Education

• AB, Anthropology, Hamilton College
  
• MA, Anthropology, University of Arizona
• PhD, Anthropology, University of Arizona

Biography

I come to the fields of archaeology and environmental management less a scholar than a practitioner. Growing up in Colorado, I worked on ranches and land survey crews before stints as a crab fisher, wildland firefighter, archaeological field technician, and U.S. Bureau of Land Management staff archaeologist. These jobs prepared me to help the White Mountain Apache Tribe set up its Heritage Program and Historic Preservation Office.  My duties as the Tribe’s HPO meant working with loggers, miners, livestock owners, well drillers, biologists, hydrologists, recreation managers, and road and community builders. Most of all, my responsibilities for helping manage lands under Apache ownership since time immemorial brought opportunities for me to listen, learn, and mobilize Ndee (Western Apache) values, interests and preferences.

Service as a Tribal official, 1997–2005, and as a member of the Board of Directors for the Fort Apache Heritage Foundation, 1997–present, has also allowed me to keep at least two promises. The first was a personal pledge I made to the Tribe’s leadership to resign as THPO once the Apaches I was working with were able to run the office. The second is a career-scale practical promise: fulfill ethical mandates to use archaeological thinking, methods, places, and knowledge to serve living communities.

As I was preparing to leave my position with the Tribe, SFU Archaeology and REM were recruiting a Canada Research Chair faculty member with expertise working at interfaces between cultural and natural resources and Indigenous and Western ways of learning, doing, and managing. My faculty position has allowed me to craft collaborations with Apaches and other Indigenous peoples on projects to advance both Indigenous sovereignty—that is, rights and responsibilities derived from authority over people and territory—and Indigenous stewardship—that is, sustainable and broadly beneficial uses of sociocultural and biophysical inheritances.

As of 2022, those commitments include service as an expert witness for Apaches, as the director for Archaeology Southwest’s Landscape and Site Protection Program, and as the lead planner for a major new preservation and visitor experience plan for the Fort Apache and Theodore Roosevelt School National Historic Landmark. I’ve also had the honor of service on the boards of the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers and the Arizona Wilderness Coalition. My published works center on Ndee history and applied archaeology. Research and outreach partners in British Columbia include the Tla’amin and Katzie First Nations and the Stó:lō Research and Resource Management Centre.

My graduate student recruitment focuses on the HRM Professional Program.

Some recent publications include:

• Welch, John R. (2021) “United States shall so legislate and act as to secure the permanent prosperity and happiness of said Indians”: Policy Implications of the Apache Nation’s 1852 Treaty. International Indigenous Policy Journal 12(4). 
• Hogg, Erin A., and John R. Welch (2021) Expert Witnesses’ and Lawyers’ Perspectives on the Use of Archaeological Data as Evidence in Aboriginal Rights and Title Litigation.  BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly 211 (Autumn 2021): 13–41. 
• Gauer, Viviane H., David M. Schaepe, and John R. Welch (2021) Supporting Indigenous adaptation in a changing climate: insights from the Stó:lō Research and Resource Management Centre (British Columbia) and the Fort Apache Heritage Foundation (Arizona). Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. 
• Hogg, Erin A., and J.R. Welch (2020) Aboriginal Rights and Title for Archaeologists: A History of Archaeological Evidence in Canadian Litigation. Journal of Social Archaeology20 (1):1-28. 
• Welch, John R. (2020) I © Archaeology. In Archaeologies of Heart and Emotion, edited by Kisha Supernant, Jane Eva Baxter, Natasha Lyons, and Sonya Atalay, pp. 23-37. Springer Nature. 
• Hodgetts, Lisa, Kisha Supernant, Natasha Lyons, John R. Welch (2020) Broadening #MeToo: Tracking Dynamics in Canadian Archaeology through a Survey on Equity and Diversity. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 44(1):20-47. 
• Welch, John R. (2019) Conserving Contested Ground: Sovereignty-Driven Stewardship by the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the Fort Apache Heritage Foundation. In Environmentalism on the Ground: Processes and Possibilities of Small Green Organizing, pp. 73–97, edited by Jonathan Clapperton and Liza Piper. Athabasca University Press.
• Welch, John R., Mark Altaha, Garry J. Cantley, William H. Doelle, Sarah A. Herr, Morag M. Kersel, Brandi L. MacDonald, Francis P. McManamon, Barbara Mills, Fred Nials, Mary Ownby, Michael Richards, Ramon Riley, Stacy L. Ryan, Duston Whiting, Donna Yates (2019) Hope in Dirt: Report of the Fort Apache Workshop on Forensic Sedimentology Applications to Cultural Property Crime, 15–19 October 2018. International Journal of Cultural Property (2019) 26: 197–210. 
• Welch, John R.; Burley, David V.; Driver, Jonathan C.; Hogg, Erin A.; Jayasundera, Kanthi; Klassen, Michael; Maxwell, David; Nicholas, George P.; Pivnick, Janet; and Dore, Christopher D.  (2018) Digital Bridges Across Disciplinary, Practical and Pedagogical Divides: An Online Professional Master’s Program in Heritage Resource Management. Journal of Archaeology and Education 2. 
• Welch, John R. (2018) Sovereignty-Driven Research. In Giving Back: Research and Reciprocity in Indigenous Settings, pp. 307–329, edited by R. Douglas K. Herman. Oregon State University Press.
• Schaepe, David, Bill Angelbeck, David Snook, and John R. Welch (2017) Archaeology as Therapy: Connecting Belongings, Knowledge, Time, Place, and Well-Being. Current Anthropology 58(4):502-533. 
• Welch, J.R. (2017) Earth, Wind, and Fire: Pinal Apaches, Miners, and Genocide in Central Arizona, 1859-1874. Sage Open (October-December):1-19. 
• Welch, John R., Sarah A. Herr, and Nicholas C. Laluk (2017) Ndee (Apache) Archaeology. In Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology, edited by Barbara J. Mills and Severin Fowles, pp. 495-512. Oxford University Press, New York. 
• Welch, J.R., Editor (2016) Dispatches from the Fort Apache Scout: White Mountain and Cibecue Apache History Through 1881, By Lori Davisson, with Edgar Perry and the Original Staff of the White Mountain Apache Cultural Center. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Welch helps direct the Professional Online Graduate Program in Heritage Resource Management and teaches Indigenous Peoples and Co-Management (REM 406), Cultural Heritage Management (ARCH 286), HRM Law and Policy (ARCH 531), and HRM Professional Practice and Ethics (ARCH 541).