Historic Preservation & Resiliency: Traditional Pueblo Villages

(above left) “View of San Juan Pueblo and North Plaza.” 1877. John K. Hillers. Courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. (NAA INV 06344100). (above right) "Mud plaster workshop at Ohkay Owingeh." Tania Hammidi, Photographer, 2012. (center) "View of rehabilitated home at Ohkay Owingeh." Kate Russell Photography, 2012.

Guest Speaker: Shawn Evans
Atkin Olshin Schade Architects, Santa Fe, NM; James Marston Fitch Fellow

Shawn Evans, AIA, is an Associate Principal at Atkin Olshin Schade Architects, a 20-person architecture, planning, and preservation firm with offices in Santa Fe, NM and Philadelphia, PA. A graduate of Texas A&M University, Shawn received a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. Shawn leads many of the firm’s preservation, cultural, and institutional projects, including master plans for Eastern State Penitentiary (PA), the Penn Museum (PA), Fort Apache (AZ), Cherokee Castle (CO), University of Pennsylvania, and Colorado College. He has led complex preservation planning efforts for historic housing at Ohkay Owingeh, Pueblo de Cochiti, and Santo Domingo Pueblo, as well as numerous churches and historic sites.



A frequent speaker on heritage and museums, he has presented at many conferences, has taught architectural design at Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania, and will be teaching in the Preservation and Regionalism program at the University of New Mexico in 2015. In 2011, Shawn received the prestigious James Marston Fitch Mid-Career Fellowship, through which he broadened his collaboration with the Pueblos. His Fitch work included extensive dialogue with tribal leaders regarding each Pueblo's preservation and rehabilitation practices, with the goal to build support for increased self-determination in housing policy in the historic villages.

"Historic Preservation, Self-Determination, and the Resiliency of Traditional Pueblo Villages: Traditional Cultural Place as an Enabler of Change"

The living cultures of the Pueblo tribes maintain the oldest traditions of architecture in the United States. Advances in self-determination policy have enabled them to develop plans to preserve their historic villages according to their own heritage values. Some Pueblos are renowned for resistance to change, while other view preservation with skepticism. What most tribes seek is revitalization, not “preservation” as defined by the federal government. Most seek to extend the palpability of the past, but many are just as interested in meeting the needs of modern life in these ancient places. This paper summarizes the results of a two-year study of the physical conditions and place-based preservation approaches of the Pueblos, as well as completion of a rehabilitation project at Ohkay Owingeh.

National Register Bulletin 38 provides a process for nominating Traditional Cultural Properties (TCP) to the National Register of Historic Places.  This typically involves a community invoking preservation policy to prevent change at a place they hold dear but no longer fully control. The Pueblos demonstrate that the TCP process can also be used to enable change in some of the oldest places in America. The elevation of community values and a place-based understanding of integrity over federal standards and a materials-based understanding of authenticity is challenging, but provides a window to preservation for minority and traditional communities often averse to external influence. 

Suggested Advance Readings:

Reed Karaim 2015. "It Takes a Village: A New Mexico Pueblo Finds Strength in its Past" in Preservation: The magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Winter 2015, pp. 26-33.

Thomas F. King 2003. "Getting Started with TCPs" in Places That Count: Traditional Cultural Properties in Cultural Resource Management. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, pp. 1-15.

Sponsored by the Native American & Indigenous Studies Initiative at Penn.