Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Redefining The Dust Bowl Region Via Popular Perception And Geotechnology, Jess C. Porter, G. Allen Finchum

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The Dust Bowl is a historical vernacular region that has been delimited by a diverse group of academics, literary authors, and popular cultural voices. However, the general public’s perception of the Dust Bowl region has not been mapped and analyzed. This research queried residents of 93 Great Plains counties in order to ascertain their perceptions and knowledge of the vernacular Dust Bowl region. Analysis of the responses via the application of geographic information system mapping reveals striking differences between respondents of varying age and place of residence. Findings suggest that spatial understanding of the Dust Bowl phenomena is eroding among …

Book Review: Daschle Vs. Thune: Anatomy Of A High-Plains Senate Race By Jon K. Lauck, Thomas D. Isern

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Historian, political operative, and blogger Jon K. Lauck offers an insider’s account of the 2004 United States Senate race in South Dakota. Democrat Tom Daschle, leader of his party in the Senate, sought reelection and was challenged by Republican John Thune. Lauck seeks to explain Thune’s surprising victory—or rather, as the account unfolds, Daschle’s bitter loss. As is the way with insider accounts, this one produces some striking insights, but is also somewhat limited by its perspective.

Daschle in 2004 struggled, as Lauck puts it, with “the LBJ dilemma”—how to lead a liberal party in Washington while campaigning back home …

Abundance And Distribution Of Lesser Snow And Ross’S Geese In The Rainwater Basin And Central Platte River Valley Of Nebraska, Mark P. Vrtiska, Susan Sullivan

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The number of lesser snow geese (Chen caerulescens) and Ross’s geese (C. rossii), hereinafter called “light geese,” staging during spring in the Rainwater Basin and Central Platte River Valley of south-central Nebraska has dramatically increased since the late 1980s. However, there has been no documentation of the abundance or distribution of light geese across the Rainwater Basin and Central Platte River Valley and the relationship of distribution to conservation-order activities. We used aerial transect surveys and distance sampling methodology to estimate abundance and distribution of light geese in the Rainwater Basin and Central Platte River Valley …

Book Review: Collaborating At The Trowel’S Edge: Teaching And Learning In Indigenous Archaeology Edited By Stephen W. Silliman, Joe Watkins

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This book is an outgrowth of a symposium presented at the 2005 Society for American Archaeology annual meeting and judged by the Amerind Foundation as the conference’s outstanding symposium. The original symposium papers, further refined during an Amerind Foundation-sponsored seminar held in October of the same year, form the book’s chapters. The volume’s rather lofty goal, as set out in Silliman’s introductory chapter, is to “redirect contemporary archaeology in many ways that are more methodologically rich, theoretically interesting, culturally sensitive, community responsive, ethically aware, and socially just.”

The chapters in part 1 focus on field schools and workshops conducted in …

Long-Term Agricultural Land-Use Trends In Nebraska, 1866–2007, Tim L. Hiller, Larkin A. Powell, Tim D. Mccoy, Jeffrey J. Lusk

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Although landscape changes from anthropogenic causes occur at much faster rates than those from natural processes (e.g., geological, vegetation succession), human perception of such changes is often subjective, inaccurate, or nonexistent. Given the large-scale land-use changes that have occurred throughout the Great Plains, the potential impacts of land-use changes on ecological systems, and the insight gained from knowledge of land-use trends (e.g., to compare to wildlife population trends), we synthesized information related to land-use trends in Nebraska during 1866–2007. We discussed and interpreted known and potential causes of short- and long-term land-use trends based on agricultural and weather data; farm …

A Taxonomic Study Of Populations Of Tiger Beetles In The Cicindela Longilabris Complex From The Black Hills Of South Dakota, Stephen M. Spomer

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Three phenotypes within the Cicindela longilabris complex are present in the vicinity of the Black Hills in South Dakota: Laurent’s boreal long-lipped tiger beetle, Cicindela longilabris laurentii; the prairie long-lipped tiger beetle, Cicindela nebraskana; and a third phenotype that shares characteristics of both species. By comparing morphological and ecological characteristics between these three phenotypes, I was able to separate C. longilabris and C. nebraskana using ventral and proepisternal color, presence or absence of a middle band on the elytra, elytral luster, labral width:length ratio, and hind tarsal length. Somewhat less useful characters were labral color and total length. The …

Book Review: Grappling With Demon Rum: The Cultural Struggle Over Liquor In Early Oklahoma By James E. Klein, Davis D. Joyce

