The National Workshop on Large Landscape Conservation

October 22 - 24, 2014

The panel  will present an innovative new concept for conservation, preservation, heritage tourism, and collaboration with American Indian groups. The Indigenous Cultural Landscape views large landscapes from the perspective of American Indian nations at the time of their first contact with Europeans. Such landscapes comprise the cultural and natural resources and relationships that would have supported the historic lifestyles and settlement patterns of native groups in their totality. The concept presents the indigenous view of one’s homeland on a regional rather than site based scale. The panel will discuss these ideas and the challenges of implementation in the context of a specific National Park Service project  - the planning for the Captain John Smith Historic Trail in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. 

 The goal of this session is to introduce the concept of Indigenous Cultural Landscapes and its orgins in the Chesapeake Bay. To present the idea that is under development by the National Park Service as a planning tool. The panel will also cover the relationship of the idea to the broader concepts of cultural landscapes. It will review the challenges of merging archeological data, information from the historical record, and regional environmental mapping. It will discuss the process developed to create criteria and methodology for identifying and mapping areas likely to contain ICLs, and explore the ways in which such a project might inform large landscape conservation beyond the Chesapeake Bay region.The panel will conclude by inviting the audience to participate in a discussion on the opportunities to use this information for targeting land conservation, recreational access, interpreting the American Indian story at a landscape scale, and benefiting diverse communities.