Ethnography, Following your Passion, and the Heritage Voices Podcast with Jessica Yaquinto

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick!

On today’s episode, we talk with Jessica Yaquinto, Founder and Principal Investigator of Living Heritage Anthropology about Ethnography, Following your Passion, and the Heritage Voices Podcast.   Read her full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
2:22  Nic & Laura discuss Ethnography
7:17  Interview with Jessica Yaquinto starts
8:40  Ethnography
16:35  Following your passion
29:28  Heritage Voices podcast
32:37  Field Notes

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Jessica Yaquinto at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-yaquinto-ma-8b2037ba/

Guest Bio:
Jessica Yaquinto is the Founder and Principal Investigator of Living Heritage Anthropology, which focuses on collaborative ethnographic research and tribal consultation. Additionally, she is the President and CEO of the 501c3 non-profit, Living Heritage Research Council, as well as the host of the Heritage Voices podcast on the Archaeology Podcast Network. She has a Masters from Northern Arizona University in Applied Socio-Cultural Anthropology.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Laura 
Hello and welcome to NPR with your favorite environmental nerds Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Nick and I discuss ethnography, we talk to actually Nick talks to you because I'm not there, Jessica you Quinto about ethnography following your passion and the heritage Voices Podcast. And finally, we're talking about human history today. So let's give some human facts. Yes, we're known for big giant brains, but we're also incredible distance runners, like humans can outrun almost any animal. Interesting. Because we cooled by sweating rather than panting. We can stay cool at speeds and distances that would overheat other animals. Hot day a human could even outrun a horse in a 26.2 mile marathon was pretty well

Nic 
done. Oh, that's really cool. We're not just brains are mostly brains, but we're not just brains. Okay?

Laura 
All right, so I guess you know if you can just keep running that music.

Nic  
back as you want this here, and we're preparing for a content filled month of daily highlights of conservation champions over at the green obsidian which is created by Sierra Taliaferro and highlights people such as roo math, founder of outdoor Afro Tierra Mora, founder of Black and marine science. Check us here as latest guest spot from last week on EPR and follow the green obsidian on both LinkedIn and Facebook every day in February.

Laura 
All right, we are out of pocket for sponsor this week. So here we go with our next corner sponsor of the week. Ready? 30 Seconds or Less go.

Nic 
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Laura 
Ding ding ding that was like right at 30 seconds.

Awesome.

[Nic & Laura discuss Ethnography]

Laura
What's against you our segment?

Nic 
Talked about ethnography and being ethnography, the study of people but it's through language or basically through conversation. I guess it's probably a better way to put it was that is that what you and I are doing? Kind of a little different. Because there's there's no history element involved. That's also important for what she's doing. So we're very current. Current ethnographers I don't know if that's even right.

Laura 
Related to anthropology.

Nic 
It's a field of anthropology. That's correct.

Laura 
I'm going to need a definition here.

Nic  
Yeah, I'm pulling it up for you right now. scientific description of customs of individual peoples and cultures. What we're doing is it's very reason usually it's like what has been happening. It's not just but that's fair. It's like the whole history, not just the pre history or the older things. It's it is the whole history of a culture. But yeah, you can do this for your family and you can do it for you know what, what Jessica does? Is through tribes, tribal consultations and coordination and all that was very cool. It was a very cool interview. It was really neat to hear about that. And it's in the Nieper world is not very common, but that doesn't mean it doesn't come up. So yeah, there's definitely projects that are influenced by Tribal Coordination and you need ethnographers to help learn more about what you're doing what you're trying to do. And a big thing we talked about, though, this is true, especially of like, you know, communities that like you know, Hawaii, for example, you don't just show up and be like, Okay, we're building a project, and then you leave, right that's a bad idea. It's terrible. If you want buy in support, you have to be part of the community and not just hanging out, you know. So, yeah, that was kind of and so. So that's basically that's what we talked through is you know, you know, being good stewards and being good community members, you know, not just showing up and leaving, but saying being part of the community living where things needed to be. Doesn't make any sense, but like, just being being part of the community, not just showing up. Okay.

