The cultural resource management (CRM) industry evolved to help government agencies and companies adhere to environmental protection regulations that call for the mitigation of adverse impacts to historic properties like archaeological sites, historical buildings, and cultural landscapes. An estimated $1.4 billion will be spent on CRM in the United States in 2020, more than $349 million of which is for archaeological project costs. When the $43 million spent on academic archaeological research is added to this total, it becomes very clear that this country allocates a large amount of resources to archaeological research; however, very little of these resources are in the control of BIPOC archaeologists, businesses, or communities. Over 90 percent of archaeologists in the United States are white, which means, despite the fact that much of this archaeology is conducted on BIPOC heritage sites, non-white people are rarely directly involved in the identification, interpretation, or conservation of the places that create our own heritage and cultural identity. Fortunately, there has been a concerted effort to include BIPOC people in archaeological research in hopes of creating more diversity in archaeology. It is hoped that adopting an anti-racism praxis among archaeological professionals will help undo the structural inequalities in the CRM industry and help cultivate a more equitable, inclusive field of study. Ongoing archaeological fieldwork on the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands is used as a case study in what this sort of anti-racist, community-based archaeology can look like and how it can help train the next generation of BIPOC archaeologists.

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