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

When asked to review this book for Great Plains Research, the first thought to cross my mind was of Jimmie Lewis Franklin’s Born Sober: Prohibition in Oklahoma, 1907-1959, for Franklin set a high standard on the subject of prohibition in Oklahoma with that 1971 work. Indeed, Franklin, now retired from Vanderbilt University, provided one of the endorsements for the dust jacket of James E. Klein’s work, calling it “An engaging study of the intense battle over liquor in the early years of the Sooner state. In a careful and sophisticated analysis Klein shows that tensions over prohibition arose …

Analysis Of Aquifer Depletion Criteria With Implications For Groundwater Management, Jesse T. Korus, Mark E. Burbach

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Groundwater is critical to many aspects of life on the Great Plains. Overdevelopment of this resource can have serious social, economic, and environmental consequences. Aquifer depletion criteria are used in many areas of the Great Plains to implement management responses and limit groundwater development. This study addresses groundwater-level triggers and depletion limits—criteria commonly used in Nebraska—within the context of interconnected ground- and surface-water systems. Generic models are used to calculate transient water budgets in three hypothetical systems given depletion limits of 5%, 10%, 15%, and 25%. In each simulation, the source of water to the wells changes from aquifer depletion …

Book Review: Ecology Of The Shortgrass Steppe: A Long-Term Perspective Edited By William Lauenroth And Ingrid C. Burke, Richard K. Sutton

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Ecology of the Shortgrass Steppe represents the newest in a series of books detailing the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites found throughout the United States. The book’s editors, associated with the on-going interdisciplinary research at the Central Plains Experimental Range and nearby Pawnee National Grasslands, bring 40 years of work to understanding this unique ecosystem.

The book proceeds from general overview chapters about the context, climate, soils, and plant community of what the editors call the shortgrass steppe (shortgrass prairie) to more detailed chapter reviews of its disturbance regime, faunal communities, primary production, organic and gas exchanges, grazing, and finally …

Book Review: Food And The Mid-Level Farm: Renewing An Agriculture Of The Middle Edited By Thomas A. Lyson, G.W. Stevenson, And Rick Welsh, Richard A. Levins

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The central question of Food and the Mid-Level Farm is both complex and fascinating: how can we renew an agriculture of the middle? To a large degree, the answer lies with what we think an “agriculture of the middle” is.

For decades, we have heard of a trend toward “bimodal agriculture” in which there are very many small farms, relatively few giant corporate operations, and not much in the middle. Most discussions of this “middle” go no farther than the scale of the operation, that is, the acreage, number of animals, and that sort of thing. The approach here moves …

Book Review: Power Struggles: Hydro Development And First Nations In Manitoba And Quebec Edited By Thibault Martin And Steven M. Hoffman, Merrell-Ann S. Phare

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

When First Nations try to protect their lands and waters it very often involves a struggle against some form of energy-related development. The greatest challenge facing those wishing to understand the long and complicated history between First Nations and hydro development in Canada is just that: it’s a very long and complex story. While this history begins over 50 years ago, the ensuing destruction of Indigenous lands and waters, cultures and ways of life, continues to this day.

Many have believed the time of building new big dams was over, especially since the Report of the World Commission on Dams …

Book Review: New Faces In New Places: The Changing Geography Of American Immigration Edited By Douglas S. Massey, John Defrain

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Patterns of immigration to the U.S. have been changing since the 1990s. The geographic dispersion of immigrants away from traditional urban gateways— New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, and Chicago— into smaller communities throughout the country means that millions of native-born Americans lacking any experience with foreigners are now, for the first time in living memory, having direct and sustained contact with unassimilated immigrants. The newcomers settle in small towns as well as large cities, in the middle of the country as well as the coasts. Especially relevant to Great Plains Research readers, the new immigrants have discovered the Middle …

Book Review: Establishing Justice In Middle America: A History Of The United States Court Of Appeals For The Eighth Circuit By Jeffrey Brandon Morris, Mark R. Scherer

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The United States Supreme Court accepts for review less than two percent of the cases presented to it on appeal. For the vast majority of litigants in the federal court system, therefore, the circuit courts of appeal are truly the “court of last resort,” and throughout American history those courts have had the final say on a wide range of critical issues. Yet despite these truths, books about the Supreme Court arrive on the shelves almost daily, while treatments of the lower courts remain rare. Thus, Jeffrey Brandon Morris’s goal in Establishing Justice in Middle America is both admirable and …

Book Review: Pagans In The Promised Land: Decoding The Doctrine Of Christian Discovery By Steven T. Newcomb, Blake A. Watson