Laura 
We've kind of touched on that a couple of times, some of some other guests. I mean, obviously, that applies. Not only for tribes, but even just neighborhoods and whoever you're potentially impacting. So if you're doing any projects, and you know, at what point, do you just go hey, we didn't need an ethnographer is that what goes off or what?

Nic 
Yeah, almost. I mean, gosh, I think I don't know if I've shared the story. But yeah, there's sometimes the people we're dealing with on the will say, just in the in the Project Management realm, don't have any idea and I mean, any idea about tribal consultation, or natural resources or anything, we had somebody tell us ask us once why someone in Oklahoma would care about anything on the East Coast. You can imagine that was the most that was actually one of the most awkward moments I think, in our in my whole career where the entire room of people looked at this person and they were like, really, you don't you don't remember what happened. And they're not from Oklahoma, you know? So it was that involved? Like it's, you know, sometimes it's not even doesn't even come up. It's more like we determine if we'll need one for our project before anybody else will. We'll talk through that with clients and be like, you know, hey, this is going to be a really significant projects in a really significant community area, what are your ties to the area? And so one of the first questions we will ask is, what's your relationship with the community? How involved are you guys? What do you do on a day to day basis because that that influences everything that that goes on afterwards? Right? If it's a big project that's going to be difficult, controversial or whatever, and you have no relationship with the community, it's a lot harder and it's gonna take a lot longer to get in the community.

Laura  
You know, I missed this one. I don't even remember why but so Jessica was recommended as part of our partnership with Agra, right? She's in the horses, so

Nic 
that's okay. Yeah, she was great, but it's a really good interview, a lot of fun. Fantastic. So

Laura 
we're gonna have more people who are members and associated with that kind of work throughout the year. So we're trying to spread them out. So it's not like four weeks in a row of someone talking about heritage and architecture, which is still cool in architecture. I do that. Architecture, archaeology. So yeah. So anybody who's interested in that, we'll have more of that to come.

Nic  
Yeah. Absolutely. And yeah, it was a lot of fun, so you guys can check it out.

Laura 
Yeah, well, let's get to the interview. And I got to listen to it myself.

Nic 
And that's when you can't because you're not in it. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

[Interview with Jessica Yaquinto starts]

Nic
Welcome back to EPR. Today, we have Jessica Quinto, President and CEO at living heritage Research Council on the show. Welcome Jessica.

Jessica Yaquinto 
Thanks for having me.

Nic 
Yeah, we're really excited to have you here. We asked Accra to send us some guest options, and you were the first one they suggested. So why don't you tell us a little bit about you and what you do?

Jessica Yaquinto 
Yeah, so I am a cultural anthropologist. I'm an ethnographer by training. So a little bit different than much of the cultural resources industry. So I imagined that's why I was the first person that they sent over. But I am the founder and principal investigator at living heritage anthropology. That's my for profit. And then like you mentioned, I'm also the president and CEO of living heritage Research Council, which is the nonprofit. And then I'm also the host of the Heritage Voices Podcast on the archaeology Podcast Network, which, again, cultural anthropologist, but I always end up hanging out with the archaeologists. So of course, that's why I'm on there. And I am based in Cortez, Colorado, which is it's Colorado, so everybody always thinks Denver, but we're about as far as Denver and still be in the same states. We're by the Four Corners Mesa Verde National Park in that area, but I'm originally from from Tucson Arizona. Oh, cool.

[Ethnography]

Nic 
Yeah. Okay. So what does an ethnographer do and how is it different from typical work or cultural work?

