Whistleblower sounds alarm about destruction of tribal sites in North Carolina

Spear points, hammer stones and picks lost to history under layers of leaves, roots and rocks - it was the evidence Scott Ashcraft was looking for.

The ancient tools were inadvertently unearthed in 2021 by a bulldozer fighting a wildfire along a steep slope in western North Carolina. Ashcraft, a career U.S. Forest Service archaeologist, knew these wooded mountainsides held more clues to early human history in the Appalachian Mountains than anyone had imagined.

He tried for years to raise the alarm to forest managers, saying outdated modeling that ignored the artifacts sometimes hidden on steep terrain - especially sites significant to Native American tribes - needed to be reconsidered when planning for prescribed fires, logging projects, new recreational trails and other work on national forest lands.

Instead, Ashcraft says managers retaliated against him and pushed ahead with their plans, often violating historic preservation and environmental protection laws by side stepping consultations with tribes, limiting input from state archaeologists and systematically suppressing scientific data.

In a letter shared with The Associated Press, Ashcraft sent his concerns Thursday to top officials in the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Interior Department, White House Council on Native American Affairs and National Congress of American Indians. He described an escalating pattern of illegal, unethical and irresponsible behavior by forest managers in North Carolina that stands in sharp contrast to the historic strides the Biden administration has made nationally to include Indigenous expertise when making decisions about public land management.

Although the case focuses on a single state, Ashcraft said it highlights a bigger problem - that there are no guardrails to keep the Forest Service from using outdated modeling and skirting requirements to consult with tribes before moving ahead with projects.

"It's seems that project completion, feathers in caps and good performance evaluations have outweighed the protection of cultural resources," Ashcraft told the AP in an interview.

The letter is the latest salvo in a federal whistleblower case that began when Ashcraft filed a lengthy disclosure with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's inspector general in 2023. That office turned the case back to the Forest Service, where regional officials declared that legal requirements had been met.

The whistleblower disclosure gained the attention of preservation experts and other researchers as hostility by forest managers mounted against Ashcraft, the heritage resources program manager for the Pisgah National Forest.

Emails and other documents reviewed by the AP show many of Ashcraft's duties were reassigned to other employees and he was prohibited from communicating with tribes.

Regional forest officials have not directly addressed allegations of retaliation against Ashcraft, but they have doubled down on promises to work with the dozen tribes that have ancestral connections to the Nantahala and Pisgah national forests.

Nationally, the Biden administration has moved toward recognizing the connection Native Americans have to their homelands through the publication of action plans and guidance for dealing with sacred sites. In 2022, President Joe Biden issued a memo aimed at setting minimum standards for how agencies should carry out consultations with tribes.

It appears that system broke down in North Carolina, said Valerie Grussing, the executive director of the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers. The group has been in discussions with tribes and top forest officials about violations there.

"What's happened at the forest unit and the regional level is egregious. It's unconscionable," she said. "It's not just a breaking of the federal trust responsibility, but of established relationships."

James Melonas, supervisor of the four forests in North Carolina, said in a statement that an independent group of experts was tapped last year to review several projects to ensure compliance with federal laws and tribal consultation obligations after "an internal concern" was raised.

The experts recommended more training for employees on the requirements of the National Historic Preservation Act and a full review of the forest heritage program. Regional forest officials said that internal review was done in May, confirming that obligations were met.

"Honoring this rich tribal heritage along with co-stewardship of these lands with tribal nations is a top priority for the Forest Service," Melonas said.

Some tribal officials say the Forest Service did not reach out to them when conducting the reviews.

Ashcraft's attorneys have partnered with the legal nonprofit Whistleblower Aid. They contend that Ashcraft has put his career on the line to bring attention to what they described as the "willful destruction of Native American heritage sites."

Andrew Bakaj, chief legal counsel for Whistleblower Aid, said virtually none of the key stakeholders with knowledge of the violations were interviewed as part of the agency's review and the report has been kept out of the public eye.

The concerns raised by the whistleblower are not the first time the Forest Service has been accused of not following procedures. Documents obtained by the AP in 2016 revealed that portions of the Trail of Tears were ripped up in eastern Tennessee when an employee approved the construction of berms and trenches without authorization. The Forest Service later apologized to the Cherokee Nation and other tribes.

Ashcraft has surveyed vast tracts of forest over his 31-year career. Without further investigation of steep slopes, he said the extent of the damage done in western North Carolina as a result of managers relying on outdated modeling can't be fully known.

The whistleblower disclosure provides examples in which forest managers have allegedly tried to obstruct further archaeological investigations on steep slopes. It states that recreational trail projects - including a multimillion-dollar effort to expand hiking and biking networks east of Asheville -- have already been built over some areas and that prescribed burns have been implemented despite the need for more assessments and tribal consultation.

"These actions are irreparably damaging or destroying an untold sum of Native American cultural and archeological sites including some of great significance. This conduct continues to this day," Ashcraft warned in his letter.

The intent isn't to stop work on forest lands, Ashcraft said, but rather to document sites before they're altered or reroute work in cases where areas are more sensitive and need protection.

The Center for the Investigation of Native and Ancient Quarries has worked with Ashcraft and other scientists to uncover dozens of sites - many of which have a "surprising density" of Native American cultural materials and evidence of land use dating back thousands of years.

Within the scar of the Seniard Creek Fire south of Asheville, they turned up stone axes and other tools used for digging at quartz and soapstone quarries - all examples of what researchers described as engineering feats by sophisticated societies that called this region home about 6,000 years ago.

"Here we are at higher elevations and steeper slopes with an absolutely magnificent resource eroding downslope," said Philip LaPorta, executive director of the center and adjunct senior research scientist at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

LaPorta said discoveries like the one near Asheville should make people think differently about how Indigenous people used steep landscapes.

The whistleblower disclosure was shared with the Cherokee Nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the Catawba Indian Nation, the Muscogee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee were hopeful about having more meaningful and frequent consultations with forest managers after the agency adopted a revised plan for the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests in 2023. However, a specialist with the tribe said not much has changed.

In his letter, Ashcraft wrote that the identification and preservation of Native American heritage sites goes beyond a single agency, tribe or whistleblower.

"It concerns all of us," he wrote. "Protection of these resources is a duty shared by actors across state and federal government, sovereign tribes as well as civil society. When one fails - spectacularly and in bad faith - it is up to the rest to step in."

For Native Americans, Grussing said it goes beyond the artifacts found in a particular spot. It's an intangible energy that comes from being connected to a place.

"That's what is at stake," she said. "These are irreplaceable cultural resources and places. They're nonrenewable."