Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Review Of Wild Prairie: A Photographer's Personal Journey By James R. Page, Larry Schwarm

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The landscape of the prairie is often overlooked in favor of more dramatic mountain ranges and wild forests, yet it is an ecosystem teaming with life and beauty. Grasslands are the backbone of our planet, but to appreciate the prairie takes time. Photographer James R. Page immersed himself in the prairie to observe and understand its vastness and subtleties, using his camera to record his vision. He shares these photographs, and thoughtfully written observations, in his US-page book, Wild Prairie: A Photographer's Personal Journey.

Early in the text, Page states that "Everything on the prairie seems either" huge or …

Grassland Birds In Restored Grassland Of The Rainwater Basin Region In Nebraska, Jill Sporrong Utrup, Craig A. Davis

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Conservationists and managers mention grassland restorations as a conservation strategy to reverse the decline of grassland bird populations in the Great Plains. In the Rainwater Basin Region of southcentral Nebraska, state and federal resource agencies have used grassland restorations to protect wetlands from sedimentation and agrichemical runoff. These grassland restorations may also provide important habitat for breeding grassland birds. In this paper, we describe the abundance, composition, nesting success, and habitat requirements of breeding birds in grassland restorations in the Rainwater Basin Region. We observed 14 grassland bird species in 12 grassland restorations. The most abundant species were dickcissels ( …

Review Of Paleoamerican Origins: Beyond Clovis, Matthew G. Hill

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Paleoamerican Origins is a compilation of23 papers, most of them expanded versions of presentations or posters given at "Clovis and Beyond" in Santa Fe in late October of 1999, "the greatest Ice Age American conference of the twentieth century" according to Kenneth Tankersley in his 2002 In Search of Ice Age Americans. It follows up New Perspectives on the First Americans (Lepper and Bonnichsen, 2004), a slim volume comprised of30 short, preliminary papers; eight contributors to Paleoamerican Origins also have papers in New Perspectives. Thus, these two volumes contain the published versions of about half of the …

Understanding Sacred Lands, Roxanne T. Ornelas

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Recognition of the human right for indigenous peoples to freely express their spiritual beliefs is essential to expanding tolerance for the earth-based spirituality of many indigenous peoples. Awareness of such beliefs must be extended to support the spiritual significance of what indigenous peoples believe are their sacred lands. Physical landmarks such as mountains or rivers hold essential spiritual meaning for many tribes. Linkages to indigenous peoples' knowledge systems can yield a greater understanding of their social values and cultural differences in public debates over human rights and their struggles to protect their sacred lands. This paper reviews the impact of …

Foreword For Vol. 17 No.2, James W. Merchant, Rex Honey

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Geographers have contributed much to the rich literature that defines the natural and human dimensions ofthe Great Plains. The emphasis that geographers place upon illuminating the spatial components of environmental, societal, economic, and cultural issues has often afforded them a unique perspective on important questions confronting the region. Moreover, geographers have sought to improve our understanding of the complex interrelationships between Great Plains landscapes and their human occupants. These foci of geography have, in recent years, given rise to research on topics such as the drivers and effects of land use and land cover change, rural depopulation and evolving settlement …

Review Of Hidden Victims: The Effects Of The Death Penalty On Families Of The Accused, Mark Costanzo

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The debate over capital punishment is driven by data and stories. Social scientists have amassed and analyzed mountains of data on issues like deterrence, public opinion, racial bias, and financial cost, data that have convinced most social scientists and much of the general public that the death penalty ought to be abandoned. But support for or opposition to capital punishment is not guided by a dispassionate analysis of data alone. It is also fueled by stories. There are the stories of the murderers and their horrible crimes. There are the stories of the victims whose lives were tragically cut short, …

Review Of Like A Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights, And The Legal History Of Racism In America, Alexandra Page

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In Like a Loaded Weapon, Robert A. Williams Jr. argues that reliance by the courts on racist precedents from the nineteenth century perpetuates racism against American Indians and prevents Native tribes and nations from vindicating their human rights, both under the law and in society more broadly. Taking his title from a dissenting opinion in the infamous 1944 Korematsu decision of the Supreme Court, which upheld the forced relocation and internment of thousands of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II, Williams cogently demonstrates how racially biased patterns of Janguage and belief incorporated into legal opinions pose a …

