John Swigart
The National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (NATHPO) is currently developing the Land Area & Name Directory (LAND), a spatial database of Tribal areas of interest (AOIs) and a web mapping front-end. When incidents occur in areas of Tribal significance, LAND is designed to facilitate emergency response notifications to Tribal cultural resource officials. LAND will provide an easily accessible and up-to-date directory that emergency managers can use to contact THPOs or other Tribal officials and notify them where response efforts may adversely affect Tribally important places (collective benefit). THPO contact information is linked to AOIs, which can be queried in a web app using incident locations. How the AOIs are delineated is entirely at the Tribes’ discretion, but should be generalized to protect sensitive locations. Tribes can request changes to AOIs, contact information, or the inclusion of the data at any time (authority to control). NATHPO serves as the steward of the data and web app, and is accountable to the participating Tribes (responsibility and ethics). A Tribal Working Group will help guide the critical elements of the LAND project throughout its development.