Rediscovering Anthropology: An Internship with the National Park Service

Abstract

My initial experience with applied anthropology began in cyber-space. In the fall of 1994, I was considering a leave from my doctoral program in cultural anthropology at Harvard University and was searching for employment in which I could test the practicality of my anthropological skills. My most marketable professional experience at that time was several months involvement in implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. In response to an inquiry I posted on an anthropology listserve, Rebecca Joseph, an ethnographer with the National Park Service (NPS), contacted me about assisting her for a year in an internship capacity. At the time, she was responsible for overseeing NAGPRA implementation in the NPS New England Cluster in addition to her regular duties as manager of the regional Applied Ethnography Program. The impetus for the position was a pending NAGPRA compliance deadline (November 1995) that required inventorying Native American human remains in park collections and research on potentially affiliated tribal groups. I would also have an opportunity to help her in other capacities when NAGPRA duties were minimal or the deadline had passed. The internship was economically feasible for me since it provided a comfortable salary, reimbursement for workrelated travel, and funds to cover medical expenses in lieu of benefits. I started working full time in February of 1995 and was based out of the central NPS office in Boston, where I had daily contact with agency professionals and exposure to a variety of projects and departments. This arrangement proved to be personally invaluable in gaining a broad understanding of how federal policies affect local-level issues.