Review Of Deep Alberta: Fossil Facts And Dinosaur Digs, University Of Alberta

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

We tend to rate smarter animals, like crows and naturalists, by their degree of behavioral versatility. If polymathic interest correlates with intellect, John Acorn is a very bright naturalist indeed. He has written field guides to insects and birds of Alberta's prairies, mountains, and badlands. His versatility emerges through media popularization of these topics, in series like The Nature Nut and more recently Deep Alberta, a set of radio vignettes about Alberta's fossilized past. But does Acorn's range skim the surface like a light breeze, or does his insight scour deep to Cretaceous bedrock? Judging by Acorn's Deep Alberta: …

Review Of Texas Quails: Ecology And Management, Paul A. Johnsgard

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Texan quail enthusiasts can count themselves lucky, since Texas is one of only two states (New Mexico is the other) supporting native populations of four species of American quails. These include the nearly ubiquitous northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus), the scaled quail (Callipepla squamata) of the desert grasslands, the Gambel's quail (Callipepla gambelii) of the upper Rio Grande Valley, and the rare and beautiful Montezuma quail (Cyrtonyx montezumae) of the Trans-Pecos and Edwards Plateau's pine-oak woodlands.

Review Of Treaty Promises, Indian Reality: Life On A Reserve, Robert Alexander Innes

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Harold LeRat's book provides details of the history of the early years of the Cowessess First Nation. LeRat, an Elder from the Cowessess Reserve in Sakatchewan, is a farmer/rancher by trade, not a trained historian. Yet he, along with Linda Ungar, has pieced together a narrative based on oral stories, personal reflections, and an impressive collection of archival documents.

Review Of Developing And Extending Sustainable Agriculture: A New Social Contract., Fabian D. Menalled

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In the last two decades, sustainable agriculture has grown from a purely academic curiosity into a widely accepted approach to producing food, fiber, and energy. Since its creation in 1988, the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE) has been instrumental in the process of bringing sustainable agriculture forward by helping professional agriculturists across the United States advance farming systems that are profitable, environmentally sound, and good to communities. Almost 20 years later, Developing and Extending Sustainable Agriculture: A New Social Contract provides a timely review of the many contributions of the SARE program, land grant universities, and the nonprofit …

Review Of Queer Youth In The Province Of The "Severely Normal.", Doreen Fumia

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Gloria Filax poses an important question that has a specific context for the conservatism found in the Canadian prairies, yet is more generally applicable to modern western societies: Can queer youth, who struggle to define themselves as "normal," negotiate a place of social belonging where heterosexual norms still dominate? She problematizes this question through a complicated mixture of ethnography, discourse analysis, history, and theory. Queer Youth in the Province of the "Severely Normal" tells a story about how queer youth in Alberta in the 1990s, unlike their heterosexual counterparts, have been actively excluded from social supports and public education that …

Notes And News For Vol.17 No.2

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

No abstract provided.

Review Of The National Grasslands: A Guide To America's Undiscovered Treasures., Mary Ann Vinton

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The aptly named "guide to America's undiscovered treasures" is an informative and user-friendly summary of the areas that comprise the 4 million-acre national grassland system. The terrain, plants, wildlife, public facilities, and unique features of each of the 20 grasslands ranging from western Oregon to eastern North Dakota are described, with detailed maps and 10utras's evocative photography interspersed throughout. Most areas (17 of 20) are located in the Great Plains. The aim of the book is ambitious: Moul attempts to place the national grasslands in context, with a look at the history of the grassland system as well as an …

Regional Dynamics Of Grassland Change In The Western Great Plains, Mark A. Drummond

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This paper examines the contemporary land-cover changes in two western Great Plains ecoregions between 1973 and 2000. Agriculture and other land uses can have a substantial effect on grassland cover that varies regionally depending on the primary driving forces of change. In order to better understand change, the rates, types, and causes of land conversion were examined for 1973, 1980, 1986, 1992, and 2000 using Landsat satellite data and a statistical sampling strategy. The overall estimated rate of land-cover change between 1973 and 2000 was 7.4% in the Northwestern Great Plains and 11.5% in the Western High Plains. Trends in …

Annual Index For Vol.17 (2007)