Jessica Yaquinto  
Yeah, so an ethnographer. So first, I should preface and say I do both ethnography ethnographic research and tribal consultation. So a little bit of both. And an ethnographer. Basically, what we do is we study cultures. So we do research. We do interviews with people from from different backgrounds, and in the cultural resource. management industry. Obviously, that's usually tied to land management project, a heritage or historic preservation type of project. So for me, I've predominantly worked with indigenous communities in the United States, and then also a little bit with Spanish speaking communities. Both in the US and Mexico. But predominantly, I tend to give an example of what an ethnographer does, because most people just have no context. So what this actually looks like is basically I'll work with a tribe and I guess let me back up even further. I usually, usually we are hired by land management agencies, federal agencies is the most common. So like the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, Park Service, and they want to know, usually how indigenous people are connected to the lands that they manage. Sometimes we're also hired by like local governments, state governments, nonprofits, the tribes themselves, that's somewhat common or other cultural resource management or environmental firms. So those are where these projects usually come from. But once we're hired, we'll work with the tribes that are a part of the project or other communities, introduce ourselves, have meetings. And then usually what ends up happening is we'll take elders or people that are connected to that area out into the fields will go to a representative sample of the types of places on that field office or area that's under study, I guess we'll say, and talk about those types of places. So unlike an archaeology survey, for example, usually we're not doing we're not going to do the entire project area, because again, a lot of these projects are very proactive. It's a whole field office for the BLM. For example, I do a lot of BLM projects, as you could tell. So it's not like we can go to every culturally important place, but we're trying to hit up representative types of places. So that might be rock art, that might be a spring that might be the mountains that might be structures, archaeological structures. So it's that range of cultural and natural resources that might be important to to the tribe or tribes. So we take out elders, we do interviews on the landscape. We go back to the office, we take the data, the recordings, and we transcribe those. And then we take those and we code them, which is a fancy way of saying, We organize them by theme, and then we write up a report we take it back to the community. Did we get this right? Are we understanding your story correctly? Is there other things that you want to add or what else do you want to tell the land management agency about how they should manage their land about any particular places that are especially important or need an extra level of protection? Maybe they need to be identified as traditional cultural properties. And then once we input their changes, then it goes back to the client.

Nic 
And it's all very, very interesting stuff. I think it's really fascinating how that process works, and there have to be challenges with that. I'm sure I know sometimes there's difficulty even getting tribes to talk to you or not you I mean, like talking to project managers or something like so what do you do to really get to try to be as involved as possible with what you're doing?

Jessica Yaquinto 
Yeah, I certainly would never want any tribe to participate in a project that they don't want to participate in. That's for sure. We definitely shoot for projects to where the tribes actively want the project. So for example, if an agency or someone is reaching out to me about a particular project, usually we kind of do a little checking in with the tribes or communities we're working with beforehand and see, like if it's something that they're interested in, so that we're not we certainly never want to go against the tribes wishes because that's, that's not good business for us. Yeah, so yeah, so we do tend to be a little bit more selective with our clients, at least my companies do, and we want projects that are going to be beneficial for the tribes. And that's how you get that by and, you know, if you consistently show up and show that you are working on projects that are going to be beneficial to them, that you're not going to try and pull one over on them. You know, just basically you're building up trust, just like any other relationship.

Nic 
Yeah. And I think that's a really great point. And, you know, we all what is it like, the relationship doesn't start and end with the project. I think it's a really fair point. So I'm glad that that's, that's really cool. So when did you just start discover this is what I want to do. Okay, this is the stuff I want to be an ethnographer

Jessica Yaquinto 
Yeah, okay. So I when I was in high school, I did a program called amigos Tillis, Americas and basically, I, so it's a program that fosters intercultural exchange, community development and youth empowerment across the Americas. So the first summer I spent eight weeks in a very small about 800 people village in Panama, and with one other American at same age, so I was we were about 17. And we did community, or I guess, collaborative based work with the community. So we worked with community to develop a project they'd like to see we got it funded. And we did the project. And then we also did a lot of work with the local school, teaching classes and things like that in leading a summer camp over their summer break. So that experience and then two years later when I went back at 19, and did another summer in Uruguay, those were probably I mean, I would recommend amigos to anyone. It definitely made me into the person that I am today and made me confident enough to do something like start a business and start a nonprofit. But coming back from that I really thought that I wanted to do Latin American development work. I wanted to do anthropology, cultural anthropology. I really loved learning about other cultures, meeting people from different backgrounds. And when I was studying at the University of Arizona, one of the professors that I took a class from invited me to join his research team, and this is the type of work that he was doing. And so I basically, I had no idea that this world existed. Growing up in Tucson, which is funny because, again, Tucson has a tribe that is literally within city limits, and then another major one just outside so you would think that I would have had more more background on this. But But yeah, so I started working for him and we got to go to really incredible places and learn from really incredible people. And it was just such a profound experience that I wanted to keep going with it.

