Bear Bones Lab URAP Project 2: Colfax-Todds Valley and Shingle Springs Intertribal Ecological Restoration (INTER crew) support
Jun Sunseri, Professor
Anthropology
Applications for Fall 2024 are closed for this project.
Our partnered project is a community-based, collaborative partnership involving Berkeley archaeologists and the Colfax-Todds Valley and Shingle Springs InterTribal Ecological Restoration (INTER) Crew. Tribal Leaders from Colfax-Todds Valley Considated Tribes and Shingle Springs Band of Miwok mentor our research at their Ancestral Places in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. These Community Partners are increasingly requesting the use of geophysical technologies and methods that have low impact and are minimally invasive on cultural and natural (often inextricably linked) resources. Bear Bones Lab crew members have not only been mastering these technologies, but building teaching modules for Community youth with whom we are working in the field. Already, we have participated in extensive wildland firefighter and sawyer training with our Tribal mentors, preparing for the joint use of technology and traditional cultural fire to protect Ancestral Places. Expanding on our extensive scaffolding of accountability to include more frequent in-person fieldwork opportunities with Community Partners on their Ancestral lands and providing deliverables to help UC Reserves co-manage with these Native Californian Tribal Leaders will provide UC and the youth of the Intertribal Ecological Restoration (INTER) Crew discovery-focused opportunities to work together. Our priority is to deliver on Community Partner-mandated research that will help the INTER Crew build capacity for UC Reserve co-management strategies that also meet CEQA compliance.
Our work with ground-penetrating radar, magnetic gradiometry, resistivity tomography, and multispectral imaging is focused on real-world scenarios for Tribal archaeologists and INTER Crew members working with descendant communities on issues of restorative justice but expands to explore overlap with other disciplines and methods, such as forestry and cultural fire. The modules we’ve designed are for participants to learn and practice some of the core concepts of Community-accountable scholarship and integrate them into co-crafted research deliverables. Opportunities for students to develop these ideas and deliverables with and for community partners in-person on Ancestral Places located on their trust lands and the UC Blodgett Forest Reserve has developed into work that lives beyond the semester and the academy.
Interested in Tribal co-management of the UC reserves, the Manager of the UC Blodgett Forest Reserve has requested that we help build a California Vegetation Treatment Program, co-crafted with Native Californian Mentors and INTER Crew leadership to meet the archaeological and cultural resources inventories and management plan for CEQA compliance at Blodgett and several other Berkeley Forest properties in the coming year. We start with a model of in-person mentorship, co-crafted research, and management design under close mentorship of Tribal leadership and the Intertribal Cultural Fire and Ecological Restoration (INTER) Crew. Crew might need to travel to Tribal offices and facilities at Blodgett and through the sessions and fieldwork supported by the PI’s collegium grant. Follow-on years of co-crafted research in this mode of shoulder-to-shoulder work on the UC forests is designed to be incorporated into the planning documents and operational budget of the forest, through new grants pursued in collaboration with the Tribal Leadership of the Colfax-Todds Valley Confederated Tribes and Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, and possibly through new commitments in the UC ANR 15-year Strategic Planning process to support Indigenous stewardship on UC properties. This project is looking to recruit students with experience in:
Geographic Information Systems, Database management, Web ODM/AGI Metashape, and/or other Geophysical instrument data processing suites
Role: 1. Field Data Management
This position will focus on turning the data collected during previous field seasons and ongoing work into a use-able digital collection of files. This includes processing instrument data, reviewing and standardizing files, organizing data in Drive, and completing inventory of digital resources that can be made into publication ready images using Adobe Illustrator.
2. Geographic Information Systems
This position will assist the supervisor in standardizing all geospatial information collected during previous and ongoing field seasons. This includes working in ArcGIS and creating publication-ready maps to send to our community partners for vetting. As well as using those images and audio-visual material from previous and ongoing field season to create online content for the Bear Bones and INTER crew websites.
Qualifications: Geographic Information Systems (ESRI or QGIS), Database management, Web ODM/AGI Metashape, and/or other Geophysical instrument data processing suites such as RADAN, Terrasync, etc.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Shelby Medina
Hours: 3-5 hrs
Engineering, Design & Technologies Social Sciences