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

5 pages

Acorn, John. Deep Alberta: Fossil Facts and Dinosaur Digs, reviewed, 17:232
through
Zontek, Ken. Buffalo Nation: American Indian Efforts to Restore the Bison, reviewed, 17:225

Potential Aboriginal-Occupation-Induced Dune Activity, Elbow Sand Hills, Northern Great Plains, Canada, Stephen A. Wolfe, Chris H. Hugenholtz, Christopher P. Evans, D. J. Huntley, Jeff Ollerhead

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Geomorphological and archeological evidence indicates potential linkages between Plains aboriginal occupation and dune activity in the Elbow Sand Hills of southern Saskatchewan, Canada. Vegetation encroachment has rapidly outpaced migration of an active dune complex over the last 65 years. Optical ages of stabilized dune remnants indicate that dune activity predates Euro-Canadian settlement (ca. AD 1900). Early Euro-Canadian explorers observed local occupation and exploitation of the sand hills by aboriginal groups for herding and impounding bison. Mapping of archeological sites in relation to physiography reveals that sand dunes, in close proximity to permanent water resources, were preferred areas of occupation. Collectively, …

Conducting Cross-Cultural Research In Teams And The Search For The “Culture-Proof” Variable, Patricia Draper

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Objective: Cross-cultural research must always deal with the problem that meaning systems and behaviors cannot be readily compared from one culture to the next because the sociocultural context can vary so widely.
Design: The organizers of Project AGE: Age, Generation, and Experience, a multicultural study of aging, recognized this problem and devised instruments for studying age that allowed for cultural variation as well as comparability at higher levels of abstraction. The principal investigators of Project AGE and the individual researchers made every effort to gain an emic understanding (understanding based on categories recognized by the local respondents) of people’s attitudes …

Paleo-Indians, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

First paragraph:

Paleo-Indians were the earliest people to inhabit the Americas. Between thirty and eleven thousand years ago, small, highly mobile groups of huntergatherers extended their hunting areas throughout Beringia (the landmass that joined Siberia and Alaska) and into the Western Hemisphere. This “bridging landmass” emerged slowly from beneath the Bering Sea as more than nine million cubic miles of glacial ice accumulated over southern Alaska, Canada, Labrador, and Greenland. About twenty to eighteen thousand years ago an immense “ice dome” (the Laurentide glacier) towered more than one mile over present-day Hudson Bay. Two lobes of ice spread southward over …

The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate, Raymond Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Debate around the ecologically noble savage represents two markedly different research threads. The first addresses the issue of conservation among native peoples and narrowly focuses on case studies of resource use of ethnographic, archaeological, or historic sources. The second thread is broader and more humanistic and political in orientation and considers the concept of ecological nobility in terms of identity, ecological knowledge, ideology, and the deployment of ecological nobility as a political tool by native peoples and conservation groups.

Human Trafficking: Monitoring And Evaluation Of International Projects Are Limited, But Experts Suggest Improvements, United States Government Accountability Office

Human Trafficking: Data and Documents

While governments, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations have recognized the importance of collaborating and have established some coordination mechanisms and practices, they will need to overcome challenges that have impeded collaboration in the past for their efforts to be successful. In two of the three countries GAO visited, it found that host governments—which bear ultimate responsibility for combating trafficking within their borders—have passed national anti-trafficking laws and enacted national action plans. However, organizations continue to face numerous challenges when collaborating to combat human trafficking, including varying levels of government commitment and capacity. For example, some governments treat foreign trafficking victims …

International Trafficking In Persons: Taking Action To Eliminate Modern-Day Slavery, U.S. House Of Representatives Committee On International Relations

Human Trafficking: Data and Documents

According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, human trafficking, the subject of our hearing today, is the world’s fastest growing international organized crime. It is also one of the most profitable, generating between $12 billion and $17 billion per year. There are only two other illicit businesses, the trade in drugs and the trade in weapons, which are more lucrative. The European Union has designated this day, October 18, as Anti-Trafficking Day, and I commend our friends in the European Union for their exemplary efforts to advance the cause of human rights. This step reflects the international …

Protecting The Human Rights Of Comfort Women, U.S. House Of Representatives Committee On International Relations

Human Trafficking: Data and Documents

Today our subcommittee will consider House Resolution 121, introduced by my good friend and colleague, Congressman Honda, which urges, basically, the Government of Japan to formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility for its Imperial Armed Force’s coercion of young women into sexual slavery— or forced prostitution if you want to put it in other terms— during its occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands before and during World War II.

