Alan Downer

Alan Downer arrived early this month in the Kapolei offices of the State Historic Preservation Division, an agency that has been under the gun over the past several years. Challenges notwithstanding, the temperate weather felt welcome after leaving behind work days in the cooler reaches of Arizona.

"I’m on the Colorado Plateau," Downer said in a telephone interview before his departure for Hawaii. "It’s 40 degrees out."

Downer, the new SHPD administrator, is contending with the pressures of bringing his office into compliance with National Park Service requirements concerning records management and other issues, so that it would not lose federal funding. And all of this is happening in the midst of ongoing duties overseeing the management of historic resources through mammoth projects, including Kakaako redevelopment and building Oahu’s rail system.

At 64, the New Jersey-born Downer comes to the job after more than 27 years as director of the Navajo Nations Historic Preservation Department. He’s also served on the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, an independent federal agency.

He’s well aware of the cultural sensitivities in this work. About four years ago, a former employee had a letter published in a newspaper alleging that Downer had made a disrespectful reference to Navajo burials, an assertion Downer denies. He said he does not recall the precise exchange made during a staff meeting, but he said the focus of the conversation was the need to repatriate Navajo remains promptly, and the upshot was that the Navajo officials sued to make that happen.

Downer has been on the historic preservation path for a long time, but there was a period running an eatery in the Friendly Ice Cream chain. Cooking remains an interest, as does swimming — he looks forward to doing more of that here.

Following that diversion into restaurant management, graduate studies in archaeology and applied anthropology followed at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Antiquities have been an interest since he was 8 years old.

"My parents bought me a World Book Encyclopedia," he said. "I was thumbing through it and I came across the article on the Roman Empire. I took one look at that and said, "Wow, that’s really cool. … I don’t know what that is, but that’s what I’m going to do."

QUESTION: How did you come to take this job?

ANSWER: I think I saw on a historic preservation website that it was being advertised. … And I had decided sometime in the last year that it was time for me to figure out what was going to come next. So when I saw the advertisement I was intrigued and thought, “Well I might as well apply for it and see what happens.”

I couldn’t tell you how much I’d heard about the details of SHPD being in the news, although I’m sure I had heard some. I do sort of keep track of what’s going on throughout the preservation community in the U.S. Honestly, I’m looking for new challenges, and so I was intrigued with the opportunity presented.

Q: What are your first concerns you want to address?

A: (Laughs) I have a great deal to learn, both in terms of what’s going on in preservation in Hawaii but also the nuts-and-bolts, day-to-day operation at SHPD, and what needs to happen to meet the requirements …

A friend of mine who is Hawaiian said to me in an email, “Wisdom comes from many voices.” So I’ll be doing a lot of talking and a lot of listening. …

As far as the very first thing I’d do is find out exactly where we are in terms of meeting all of the requirements … then do everything we can to both continue to get the day-to-day work done that has to be done to keep the operation afloat, but also make sure we meet those requirements.

Q: The problems we’ve had in staffing and managing records, all of the stuff that has fallen behind: Is any of that typical in this general field?

A: I think there are a number of issues. One of the common problems, of course, is finding qualified people, and qualified people willing to work for government wages. And I have to say that any number of people — both within the state government, people I know in Hawaii, people who are not necessarily living in the islands but have worked on preservation issues — every one of them speaks very highly of the staff that’s there now. And that’s really nice to hear. …

Q: Are there better opportunities for someone with archaeological training?

A: In some parts of the country there’s intense competition for people in the historic preservation field … consulting firms, and that can be very difficult to overcome. How true that is in Hawaii kind of depends on how big the labor pool is and how bad the economic downturn hit Hawaii. Recruitment can be a real serious issue. …

As far as record management goes, I think partly you’ve faced kind of a similar recruitment problem. All you have to do is read the newspaper about the tech world to realize that highly skilled tech people are in enormous demand. Government has a real problem competing for those people.

And the other problem that I think goes with that is, most places you have a tremendous backlog of what I would term “legacy data.” Stuff that the state started in the early ’70s. Technology to manage that data came along much later. So you may have two or three decades worth of material that needs to be put into an electronic format so that you can really work with it effectively.

And getting all of that into a usable form is a formidable task. And I think the states that committed to that early on are in a little bit better shape than the states that have come to it late in the game.

Q: Like Hawaii.

A: Yeah.

Q: Do you see any challenges getting to know this community, the cultural
issues? Concerns being viewed as an outsider?

A: I think my experience in Hawaii, dealing with the folks, has been that they’ve all been very welcoming, and very open. And I do know a number of people for years and years that have known folks in the preservation field in Hawaii, who have been very supportive of me throughout this process.

I think, as I said earlier, I have a lot of listening to do, a lot of learning to do. One of the key things, from my perspective, is I don’t intend to come in there and try to impose my perspective on the world. I intend to listen to all voices, and I’ll develop positions based on what I’m hearing.

Obviously, I am an outsider. I’m not concerned about that in the sense of, “Will I be viewed as an outsider?” It is what it is. There may be an advantage to not being viewed as somebody who’s already got a position. … I’ll be coming in essentially as a neutral, I guess.

There are pluses and minuses to that. I intend to make it a plus.

Q: Was the disposition of native remains a contentious issue in your own Navajo experience?

A: I think it’s wrong to think of this as just a native/non-native issue. I think the truth is that the vast majority of people feel like their ancestors should not be disturbed once they’re buried. I think that the native people generally feel like, and with good reason, they’ve been singled out for special mistreatment, if you will.

For example, if you look on the mainland, and it’s true of Native Hawaiians as well, if you have an archaeological dig at a historic site that’s an Anglo site, they may have to excavate some remains and they may have to do a study. But as soon as they’re done, those remains get reburied.

When you’re talking about native remains, until 1990, those remains got studied and put in boxes and put on shelves and curated, as specimens rather than as human beings. Realistically, we need to recognize that there’s a history there, and that there’s nothing unique about that sort of attitude, “Yes, we want our ancestors treated with respect and not disturbed unless there’s a good reason to.”

All over the United States, in native and non-native communities alike, you have these incidents where projects get hung up because of discovery of a cemetery nobody knew about. Or maybe if they’d done a little more planning or research they could have suspected something was there and prepared for it. …

By saying that, I’m not trying to underplay the importance of this to Native Hawaiians. I’m just trying to make the point that this is an almost universal human attitude. …

The best solution to dealing with human remains is to do your level best to identify them beforehand and take those into account in your planning so that things aren’t disturbed, unless there’s just no way to avoid it.

Q: Do you have any concerns about the SHPD mission regarding the Hono-lulu rail project?

A: There’s a programmatic agreement … that covers the rail project. Obviously, most of the decisions about how that process is supposed to work are laid out in the programmatic agreement. So I guess my concern is that the terms of the agreement be complied with, and that the planning proceeds in a manner that does as little harm as possible to the historic resources. …

Q: Is there any awkwardness about your predecessor still being there, Pua Aiu?

A: I actually literally ran into her before my first interview. I was kind of surprised that there didn’t seem to be any awkwardness there.

I figure we’re both adults, we’re both professionals. We’ll figure it out.

Q: You said you have been here before, but was it ever as part of your professional duties?

A: When I worked for the advisory council on Historic Preservation in the Denver office, the staff was organized by state. Hawaii was one of the states that I covered. Every time a federal agency invited me out there to meet with them and do an on-site inspection of a project, somebody more important than me decided that they really needed to handle it.

(Laughs.) Once I even had my ticket in my hand when one of the senior executives in Washington called and said, “Oh, no, Downer, that’s something I really need to handle.”