Applied Anthropologist Profile: Margaret Hangan, Heritage Program Manager for the U.S. Forest Service

Margaret Hangan, Heritage Program Manager for the Kaibab National Forest

 

There is an old saying that goes: “Find a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”  There are variations on this saying, but ultimately, the message is clear: if you love what you do it will never feel like work.  It will be your passion project.  This very much embodies the career of Margaret Hangan, who has made a career out of her passion for history and archaeology.  She is currently employed as a Heritage Program Manager for the Kaibab National Forest, but she has worked for several decades in archaeology in various private and federal sector positions, all of which will be covered in this post.

 

Margaret Hangan’s interest in archaeology started in a very common (for many archaeologists) place: it started with dinosaurs.  She was interested in digging them up, but she did not initially start her adult working life in that or anything related to it.  She actually started out as a waitress while she attended community college.  She had no set path when she started her coursework at the community college.  She simply took classes that sounded interesting and given her interests in dinosaurs she opted to take an archaeology course.  This is where she got hooked into the field.  She ultimately pursued and in 1989 completed her Bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Pitzer College.

 

For about a decade after that she worked in the private sector as an archaeologist.  The work was steady but inconsistent, leading her to pursue her Master’s of Arts degree in anthropology.  She enrolled in the program offered through the University of California-Bakersfield, and someone recommended she apply for the Student Career Experience Program (renamed to the Indefinite Intern program).  In an interview she admitted that she really needed the money, which is why she ultimately applied to the program, and it worked out because she was placed with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).  The internship provided her money and flexibility to complete her Master’s degree, which was done in 2003, and it launched her career in the federal sector as she moved directly into a full time position with the BLM.  She transitioned in short order to the U.S. Forest Service, working for the Cleveland National Forest as a Heritage and Tribal Relations Program Manager.  She stayed in that position for three years before moving on to her current position as the Heritage Program Manager with the Kaibab National Forest.  In this position she is responsible for meeting compliance standards with the Historic Preservation Act, and she pursues various prehistoric and historic archaeology projects throughout the area, many of which focus on Black history.

 

In addition she has served as a co-chair of the Arizona Historic Archaeology Advisory Committee and a member of the Arizona Governor’s Archaeological Advisory Council.  She was also the President of the Southwestern Region’s Regional Civil Rights Committee, wherein she completed work focusing on diversity inclusion, LGBTQ recognition and other relevant issues.  This work has more recently gotten her involved in the U.S. Forest Service’s Culture Heritage in the Forest (CHIF) program.  It is a program that was recently developed for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities to learn and gain exposure to the heritage programs with the U.S. Forest Service.  The goal of this program is to expand the number of minority candidates who work for agency, and as Hangan is one of five Black archaeologists working for the U.S. Forest Service she is dedicated to increasing the number greatly.  During an interview she noted that when there are not People of Color or other minorities in these positions that certain stories do not get told, and it is important to her and the people she serves to have all these stories shared.  I suspect that Hangan’s efforts, with the support of the U.S. Forest Service, will encourage a greater diversified workforce and enable those stories to be told.

 

References

Baca, B. (2021, February 26). HerStory: Meet Margaret Hangan. Retrieved from U.S. Forest Service: https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/excel/herstory-meet-margaret-hangan

Hangan, M. (2020, September 24). Interview: Margaret Hangan. (R. Kline, Interviewer)

Hangan, M. (2024, May 2). SBA Spotlight: Margaret Hangan. (S. f. Archaeologists, Interviewer)

Museum of Northern Arizona. (2024, March 9). African Americans and the Arizona Lumber Industry. Retrieved from Museum of Northern Arizona: https://musnaz.org/event/african-americans-and-the-arizona-lumber-industry/

Natural Inquirer. (2024, February). Margaret Hangan, Archeologist. Retrieved from Natural Inquirer, U.S. Forest Service: https://cdn.naturalinquirer.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/HANGAN_PSTR.pdf