North Cascades An Ethnographic Overview and Assessment of North Cascades National Park Service Complex

The ethnographic overview and assessment that follows is the third in a series of reports that address the cultural history and cultural identity of groups that have traditionally utilized lands administered by today's North Cascades National Park Service Complex (park complex). The first two reports in this series were prepared in the late 1980s at the request of the National Park Service by anthropologists working at Washington State University. The first, entitled People of the North Cascades, by Robert R. Mierendorf, provides a prehistoric overview that is directed almost exclusively at compiling baseline information about the known and predicted archeological resources in the park complex. The second, entitled Ethnography of the North Cascades, by Allan H. Smith, is a compilation of historic and ethnohistoric information from published and unpublished sources about the traditional lifeways of American Indian groups who utilized today's park lands. Both of these reports are referenced and discussed in this third report. For those readers interested in the archeological record of the park complex or a detailed description of traditional American Indian cultural practices in the North Cascades, the first two reports are rich sources of information.

The present report provides information that goes beyond that offered in the first two. This additional information addresses two concerns of importance to the National Park Service's on-going management of cultural resources within the park complex. The first of these concerns is the assessment of available information about American Indian populations who inhabited today's park complex and any of their descendants who may be identifiable as contemporary tribes, bands, or First Nations. A second concern regards the cultural affiliations of park-associated populations and the record of treaties, legislation, legal disputes, and judicial decisions concerning such populations' access to natural or cultural resources managed by the park complex. Such information is critical to the National Park Service's compliance with an array of federal laws and regulations guiding the management of natural and cultural resources in consultation with park-affiliated American Indian groups.

Robert R. Mierendorf
Marblemount, Washington