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

In 1793, the Indians of the Northwest Territory declared themselves “free to make any bargain or cession of lands, whenever & to whomsoever we please.” Three decades later, however, the United States Supreme Court held in Johnson v. M’Intosh that the original inhabitants of America “are to be considered merely as occupants, to be protected, indeed, while in peace, in the possession of their lands, but to be deemed incapable of transferring the absolute title to others.” Chief Justice John Marshall concluded that the rights of Indians “to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished . . . by …

News And Notes Fall 2009

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

News and Notes

CALL FOR PAPERS

CONFERENCES

Book Review: Loren Eiseley: Commentary, Biography, And Remembrance Edited By Hilda Raz, Rasoul Sorkhabi

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This little book is a nice addition to the Loren Eiseley shelf in my home library. Much has been written about Eiseley’s life, thought, and work, but he still remains little known to the public at large. As authors of essays in this volume testify from various angles, Eiseley’s writings are a rich reservoir of notions and emotions that connect humans to nature, life, and to themselves. The essays were first published in the Fall 1997 issue of Prairie Schooner, the journal in which the 20-year-old Eiseley published his first poem in 1927.

Scott Slovic’s introductory chapter is a …

Book Review: American Indians And State Law: Sovereignty, Race, And Citizenship, 1790-1880 By Deborah A. Rosen, Kathryn E. Fort

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Deborah Rosen details the historical relationship between states and their American Indian populations. She argues that while states set aside some racist understandings in order to admit Indians into the state populace through voting rights and state citizenship, they also used these same instruments as methods of assimilation to limit tribal sovereignty and citizenship and to take tribal lands.

While there was no question the federal government reserved the right to deal with tribal nations through both the Indian Commerce Clause and the Non Intercourse Acts, states still found some room to determine the political status of individual Indians. Because …

Book Review: Water In Texas: An Introduction By Andrew Sansom, C. Allan Jones

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

At last we have a review of Texas water issues worthy of the name! Andrew Sansom’s Water in Texas: An Introduction fills a void that has existed for many years. This easy-to-read 319-page introduction to Texas water will be an indispensable guide to students, professionals, and the public, laying out in easily understood language the importance and challenges of mitigating the effects of droughts and floods, protecting water quality, preserving environmental flows, and many other issues faced by water managers throughout the Great Plains. As part of the Texas Natural History Guides series, the volume has a tough flexible cover, …

Book Review: Archaeological Landscapes On The High Plains Edited By Laura L. Scheiber And Bonnie J. Clark, Marcel Kornfeld

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

In 1962 Lewis Binford (American Antiquity, 28 [2]:217-25) classified archaeological objects into technomic, sociotechnic, and ideotechnic categories. In the following decades the New Archaeologists, largely concerned with societies at the Domestic Mode of Production, emphasized the technomic objects. Prehistorians of state societies were much more frequently faced with socio- and ideotechnic objects, ritual and state symbols; the significance of these to all societies eventually crawled back into the thinking of prehistorians of band and tribal systems.

Thence come landscapes into the archaeological discourse. As with manufactured objects, landscapes can be categorized into technomic, sociotechnic, and ideotechnic classes. And …

The Grasshoppers Arphia Xanthoptera And Dichromorpha Viridis Prefer Introduced Smooth Brome Over Other Grasses, Sean D. Whipple, Mathew L. Brust, Wyatt Hoback, Kerri M. Farnsworth-Hoback

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

A study of feeding preference was conducted on two tallgrass prairie grasshopper species, the autumn yellow-winged grasshopper Arphia xanthoptera (Burmeister) and the short-winged green grasshopper Dichromorpha viridis (Scudder), to determine if they would feed upon introduced grass species. Both grasshoppers were offered two non-native cool-season grasses, smooth brome (Bromus inermis Leyss) and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.), and two native warm-season grasses, big bluestem (Adropogon gerardii Vitman) and sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula Michx.). Live biomass of the plants was weighed before and after feeding to quantify the amount of each plant species consumed by the grasshoppers. …

Book Review: Moving Toward Justice: Legal Traditions And Aboriginal Justice Edited By John D. Whyte, Kelly Larocca

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Moving toward justice for Aboriginal peoples requires a narrowing of the gap between the theory of Aboriginal rights and practice. The increase in political resolve required to promote the priority of justice for Aboriginal peoples will be achieved only through a reinforcement of mutual obligations that form the core of Aboriginal rights.

While this collection is substantially grounded in discussions of social development through law, Constitutionalism, and public administration, it is unclear that the concept of priority within the larger intersocietal relationship is ever directly engaged. Though the essays represent an impressive and promising diversity of views, there is a …