The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and RecoveryHoward G. Wilshire, Jane E. Nielson, andRichard W. Hazlett617 pages, hardcover: $35.Oxford University Press, 2008. It’s no secret that the West’s public lands are in deep trouble. The American West at Risk presents a familiar litany of problems: damage from overgrazing, […]
Communities
Posted inHeard Around the West
Behold, a pale horse…
There may be nothing new, perhaps, about a drunk guy on horseback in Wyoming, but Benjamin Daniels, 28, created a traffic hazard at 4 p.m. in Cody just by “riding a white horse during a snowstorm.” Slow-moving horse and snowflakes were blending in, reports the Associated Press, and motorists told police they feared there would […]
Posted inArticles
Abraham Lincoln and the West
Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln: Few presidents have been so connected and so often compared. Obama served in the Illinois legislature, just as Lincoln did. Obama announced his candidacy from the steps of the old state Capitol in Springfield, Ill., where Lincoln delivered his famous “house divided” speech. Like Lincoln, he rode a train to […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
No backup on the Northern border
A rural county is saddled with international responsibility.
Posted inWotr
Fear and rage in the barn
I was in the middle of a divorce when I applied for the barn job. I walked into the local rodeo arena, introduced myself to the owner and was attacked by a rooster — claws up. My automatic response was to kick the bird across the barn, too late remembering this was a job interview […]
Posted inGoat
Move over Yucca Mountain…
Construction is underway on a hush-hush repository deep beneath Wyoming’s Sweetwater County. What will it hold? Well, it’s not nuclear waste or a germ warfare facility. I’ll give you a hint: It involves a somewhat notorious science fiction author and, tangentially, Tom Cruise. From the Casper Star-Tribune (via the AP): Public planners . . .say […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
Culture and family
Besides being a way to ensure that only Indians got the pitiful and paltry benefits that the federal government was giving to the Natives they made treaties with, blood quantum was an insidious way of permanently removing the land and memory of a people (HCN, 1/19/09). What has happened to many Native families is a […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
“Five-fingered humans”
I’m a white boy who grew up on the Blackfeet rez in north-central Montana. I have distant Cherokee cousins, but my blood quantum is less than 1/16th, so I never thought it worthwhile to seek out the potential benefits, if tribal membership of an ancestor could have been proven (HCN, 1/19/09). I consider myself a […]
Posted inWotr
The terror and beauty of away games
The mud-spattered school bus hits snow at about 7,000-feet elevation. I’m following in a front-wheel-drive mini-van, and my tires are starting to spin in the gathering slush. Any moment, I expect the bus driver to find a wide spot in the road and retreat back to the high school, elevation 5,300 feet, where it is […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
Justice for all
Salt Lake City attorney serves the homeless
Posted inGoat
Meth in the West
The West continues to be the hot spot for meth in the U.S., leading the rest of the country with 65 percent of meth treatment admissions, according to a new 171-page study by the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health puts Nevada first in meth use, with 2.02 […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
Carrying your own load
Lessons from off the grid
Posted inGoat
A different outdoor game
Too little, too late. Shoot first, ask questions later… If you can shake your head in disgust while you say it, you’ve probably found the right cliche for the environmental fiasco that surrounds the wall on our southern border. The Department of Homeland Security recently agreed to fork over $50 million to the Interior Department […]
Posted inGoat
Legalize It
It sure didn’t seem like the kind of place where bloodied drug smugglers stumble out of the scrub after shootouts. But it was. On a holiday road trip to Mexico, my family and I stopped for the night at some friends’ house near Tubac, Arizona, a small community south of Tucson, about 15 minutes north […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
Catch him if you can
The Runner: A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James HogueDavid Samuels192 pages,hardcover: $23.New Press, 2008. Palo Alto High School believed James Hogue was a recently orphaned 16-year-old from a Nevada commune. Princeton University thought he was a self-educated ranch hand who lived alone in the […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
The HCN miracle
Well, you’ve done it again. Just when we were worried that the worsening economy would seriously cripple our financial condition, you stepped up in December with a blizzard of support. All told, our readers provided $150,000 in Research Fund gifts — a record amount for a single month. The presses (and the electrons at hcn.org) […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
No news is bad news
For Westerners interested in the news, one of the biggest stories lately is the crisis in the news industry itself. A few highlights: Washington state’s second-largest newspaper, the 146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was put up for sale Jan. 9. Its owner — Hearst Corp., a privately held chain based in New York — says that unless […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
Blood quantum myth
Regarding your “Blood Quantum” story, back before the first European contacts, marriage outside the tribe was the norm (HCN, 1/19/09). In my studies on biology and genetics, I learned that our Native elders did have extensive knowledge of biology, ecology, genetics, lethal recessives and the like. The only difference is that Western science quantifies, categorizes […]