[Following your passion]

Nic 
Yeah, that's great. That's great. I love when that happens. It's kind of the same thing for me too. It's like, oh, yeah, I should keep doing this. Yeah, yeah. So okay, so that's really cool. I kind of like you know, you went to college and kind of found your place there. So what advice would you give maybe to your younger so, you know, when you first started your career, or even when you're in college, that you think may have helped you if you had just if only I had known this?

Jessica Yaquinto 
That's a good question. I do. I think it's hard for ethnographers because we kind of have to know about everything. You know, it's not like you're an archaeologist and you you're like, Okay, I'm going to study this one area, and I'm going to become such an expert in it, and this is going to be my thing. We study what's important to people. And in my case, specifically, I work with indigenous people. And what's important to indigenous people, is everything. So we have to know a little bit about hydrology, and we have to know a little bit about plants and we have to know a little bit about GIS and archaeology and language all of the different aspects of anything that's important to people. And that's a lot. Yeah. And, and we tend to cover wider regions than the archaeologists do. So there's less funding for this type of work than there is on the archaeology side. And so we do have to kind of be a little bit more of a generalist than they can be. So even if you're picking a region, though, to you're learning about lots of different people and cultures and you know, in the southwest, like just the sheer number of tribes and all of them are different and interesting. And have their own backgrounds. It's a lot. So I guess what my advice to my younger self would be that it would be helpful. Some areas especially that I think would be helpful for somebody that was interested in this type of work is plants, like getting or have a botany background would be really helpful because that's generally a really important aspect for tribes, and then also getting a little bit more of a background in GIS. I think that would be really helpful. And then if you're someone who's wanting to do work with communities, and you're not coming from a cultural anthropology background, obviously, making sure that you're getting education experience in actually working with other communities, you know, maybe that's ethnographic methods class, qualitative method, research methods. Class, maybe that's some training on tribal consultation, but making sure that it's something that you're actually getting some some formal experience in.

Nic 
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's great advice. And I don't know like hearing your talk sparked a question for me like, so you talk about like, what's important to tribes and that you're studying, or that you're working with, is what's important change over time and other generational differences that you see, like maybe, you know, 30 years ago, this is what was important, but now you're going back it's a similar area, but there are new leaders in the community. So does what's important to them change or is it fairly consistent? Like if you do this one time, you were very good reset?

Jessica Yaquinto 
No, it does change because leadership changes within communities. So working with with tribes, you're working with sovereign nations, and so as sovereign nations, they they elect their own leaders. And we are always working through that official government to government structure. So we're always working with the leadership in place at time and then they're, they usually delegate their authority to you know, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer or other cultural resource equivalent. So that can definitely change perspectives within a tribe with different administrations. But I will say the themes tend to be pretty consistent. And this has been through time, in my experience, obviously, education and passing heritage down to the next generation, that's very consistent, protecting their land base seems very consistent and protecting sacred places and the struggle there is always pretty consistent because for a lot of indigenous peoples, and again, I you know, I'm an ethnographer, but I can't speak on behalf of indigenous people. I'm not an industrial indigenous person myself, but from what I've been told a lot of basically, that knowledge is not meant for everybody. So the certain people within the tribe may have certain knowledge and other people may not it may not be appropriate for those people to have it. Just like for me, there may be knowledge that's appropriate for me to have a knowledge that's not appropriate for me to have. And that's true for the federal agencies and their their younger generations as well. Some knowledge has to be earned or it has to be given to the appropriate person. So always deciding what should be shared and what shouldn't be shared is a challenge because they want their next generation to know about their culture, but they also don't want people who shouldn't have that knowledge and might either hurt themselves or hurt other people to have that knowledge. Like for example, the man in Sedona who who killed those people in a in a sweat lodge, a white man, you know that there's a very strong sense of responsibility, that knowledge that is used inappropriately can be very harmful.

Nic 
Yeah, that's something that's really, really fascinating. Yeah, thank you for sharing. So yeah, there's a lot of different things we can go through from there. But just like I said, you know, shifting gears, hard to shift gears from that, but I mean, you did say so I would do want to circle back to living heritage, which is your nonprofit. And so you say you have this you have your other company as well, but what made us decide to start this nonprofit, and what is its mission and goals?

