NPS ethnographers, along with professionals from other programs, agencies, and organizations, teach how to incorporate ethnography into park planning, management, and interpretation. Ethnographers also conduct special classes in how to do oral histories and rapid ethnographic assessments. Typically, representatives from ethnic communities and other stakeholder groups participate alongside training staff.

These courses train participants in the legal basis for park relationships with tribes, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians. The training concerns the full array of American peoples; distance learning courses are planned on African American and Asian American interests.

NPS ethnographers are active in a wide range of professional associations and activities, nationally and internationally.

• Research Methods

  • Brown, Audrey
    • 2001 Africanisms in the "Old Ship of Zion": What Are Their Forms and Why Do They Persist?, Places of Cultural memory: African Reflections on the American Landscape, Conference Proceedings, May 9-12, 2001, Atlanta, Georgia
  • Schoepfle, G.M. and O. Werner
    • 1999 Ethnographic Debriefing, Field Methods, Vol. 11, No. 2, November 1999, 158-165, Sage Publications, Inc.

• Workshop Proceedings

  • Traditionally Associated Peoples and Ethnographic Resources
  • El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro REAP Workshop

• Distance Learning

  • African American Heritage & Ethnography

• Essential Competencies

  • Essential Competencies—Ethnographer (.doc) (.pdf)