I want to note for the record that former Congressman Lane Evans from the State of Illinois originally spearheaded this effort to defend the human rights of those who …

2007 Trafficking In Persons Report, U.S. Department Of State

Human Trafficking: Data and Documents

The Department of State is required by law to submit a Report each year to the U.S. Congress on foreign governments’ efforts to eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons. This Report is the seventh annual TIP Report. It is intended to raise global awareness, to highlight efforts of the international community, and to encourage foreign governments to take effective actions to counter all forms of trafficking in persons.

The U.S. law that guides anti-human trafficking efforts, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, as amended (TVPA), states that the purpose of combating human trafficking is to punish traffickers, to …

Cod Fish, Walrus, And Chieftains: Economic Intensification In The Norse North Atlantic, Sophia Perdikaris, Thomas H. Mcgovern

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Introduction

Just over a thousand years ago, Scandinavian voyagers crossed the grey waters of the North Atlantic to briefly explore the coast of North America. These now well publicized transatlantic trips were part of larger economic, environmental, and social developments of the Viking Age, and were the product of an Iron Age chiefly society with a complex economy incorporating both classic “prestige goods” and “staple goods” components. The Viking Age expansion was the result of linked factors of economic intensification, military and technological advances, climate change, and intense com-petition among chiefly elites and between elites and commoners. The period saw …

Boletín De Grupo De Especialistas En Crácidos 23-28 (2007-2009), Iucn, Birdlife International, Cracid Specialist Group

Galliformes Specialist Group and Affiliated Societies: Newsletters

Volume 23 (Spring 2007)

Registros de anidamiento del pavo de cacho (Oreophasis derbianus) en el Volcan Atitlán, Guatemala, Knut Eisermann, Andy Burge, y Gerardo López

Registros de ninhos de Oreophasis derbianus no Vulcão Atitlan, Guatemala, Knut Eisermann, Andy Burge, e Gerardo López

Nesting records of horned guan (Oreophasis derbianus) on Atitlán Volcano, Guatemala, Knut Eisermann, Andy Burge, and Gerardo López

El redescubrimiento de la chachalaca de la Isla Utila (Ortalis vetula deschauenseei), Sheri L. Glowinski

Redescoberta do aracuã da Ilha Utila (Ortalis vetula deschauenseei), Sheri L. Glowinski

Rediscovery of the Utila Island …

Wpa News 78 (2007), World Pheasant Association

Galliformes Specialist Group and Affiliated Societies: Newsletters

WPA News (Winter 2007), number 78

Published by the World Pheasant Association

Wpa News 80 (2007/2008), World Pheasant Association

Galliformes Specialist Group and Affiliated Societies: Newsletters

WPA News (Winter 2007/2008), number 80

Published by the World Pheasant Association

Development And Confirmatory Factor Analysis Of The Community Norms Of Child Neglect Scale, Rebecca Goodvin, David R. Johnson, Sam A. Hardy, Michelle Graef, Jeff M. Chambers

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

This article describes the development of the Community Norms of Child Neglect Scale (CNCNS), a new measure of perceptions of child neglect, for use in community samples. The CNCNS differentiates among four subtypes of neglect (failure to provide for basic needs, lack of supervision, emotional neglect, and educational neglect). Scenarios ranging in seriousness for each subtype were presented to a large community sample (N = 3,809). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a four-factor model provided a better fit to the data than did a model specifying only one overall neglect factor, suggesting this sample distinguished among the four subtypes of …

Fuel Ethanol: Background And Public Policy Issues, Brent D. Yacobucci

Congressional Research Service Reports

Ethanol plays a key role in policy discussions about energy, agriculture, taxes, and the environment. In the United States it is mostly made from corn; in other countries it is often made from cane sugar. Fuel ethanol is generally blended in gasoline to reduce emissions, increase octane, and extend gasoline stocks. Recent high oil and gasoline prices have led to increased interest in alternatives to petroleum fuels for transportation. Further, concerns over climate change have raised interest in developing fuels with lower fuel-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions.

Supporters of ethanol argue that its use can lead to lower emissions of toxic and …