- Gallup, New Mexico
- Copyright 1998: Tony Klesert
I'm an archaeologist by training (and nature), but a bureaucrat by vocation (or fate?). On a typical day, I'm at work by 8:00 -- well, more or less, depending on traffic between Gallup and Window Rock. Right off the bat, there are more staff heading out to projects than we have vehicles to take them, a chronic problem. So I coerce a volunteer into taking his own truck and be paid mileage. By 8:30 or so, everyone going to "the field" has departed.
By 9:00 I've put on some therapeutic Mozart and gotten phone calls from our Office Managers in Farmington and Flagstaff, seeking advice and consent on various archaeological, logistical, and legal issues. If a department with a staff of 50-100 in three offices dispersed across two states is to function at all, effective communication is essential.
Memos, Discussions, Meetings
Next, I must write a justification memo to Personnel, in support of promoting one of our staff. He deserves the raise, and we've gone through all the proper channels, so this is a no-brainer -- but still a required piece of paperwork.
I confer with a staff archaeologist, regarding exactly how to phrase the avoidance measures she's devised to protect a significant site from a project's impacts, while minimizing the client's burden. This is always a balancing act, and one that requires precise and careful wording in the report, to get all the requisite information across but still make our recommendations unambiguous to those who must read and act on them. The average technical report is a concise masterpiece of dense technical information and an often complex intertwining of practicalities and legal compliance. Report writing is both an art and a science.
By 11:30 I'm at a session of the Intergovernmental Relations Committee of Navajo Nation Council, where I present and defend three resolutions for grant proposals to the National Park Service. I had little to do with writing these proposals -- they were prepared by our branch offices -- but I have been shepherding them through the approval process for the past month. The proposals are for computer equipment, a local culture history video, and a study of the long term effects of development on sites. They are due in Washington in a week. The resolutions are accepted and passed unanimously with only a few questions. The final step will be to get the President's signature on the grant applications. (We would eventually be awarded one out of the three -- a gratifying percentage.)
Fielding Paperwork and Phone Calls
Back in the office, I see a thick report is now on my desk, in need of final approval and signature. I am able to skim through most of it, thanks to the efforts of our editor. I review key sections and sign it and log in the invoice. The report is a week late getting out, but it's under budget, so I think the client will be pleased. The day's mail brings more reports, memos, invoices, journal vouchers, purchase requisitions, ad nauseam, from Farmington and Flagstaff, which I wade through, sign, and log in.
With Miles Davis cool in the background, I field calls from tribal offices and clients, including an ancient-sounding Navajo woman who is understandably confused about why she needs an archaeological clearance for a new homesite lease on her family's land. This is indeed a good question -- I tell her it's because a homesite lease must be approved by the BIA, which makes it a federal "undertaking" that involves ground disturbance (and, potentially, site destruction). But the language barrier is just too much for us, so I turn her over to my secretary to explain it in Navajo, which she does with her usual aplomb.
End of the Day
The late afternoon consists of responding to my Division Director with an update on project status for the President, delegating our Assistant Director to an impromptu meeting on BIA road projects, marking up an excavation proposal and budget, and then preparing for a committee meeting in which we are developing a tribal policy for curation of artifacts.
I note at the end of the day that I never came close to doing fieldwork or seeing an actual archaeological site, and that I spent a fair amount of the day doing things that graduate school never prepared me for. Maybe tomorrow will be less typical.
When he wrote this article, Tony Klesert was Director of the Navajo Nation Archaeology Department. This article first appeared in the Gallup, New Mexico Independent, and is reprinted here with permission.
