Parker was active in the promotion of tribal collecting and gathering rights on NPS-managed lands, holding a series of consultation meetings with tribes and park service staff and lawyers that aimed to amend 36 CFR Part 2, a regulation governing hunting and gathering on NPS land. This regulation’s basic direction is: ‘take only pictures and leave only footprints’. The proposed amendments focused on indigenous rights to collect plants, rocks, and minerals, and fish without paying for state permits. This regulatory correction has not yet been made.

Bulletin 38

Patricia Parker is perhaps most widely known as the lead author of National Register Bulletin 38, a publication of the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) that clarified the eligibility of Traditional Cultural Places (TCP) for the NRHP. At the request of Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) chair Cynthia Grassby-Baker and Executive Director Robert R. Garvey, Jr., Patricia L. Parker and Thomas F. King coauthored these guidelines for federal agencies to follow when evaluating places for the NRHP. This evaluation is important because under Section 106 of the National Historic preservation, impacts on eligible places must be “taken into account” in planning projects that might affect them, which generally requires avoiding or otherwise mitigating impacts on them. The NRHP program supports efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect cultural heritage sites and compile them in an official list of registered historic properties deemed worthy of preservation. The NRHP allows for five property types including sites, structures, buildings, objects, and districts. However, some have argued that these protocols were designed to be most ideal for cultural properties that exist in well bounded, above ground, urban settings and does not do justice for rural or alternatively significant locations, landscapes, or objects. Section 106 can be a powerful management tool, but only for places found eligible for the NRHP. Bulletin 38 “levelled the playing field” for those seeking to use Section 106 to protect TCPs.

Over the decades CRM specialists have faced difficulties meeting the NRHP stipulations for TCPs that do not resemble what are commonly considered historically significant structures resulting in unsuccessful nominations. Bulletin 38 illustrates how TCPs can, and do, fit into existing NRHPs guidance.

Published Works

• Parker, Patricia L.1977. Country Nodes: An Anthropological Evaluation of William Keys’ Desert Queen Ranch, Joshua Tree National Monument. National Park Service, Publications in Anthropology No. 7, Western Archeological Center, Tucson, Arizona.
• Parker, Patricia L.1980. One Hundred Years in the California Desert: An Overview of Historic Archaeological Resources at Joshua Tree National Monument. National Park Service, Publications in Anthropology No. 13, Western Archeological Center, Tucson, Arizona.
• Parker, Patricia L. and Thomas F. King 1981. Recent and Current Archaeological Research on Moen Island, Truk, Asian Perspectives, 24(1):11-26.
• Parker, Patricia L. and Thomas F. King 1984. Pisekin Noomw Noon Tonaachaw: Archaeology in the Tonaachaw Historic District, Moen Island, Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper No. 3; Micronesian Archaeological Survey Report No. 18. Carbondale; Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, 573.
• Parker, Patricia L.1985. National Register Bulletin: Guidelines for Local Surveys: a Basis for Preservation Planning. Interagency Resources Division, Washington D.C.
• Parker, Patricia L.1987. Choosing an Archaeological Consultant, Local Preservation. National Park Service, Interagency Resources Division, Washington D.C.
• Parker, Patricia L.1987. Is there Archaeology in Your Community? National Park Service, Interagency Resources Division, Washington D.C.
• Parker, Patricia L.1987. Question and Answers About Historic Properties Survey. National Park Service, Interagency Resources Division, Washington D.C.
• Parker, Patricia L.1987. Questions and Answers About the ‘SHPO’. National Park Service, Interagency Resources Division, Washington D.C.
• Parker, Patricia L.1987. What Are the National Register Criteria? National Park Service, Interagency Resources Division, Washington D.C.
• Parker, Patricia L. and Thomas F. King 1987. Intercultural Mediation at Turk International Airport, in Anthropological Praxis, First Edition edited by Robert M. Wulff, Routledge, New York.
• Parker, Patricia L.1990. Keepers of the Treasures: Protecting Historic Properties and Cultural Traditions on Indian Lands: A Report on Tribal Preservation Funding Needs. National Park Service, Interagency Resources Division, Washington D.C.
• Parker, Patricia L.1993. What You Do and How We Think, CRM, 16(1068-4999):1-5.

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