Jessica Yaquinto 
Yeah. So there's a group of us that started the nonprofit. And so they're actually both living heritage, which is a long living heritage Research Council. Is the nonprofit living heritage anthropology is the for profit. And they are not connected in any way shape or form except for having the same first two words and me being involved in both. But yeah, so there was a group of us that came together and basically, we felt like there was an opportunity to go further in making sure that there's a tribal benefit to our work. We wanted to do projects that the tribes would like to see we're still working on that aspect. I mean, the projects we're doing our projects the tribes want to see but we're working on getting to the point where we could fund projects that are harder to get funded. So projects that that tribes want to see that maybe aren't on federal lands, maybe they're on their own reservation lands, or maybe they're, you know, private lands elsewhere, or maybe it's some sort of language program that doesn't know the location doesn't matter. So that's our next goal. The other main goal that we've been working on is indigenous internships. So we have internships with Indigenous students and young professionals. So far, we have had to count six, six interns over three years. And that's been a really exciting part of the nonprofits and then trying doing ethnographic projects that have that Tribal Benefit components. So for example, we're working on a project in Browns Canyon National Monument. And from the very beginning before we agreed to put in for the project, we talked to Southern Utah well, all three tribes and southern Utah and UberX newts really wanted to move forward on this project and they wanted in addition to, you know, your normal, let's go to the landscape and talk about the place and provide this information for the federal agency. They really wanted to add an education component for their younger people. So we were able to in addition to the Bureau of Land Management funding, we were able to get a Colorado State Historical Fund grant and not funded to use interns so that you'd interns we trained them on ethnographic methods. We went out into the field with them and elders, where they're learning directly from their elders, about the places importance to their people. And then now we're working on some outreach components. With the interns. They're very interested in potentially doing a story map about your connections to that area. And then also they're going to be doing some community presentations, both on and off reservation. And that's a consistent complaint within the ethnography field is, you know, we're going out and we're doing these projects for for federal agencies for all these other people. And we're not seeing any of the results of that work back in our community, like our young people aren't learning from these experiences. So another part of this is that they're going to develop a lesson plan that can be used both on reservation schools and potentially Colorado off reservation schools as well.

Nic 
That's very cool. And I it's a shameless plug for storymaps. I think they're fantastic. It's so much fun to take, you know, this big complicated thing and you know, kind of distill it in a way that's, you know, maybe more digestible for just about anybody, you know, so that's really cool. Really cool to hear that. That's a really another great conversation point. You know, a lot of the data, there's a lot of data that's collected by a lot of different agencies, and you know, there's some real sensitivity to what's shared like we were talking about earlier, and sometimes that maybe, maybe can go a little too far in the other direction where nothing is shared at all. And you know, it's not put out to the public, but it's also not shared with tribes. So the coordination with agencies and sovereign nations or other communities, it's good, I think there's a lot of good information but so when you say like, you know, there's they don't always get the information when the projects are done. Do you have any thoughts or ideas on ways we can be better about sharing or communicating between the two groups and sharing information appropriately?

Jessica Yaquinto 
Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things that are coming to mind. First of all, as an ethnographer, obviously, we're trained in informed consent. And I think that is huge. So this is part of human subjects and ethical, ethical research. Essentially, we're working with people. We're not working with plants or other natural resources or even cultural resources. We're working with people. And that has to be done in an ethical way. And part of that is being very transparent from the beginning, about, you know, what research is being used for or what projects are going to be happening. So I think transparency is number one. Also, I think the understanding that you don't just build a relationship. I think you said this earlier that relationships are really long term, they're not. Okay, we're going into this community for this one project and then buy. We'll never see you again. It's sitting down and sharing a meal with people like making food, bringing food, maybe doing some research into what is an appropriate gift for the specific community that you're working with. And if you're working with elders, you need to feed them, and you need to bring them a gift. Because what they're sharing with you is important, it's valued within the community. And so there's an expectation that that knowledge is equivalent to, I don't know how to put this exactly, but that it needs to be treated with respect. And that's part of the way of doing that. So yeah, so I say doing your research, listening, and when I say listening, there's a very different way of listening in our culture than in with a lot of indigenous peoples. And if an elder is talking, even if they're talking for an hour straight, you are not, you are not jumping in. And a trick that somebody taught me once was when an elder stops talking, you count to five slowly and then you can jump in, but you do not jump in before they could start going again, basically. So yeah, so learning about how to be respectful, being transparent, apologizing when you do something wrong, that goes a long time a long way and then fixing it. So basically, just all of the things again, that you would normally do when you're trying to build trust with somebody.

