Hackenberg Prize

The Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) is pleased to announce that the 2019 Robert A. and Beverly H. Hackenberg Prize will be presented to Jeremy Spoon (Portland State University associate professor of anthropology and senior fellow at The Mountain Institute), Richard Arnold (Pahrump Paiute Tribe), and their collaborators at the society’s annual meeting in Portland on March 21.  

The Hackenberg Prize recognizes SfAA members and their community partners whose work demonstrates sustained and meaningful collaboration to improve the communities where they live and work. Each year, the Hackenberg Prize highlights the very best of what applied social scientists and their collaborators are doing in the community or region where the SfAA is meeting. The work of a SfAA member and collaborators is featured in a special session. The prize is accompanied by a cash award of $1,000 to be used to advance the collaborative effort. This prize is named for Robert and Beverly Hackenberg, whose distinguished applied research careers emphasized the need for collaboration between social scientists and grassroots community organizations to identify local needs and develop culturally appropriate solutions.  

Since 2008, Jeremy Spoon and Richard Arnold have worked closely with 16 Nuwu (Southern Paiute), Newe (Western Shoshone), and Numu (Owens Valley Paiute and Shoshone) tribes and several federal agencies to sustain and revitalize cultural ties with the landscape through progressive consultation, co-management, and interpretation. The results of this decade-long collaboration, known as The Numic Project, will be presented on Thursday, March 21. Project participants will reflect on their collaboration from Indigenous, federal agency, public, and academic perspectives. Their presentation, entitled, Revitalizing Numic Homelands: Blending Culture and Collaboration in the Great Basin and Upper Mojave Deserts, will be held in the Hilton’s Council Suite from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m.  

This collaboration offers a unique understanding of the land, using a progressive consultation framework that incorporates co-managing resources and developing co-created public education. It evolved into a model that integrates tribal understandings which can be adopted in other settings and by other university-community partnerships.  

Please join the Society for Applied Anthropology in recognizing the important work of this year’s recipients of the Robert A. and Beverly H. Hackenberg Prize: Jeremy Spoon, Richard Arnold, and their collaborators.