This announcement is to provide public notice of the National Park Service (NPS), intention to fund the following project with University of Alaska Fairbanks under a Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) program. CESUs are partnerships that provide research, technical assistance, and education. The project intended award is $26,674. This is a continuation of an existing agreement, number P11AT90439-P11AC90450. STATUTORY AUTHORITY: Agreements Concerning Cooperative Research and Training on NPS Resources (16 U.S.C. § 1a-2(j)): The Secretary may enter into agreements with public or private educational institutions, States and their political subdivisions, for the purpose of developing adequate, coordinated, cooperative research and training programs concerning the resources of the National Park System, and pursuant to such agreements, to accept from and make available to the cooperator such technical and support staff, financial assistance for mutually agreed upon research projects, supplies and equipment, facilities, and administrative services relating to cooperative research units as the Secretary deems appropriate. STATEMENT OF JOINT OBJECTIVES/PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN: Material will be collected (maps, photographs, and interviews) from six (6) communities along the Alaska Highway that have customary and traditional ties to Wrangell-St. Elias -- Healy Lake, Dot Lake, Tanacross, Tok, Tetlin and Northway. Most of these communities in the Upper Tanana region were recognized as having ties to the park after the original jukebox was created in the early 1990s. Their inclusion in the jukebox was one of the recommendations in the National Park Service's (NPS) recently completed "Upper Tanana Ethnographic Overview and Assessment". An average of three to four interviews will be conducted in each community. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve is in need of interpretive programs and displays highlighting local communities with ties to the park. Some residents of these communities are Alaska Natives with long established ties to the land. There are also many non-Native histories in the region, such as mining and trapping. The special ties that residents of the upper Tanana region have to the land are recognized in the designation of Healy Lake, Dot Lake, Tanacross, Tok, Tetlin and Northway as resident zone communities for the park. For all but Tok, this designation occurred after the original jukebox was developed and consequently these communities are not currently represented. In addition, computer technology and web standards have improved in the years since the park's jukebox was originally created. Consequently that material needs to be updated to meet the NPS's current security and accessibility standards as well as to incorporate modern web technology. The jukebox materials are available to researchers, students, tribes, and the public on the internet as well as at computers in the park's visitor centers and other visitor contact stations. Information obtained through these interviews can provide important facts about sites, structures, objects, plants, animals, landscapes, and people's lives, which often cannot be found in documents, books, photographs, or anywhere else. It would be unfortunate to have these people pass away before what they know can be passed onto the present and future generations. For visitors, a multi-media interactive program offers an introduction to communities and cultures with which they may have opportunities to interact. For park managers and other employees, the interviews support the park's ethnographic overview and assessments, the administrative history, other cultural resource studies, and subsistence management as well as education and interpretation programs. And for virtual visitors who may never have an opportunity to set foot in an Alaskan village, the program offers glimpses of the people, their history, and the setting of their community. Elders and other individuals to be interviewed will be identified with relevant village councils, and we will work in partnership with these federally recognized tribal governments in identifying interview themes. New interviews will be audio or video taped, transcribed, and presented as digital files on the Wrangell-St. Elias Project Jukebox website. The original recordings will be archived at the Oral History Collection, Alaska and Polar Regions Archives at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). All people that are interviewed will be asked to sign a release form that gives permission for the UAF to make the recordings public at the archives and to make the recordings and photos available on the internet. This will be as public and accessible a record as possible. Objectives ¿ Bring the existing Jukebox for WRST up to current industry standards for web page design, including those related to accessibility. ¿ Collect additional material (maps, photographs, and interviews) from six (6) communities along the Alaska Highway that have customary and traditional ties to Wrangell-St. Elias -- Healy Lake, Dot Lake, Tanacross, Tok, Tetlin and Northway. Approximately 20 new interviews will be conducted through this project. ¿ Incorporate the interviews from six communities (Dot Lake, Healy Lake, Tok, Tanacross, Northway and Tetlin) done in previous years of the project into the newly revised Wrangell-St. Elias Project Jukebox website, which includes digitizing and converting video, time-coding transcripts, scanning release forms, writing biographies of narrators, and uploading all content into Drupal including transcripts, video, release forms, and photographs (with captions if photos are in slideshow). ¿ Integrate historic photographs and film clips from the UAF and/or WRST archives into the Jukebox. ¿ Complete any additional interviews which were incomplete in previous years. ¿ Finalize all aspects of the Jukebox website and test. ¿ Conduct community presentation in each village to show the final Jukebox website, allowing opportunity for review, comment and feedback. The partner, in cooperation with the National Park Service will: ¿ Use funds allocated under this agreement to incorporate interviews from Healy Lake, Dot Lake, Tanacross, Tok, Tetlin and Northway into the Jukebox website. ¿ Complete any additional interviews necessary from previous years¿ work and finalize the Jukebox website and test. ¿ Cooperate with the Agreement Technical Representative (ATR) to ensure that the conduct of the project complies with the ¿NPS Interim Guidance Document Governing Code of Conduct, Peer Review, and Information Quality Correction for National Park Service Cultural and Natural Resources Disciplines,¿ and with any and all subsequent guidance issued by the NPS Director to replace this interim document. The ATR is the peer review manager for this project. ¿ Integrate historic photographs and film clips from the UAF and/or WRST archives into the Jukebox. ¿ Conduct community presentation in each village to show the final Jukebox website, allowing opportunity for review, comment and feedback. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE INVOLVEMENT -Substantial Involvement : ¿ Attend meetings, consultations, and participate in conference calls which pertain to this agreement. ¿ Park staff will provide local contacts and participate in meetings with federally recognized tribal governments. The NPS will provide ongoing review of the project. NPS Staff will review all work as it progresses. Adjustments to protocol, interview subjects, scheduling, and subject matter may be discussed and implemented as necessary as project proceeds. SINGLE-SOURCE JUSTIFICATION: Department of the Interior Policy (505 DM 2) requires a written justification which explains why competition is not practicable for each single-source award . The National Park Service did not solicit full and open competition for this award based the following criteria: Continuation: This project is a continuation of an existing project. This is year three. Work this year depends on data and information collected in years one and two, and editing will be done on existing data. Technical contact information: Agreement Technical Representative: Barbara Cellarius, barbara
[email protected], (907) 822-7236, National Park Service, Alaska Region, End of FOA