[Heritage Voices podcast]

Nic  
Yeah. But it's all really great. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. You also I don't know if you know this, because you said it earlier. Do you have a podcast too, so it's just great. So it's the heritage voices, and it's been going on for about six years, just really, really impressive. So tell us a little bit about it and how it's going.

Jessica Yaquinto  
Yeah, so I love the podcast, mostly because it's an excuse for me to get to sit and listen to really interesting people. And you know, just to excuse to email somebody and be like, Oh, I think you're cool. You want to come on my podcast. Yeah, but anyway, I really like it because it focuses on specifically centering indigenous and other community voices in you know, anthropology, cultural resource management, heritage and land management. And so it's a place that people can go if they're interested in any topic and say, Okay, where's can I find an indigenous perspective on this topic? And I like that, because I always hear people saying, like, oh, I can never, you know, I'd really love to include more indigenous voices in whatever thing I'm doing, but I can't find anybody. And it's like, Well, look, I have six years worth of podcasts. I'm sure there's somebody in there that you can find to reach out to. And so it's just a good collection of all of these amazing, indigenous but also like Hispanic, Black, Asian voices. So when people are saying, you know, like, Oh, it's too hard or I don't know how to incorporate this. It's a resource for those people.
_____________________
Jessica Yaquinto 
Really interesting people, and you know, just to excuse to email somebody and be like, Oh, I think you're cool. You want to come on my podcast? Yeah. But anyway, I really like it because it focuses on specifically centering indigenous and other community voices in, you know, anthropology, cultural resource management, heritage and land management. And so, it's a place that people can go if they're interested in any topic and say, Okay, where's can I find an indigenous perspective on this topic? And I like that because I always hear people saying, like, oh, I can never, you know, I'd really love to include more indigenous voices and whatever thing I'm doing, but I can't find anybody. And it's like, Well, look, I have six years worth of podcasts. I'm sure there's somebody in there that you can find to reach out to and so it's just a good collection of all of these amazing, indigenous but also like Hispanic, Black, Asian voices. So when people are saying, you know, like, Oh, it's too hard, or I don't know how to incorporate this. It's a resource for those people.

Nic 
That's great. How often do you publish?

Jessica Yaquinto 
We're only monthly, mostly because it's a lot of work to recruit people because again, it does a smaller number of people. Hopefully not for long, but yeah, so it's only monthly. And because it's this side on top of the for profit and the nonprofit. Clearly we're if you're an indigenous person, or you know, a black person, Hispanic, another bipoc person who works in the environmental industry and you want to come on the podcast, I'd love to have you that, that we do tend to because again, we are on the archaeology Podcast Network. So we do tend to get a little cultural resources heavy, a little archaeology heavy, even as the ethnographer and cultural anthropologist of the crew. So I'd love to have a lot more land management discussions on there. So if you're out there, please, please feel free to reach out to me. Love to have you. Oh, that's great. So and

[Field Notes]

Nic 
can get it wherever they get podcasts. And, yeah, perfect. So yeah, so this is don't forget to check that out everybody. And I love it. I totally agree with everything you said about podcasting. And by the way, I wouldn't shock that. I also agree with you on that but yeah, awesome. Yeah. So anyways, let's say I please do check it out. Now it's time for one of our little segments we like to do on the podcast, our podcast called Field Notes. That's a part of the show where we talk to our guests about memorable moments, doing the work that they love. So we are encouraging our listeners to share their stories with us with the hashtag field notes so we can read them out on future episodes and have a lapse. We'll start actually with I have a couple I want to ask you about but the first one I want to know more about is your the coolest experience you've ever had, which is I know is unfair. But if you have a moment in your career, that you would describe as cool what would that be?

