The Development/Preservation Dance

Update, 2004: The following story happened in 1999, shocking the cultural resource world into recalling that not everybody supports archaeology or architectural history in the country, and that there are political issues that will outweigh our best and brightest colleagues. Lynne Sebastian never did get her job back. She now works for a cultural resource firm in the American Southwest, and in 2003 was elected the very first president of the Society for American Archaeology from the cultural resource industry. While this particular story has been resolved, its lessons are ones we should remember as cultural resource management archaeologists continue to walk a fine line between competing public needs.

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On September 1, 1999, Lynne Sebastian, for the past twelve years State Historic Preservation Officer for the state of New Mexico, was called into her boss's office and summarily fired from her job. Sebastian's boss, Director J. Edson Way of the New Mexico Office of Cultural Affairs, apologized to Lynne, but said the governor of New Mexico, Gary E. Johnson, had called for her immediate resignation and that she had two days to clear out her desk.Way said he had no idea what the problem was, but that Governor Johnson had demanded her resignation and he had no choice but to ask for it.

The resulting earthquake reverberated through the preservation community in the American southwest. When Governor Johnson's press secretary was asked why he had demanded Sebastian's resignation, she denied he had asked for it. "The governor did not ask for her resignation, he did not, he did not ask for her resignation," were her exact words. For weeks, Edson Way persisted in his claim that the Governor had asked for Sebastian's resignation, and the Governor has always persisted in his denials.

Neither man took responsibility for firing her; neither one explained why specifically she had been fired; neither wpuld state unequivocally that she should not have lost her job.

It seems clear: One of these men was lying.