J. Claire Dean is a conservator in private practice based in Portland , Oregon . With graduate and post graduate degrees in archaeology and archaeological conservation, Claire specializes in the care of archaeological and ethnographic materials with a special emphasis on rock imagery. She works both nationally and internationally. Her clients include all the major Federal land managing agencies in the USA , as well as state and local government authorities. She regularly works for Native American cultural resource offices across the country. Claire is the Consulting Conservator for the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa .

For thousands of years the Columbia River and its tributaries have been the mainstay for the cultural and economic needs of the Native American tribes of the Columbia River Plateau region. Consequently there is a concentration of archaeological materials in the area, including hundreds of rock image sites. For almost 50 years between the 1930s and 1970s, the potential for the river to produce vast quantities of hydroelectric power was also realized by the construction of many dams - 11 in the main stream of the river -- making it the most hydroelectrically developed river system in the world. Holding back the river water also meant the inundation of thousands of archaeological sites along its banks. Many of these included rock imagery and in an effort to preserve some of it from flooding many rock image boulders were removed from their original sites to higher ground. This presentation explains a major cooperative effort between Native American tribal governments and U.S. Federal government agencies to repatriate some of these boulders to locations more in keeping with their original settings and cultural contexts.