Jessica Yaquinto  
Yeah, I mean, that's tough because again, there's there's so many cool experiences. There's that moment where you're out with a tribe and all of a sudden everybody like switches to their language, and they're talking about something and you're like, I have no idea what's going on but something important is happening. Like that's always a really special moment. But I guess the one that comes to mind because it was it was pretty recent, was for the Browns Canyon project that I was talking about earlier. We actually had the opportunity to talk to the Secretary of the Interior Deb Holland, about that project. While she was stopping through Brown's Canyon, and that was that was a really special experience. Our intern, one of our two interns got to meet her. The tribal reps that we work with the most got to join our board Chairwoman who's indigenous she's from Colorado Springs. She's awesome. She's also she's an archaeologist. Oh, we don't hold that against her. Yes, she's the best. Yeah, that was just a really special incredible moment. It's a project that means a lot to me in so many different ways, especially all the work we've done with the tribes to make it what they envisioned for the project and that we got funding from the Colorado State Historical Fund. But then just yeah, getting to meet Deb getting to give that experience to our intern. It was really special.

Nic  
It's really cool. I'm super jealous. I promise not to hold it against you.

Jessica Yaquinto 
It was funny because I first I got the phone call about meeting her when I was in the middle of an accurate board meeting. So the American Cultural Resources association so we had like a five minute break or whatever, I stepped out, listen to my voicemail and got the message inviting us to meet up Alan and so I went back in the board meeting and I was just freaking out but I wasn't allowed to tell anybody. So it's like, all these people are like, are you okay? I'm like, I'm fine.

Nic 
Everything's good.

Jessica Yaquinto 
That's great. Okay.

Nic  
Now that's wonderful. I am very jealous. But really, really exciting. So that's really cool that I happen. But okay, okay, one more story for me and I want to know maybe what's the funniest thing that's ever happened? You in the tail?

Jessica Yaquinto 
Okay. I mean, that's hard to because people are hilarious, like across the board. I never laugh harder than when I'm in the field. But so one that happened not too too long ago that comes to mind those in the field with a couple of tribes and lots of agency representatives from a couple different agencies as well. And it was the summer and I had picked a couple different types of berries from my yard and brought them as a gift thinking it was a nice little gesture of friendship. They're bringing a couple of different types of areas that I knew were edible from the area, local native plants, and I brought them and we're passing them around at the opening meeting and the agency representatives are happily munching and they get to some of the elders and they start looking at the berries. I'm looking at each other. I'm looking at the berries and looking at each other. Like, okay, something's happening here and I don't know what it is. So finally, I was like, Okay, what's going on here? And they wouldn't tell me they made actually one of our interns. They made one of our interns tell me and they said, basically in our language these berries are called itchy but bear

all that you can see all the agency people go like

Unknown Speaker 
yeah

Jessica Yaquinto 
that's great. Oh, God. So the whole rest of the week I had to be like I promised these didn't come from my yard you know, whatever we're eating

Nic 
Oh, wow. Oh, that's great. But it worked out everything's okay. Now everyone survived. Yeah.

Jessica Yaquinto 
But, but everyone likes to laugh about it. Oh, yeah. Apparently they're edible, but maybe not in large quantities.

Nic  
Yeah, you're gonna have to. Yeah, I love that. It's good. But yeah, that's exactly what it's like, you know, environmental world, you know, right. It happens. But I love it. Thank you for sharing that. But yeah, you know, we also it's one of the things that's really important to us on our show is to talk about not just like the projects you work on, not just you know what you do? For A Living and all the things that are interesting there but also what you personally do for fun, we love to ask that question to get to know you a little bit better too. So what is it what do you do for fun? What do you like to do when you're not ethnography in

Jessica Yaquinto 
ethnography in? Well, I mean I would say obviously, I got into this type of fields because I love meeting new people. I love languages. I love being outside and exploring new places. So I do a lot of that my free time to a lot of traveling. A lot of hiking, spending time with friends. Yeah, my husband and I, we really we really do love traveling internationally. We love doing food tours, for example. And yeah, just exploring cultures and landscapes and yeah, I don't know that it's that exciting or different, but

Nic 
it makes me think like when you're traveling them, so you're coming from a different framework for it. So for me, like when I go to tribal, I'm like, I want to see all the coolest stuff that's outside for no reason whatsoever. I just want to stay here. I don't care about you know, you know, the city necessarily. I mean, sometimes it's very interesting, but what I want to see is the natural environment. So do you have that kind of lens on when you're out there? You're like, oh, I need to find them the culturally coolest part of this area and go to their, you know, even if it's not constantly tourist attraction or something.

