Tribal survey project aims at "protecting the sacred"

When you drive across it on highway 2, you may not think of Moses Coulee as anyone's home, but once it was a place where people lived in villages, grew gardens and gathered what they needed to live.

Previously undocumented rock feature sites in the Moses Coulee region, significant to local tribes, can now be recorded with help from National Park Service dollars. 

The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation are one of 12 recipients of  Tribal Heritage Grant money. 

Congress appropriated funding for the program in 2020 through the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF). The HPF uses revenue from federal oil leases on the Outer Continental Shelf, assisting with a broad range of preservation projects without expending tax dollars, with the intent to mitigate the loss of a nonrenewable resource to benefit the preservation of other irreplaceable resources.

The 12 grants total $569,086.

"Through these competitive grants, the NPS is able to work with American Indian Tribes, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian communities to help preserve their cultural heritage and connect people with traditions of the past," NPS Deputy Director Shawn Benge said in an Aug. 16 press release.

The Colville Tribes are receiving $49,961 for a project titled "Protecting the Sacred: A Targeted Survey of Rock Feature Sites in the Moses Coulee Region."

"This project is geared toward the documentation of previously unrecorded rock feature sites," Colville Tribal Chairman Andy Joseph, Jr. explained to The Star in an email. 

"Rock features can be defined as a constructed element of an archaeological site comprised of one or more rocks," Joseph said. "It includes such things as cairns, pits, and alignments."

Rock features do not include pictographs and petroglyphs. 

Joseph said a crew of four will conduct eight days of on-the-ground archaeological surveying of suspected rock feature areas in the Moses Coulee region. 

Joseph also explained the significance of rock features and of the Moses Coulee area to tribes within the Colville Confederated Tribes, primarily the Moses Columbia tribe. 

"The stacking and placement of rock features reflect spiritual practices and teachings among tribes of the Columbia Plateau and Okanogan Highlands," he said. "Moses Coulee is in the heart of Moses Columbia traditional territories and contains villages, campsites, resource gathering areas, burial locations, and other places of historical, cultural, and spiritual significance to the Moses Columbia Tribe. Other CCT tribes also utilized gathering areas and associated camps, places of spiritual significance, and trade and travel routes throughout the area."

He added that "the Moses Columbia people had a garden and pastured horses in that area," and that "the Moses Coulee provided shelter from harsh wind and elements."

Established in 1977, the HPF is authorized at $150 million per year through 2023 and has provided more than $2 billion in historic preservation grants to states, tribes, local governments, and nonprofit organizations. Administered by the NPS, HPF funds may be appropriated by Congress to support a variety of historic preservation projects to help preserve the nation's cultural resources.