Goodlands A Meditation and History on the Great Plains

Amer-European settlement of the Great Plains transformed bountiful Native soil into pasture and cropland, distorting the prairie ecosystem as it was understood and used by the peoples who originally populated the land. Settlers justified this transformation with the unexamined premise of deficiency, according to which the Great Plains region was inadequate in flora and fauna and the region lacking in modern civilization. Drawing on history, sociology, art, and economic theory, Frances W. Kaye counters the argument of deficiency, pointing out that, in its original ecological state, no region can possibly be incomplete. Goodlands examines the settlers’ misguided theory, discussing the ideas that shaped its implementation, the forces that resisted it, and Indigenous ideologies about what it meant to make good use of the land. By suggesting methods for redeveloping the Great Plains that are founded on native cultural values, Goodlands serves the region in the context of a changing globe.

About the Author

Frances W. Kaye is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska. She has held two Fulbright Teaching Program positions, in Montreal and in Calgary, the first of which resulted in the book Hiding the Audience: Arts and Arts Institutions on the Prairies. Kaye divides her time between a farmstead outside Lincoln, Nebraska, and a house in Calgary, so that she may always be close to the prairie land that drives her research.

Reviews

…Kaye synthesizes knowledge of the Great Plains with an almost stunning interdisciplinarity—the disciplines she draws from really are too many to list here—and, equally important to my mind, an unwavering binational Canada-US focus.

 

Western American Literature

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. 1. A Unified Field Theory of the Great Plains
3. 2. Exploring the Explorers
4. 3. Spiritual and Intellectual Resistance to Conquest, Part1: Custer and Riel
5. 4. Spiritual and Intellectual Resistance to Conquest, Part2: Messianism, the 1885 Northwest Resistance, and the 1890 Lakota Ghost Dance
6. 5. Spiritual and Intellectual Resistance to Conquest, Part3: John Joseph Mathews’ Wah’Kon-Tah and John G. Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks
7. 6. Intellectual Justification for Conquest: Comparative Historiography of the Canadian and US Wests
8. 7. Homesteading as Capital Formation on the Great Plains
9. 8. The Women’s West
10. 9. And Still the Waters
11. 10. Dust Bowls
12. 11. Mitigating but Not Rethinking: George W. Norris, Tommy Douglas, and the Great Plains
13. 12. Planning and Economic Theory
14. 13. Mouse Beans and Drowned Rivers
15. 14. Oil
16. 15. Arts, Justice, and Hope on the Great Plains
17. Conclusion
18. Notes / Credits / Index

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CA). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.