Jessica Yaquinto 
Yeah. So Well, for one thing that you mentioned that reminded me of my husband and I love to read books by authors from that country whenever we travel somewhere. So we always like bring, we always seek out authors from the area. We're going to go and buy their books and read it. While we're there. It's just a way to engage on a different level with the culture, which I always think is kind of fun. I'll tell you about one of the countries we've got to lately. It's a lot of like sandbar books. That happens yeah, no, I would say I definitely love to find people and have conversations about what their their daily lives are like getting. I don't think it has to necessarily be like, iconic cultural things. I think I just really like learning more about people and their backgrounds. Sometimes the iconic stuff, especially when it's indigenous people can be a little like, is this appropriative or is this like, you know, like, I start to go on into that rabbit hole? Well, yes, I think, yeah, just talking to people. Yeah, we love anything where we can really get more of a local engaged experience. That's part of why we really like hiking like heart to heart or doing bicycle tours and things like that, because you can really see more of the countryside and then just like the, oh, here's, you know, Angkor Wat, check, right? No, but that seemed more of the countryside and stuff like that.

Nic 
Yeah. I mean, honestly, I find that fascinating, too. I think people in general will make make your spot much more so than the monument. It's there. So totally, totally with you on that. That's very, very cool. I know we're getting close to the end of our time here. I hate to let you go. But before we do, is there anything else you'd like to talk about that we didn't get to today?

Jessica Yaquinto 
Yeah, I think I guess one of the things that I would add is that a lot of times people think of ethnography or tribal consultation as like, Oh, it's just talking to people. You know, anyone can do that. And they'll kind of throw in whatever random person in the company is available and have not had time or, you know, like they'll throw their indigenous interns a lot of times into like, oh, we have an ethnographic study like your indigenous here. Take the whole thing. Things like that. And I would, I would definitely discourage people from doing that. There are a lot of people that are not trained in cultural anthropology that you know, for example, archaeologist that do have done enough ethnography and tribal consultation that they are excellent at it now. But I would definitely encourage you to hire somebody that does have that background, and not especially to throw an intern in where they're going to, you know, where you're kind of setting them up to fail, especially on that the ethics side of things. You know, I've had agencies call me because they've had ethnographers come out on, you know, larger projects where they weren't the one that selected the company and say, they just showed up and the tribes just shut up and there's no informed consent. Can we use yours? So, yeah, you know, make sure you're you're sending somebody out that has, ideally, education and training and experience in this, you know, like a master's degree, I can, I can assure you that it is not just talking to people. Right. And I would also say where possible, again, hire an indigenous company, if you can, if you're doing this type of work, or, you know, for your company as well. But again, don't throw them out there without without what they need to be successful in the role.

Nic 
Yeah, that's absolutely great, great advice. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being on the show with us. And before we let you go, let people know where they can get in touch with you.

Jessica Yaquinto 
Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn. Obviously. Jessica Quinto, also living heritage anthropology and living heritage Research Council are on Facebook. And living heritage anthropology is also on Twitter at living heritage A and then you can also contact me if you're trying to email me for example, through living heritage anthropology or living heritage Research Council's websites, and also I will throw in a plug there too. If you want to donate to any of our work. If you found any of the nonprofit work that I mentioned, interesting. You want to support indigenous internships. You can go to the living heritage Research Council websites and make a donation there. We always appreciate that. And I want to make a plug for the heritage Voices Podcast.

Nic 
Yeah, just a little bit that you work on. Yeah. Yeah, just a couple things, just like thank you so much, Jessica. Really appreciate it.

Jessica Yaquinto 
All right. Thank you.

[Outro]

Laura 
That's our show. Thank you, Jessica, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. And don't forget to subscribe. rate and review. Bye.

Nic
See you everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai