With National Science Foundation support, the Society for American Archaeology will fund training for Native American students and heritage professionals in order to increase the number of qualified Native American and Native Hawaiian individuals participating in science and archaeology.
Since 1998, the SAA has administered the NSF Scholarship for Archaeological Training grant, which funds three Native Americans or Native Hawaiians each year, who are high school seniors, undergraduate students, graduate students, or tribal or Native Hawaiian cultural preservation program personnel, to pursue training in archaeological methods. The NSF support helps champion the SAA's own grants, which include the Arthur C. Parker Scholarship, Undergraduate Archaeology Scholarship, and Graduate Archaeology Scholarship.
To date, the NSF grants to the SAA scholarship program have directly supported 37 Native Americans and Native Hawaiians, representing many communities throughout North America, who would not otherwise have been able to obtain training in archaeological methods and theory, and to carry that understanding back to their Native communities. The NSF award provides meaningful training experiences and complements the SAA's Board-directed efforts to make the archaeological profession more inclusive and diverse.
NSF funding remains vitally important to support training for the growing number of Native American and Native Hawaiian individuals and communities interested in archaeology. Native peoples constitute a fraction of the discipline's professional class- by most accounts less than 1% of the profession. This percentage is woefully inadequate for a discipline that takes as its major focus, and values the participation of, Native peoples. Recognizing this program, the SAA has taken a leadership role in creating this program to provide financial support for Native peoples with an interest in archaeology. This program substantially fulfills the SAA's efforts to build a diverse profession and build bridges between the archaeological and Native communities.
This program's impacts include the new opportunities for Native Americans and Native Hawaiians to bring to their communities a better understanding of archaeology and valuable skills to support community initiatives in heritage research and preservation. As these students become professionals, they expand the discipline's diversity. The scholarship recipients also contribute to breaking down the false dichotomy between "archaeologists" on one hand and "Native people" on the other. Such training provides to tribes an archaeological science foundation for directing preservation and cultural resource programs in accordance with their own goals and values.
