Anatomy of a Traditional Cultural Property: The Saga of Auke Cape

In an era when indigenous people face limited sovereignty, minority status, and con-tinuing pressure on traditional lands and resources, how can important cultural landscapes best be conserved as living landscapes? For Native Americans, the process for evaluating and conserving traditional cultural properties (TCPs), first introduced twenty years ago, consti-tuted a small but important governmental response to the accelerating problem of erosion of their communal lands and historical and sacred sites. Bulletin 38 offered a set of guidelines for evaluating these places as “living landscapes ” of national historical significance due to their association with “cultural practices or beliefs of a living community that (a) are rooted in the community’s history, and (b) are important in maintaining the continuing cultural identity of a community. ” If a cultural property receives a positive evaluation, it can then be nominated for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. To mitigate a property’s vulnerability in the interim between a positive eligibility determination and the completion of the nomination process, the property can be treated “as if ” it had been successfully nom-inated and placed on the Register by the keeper. This procedure is followed because often agencies do not have the time and resources necessary to complete the formal nominatio