Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of Aboriginal Conditions: Research As A Foundation For Public Policy Edited By Jerry P. White, Paul S. Maxim, And Dan Beavon, Nathalie Piquemal

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

Grounded in recent research, this book successfully identifies key issues hearing on the current social challenges Aboriginal people face in Canada. It speaks to policy makers, social scientists, and Aboriginal communities, three constituencies for which greater cooperation is advocated, given that such cooperation is essential for positive social development within Aboriginal communities. Much of the research informing the authors' reflections on current Aboriginal conditions is framed within social and scientific method, yet with special attention to evidence-based policy making. As such, the volume offers sharp insights into socioeconomic and cultural issues, including community dynamics and population outcomes, ethnic mobility and …

Review Of Eighteenth-Century Naturalists Of Hudson Bay By Stuart Houston, Tim Ball, And Mary Houston, Greg Michalenko

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

Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay by Stuart and Mary Houston, veteran Saskatchewan ornithologists and historians of northern Canadian exploration, and climatologist Tim Ball provides a welcome, colorful addition to McGill-Queen's University Press's thirty-four-volume Native and Northern Series.
The 1670 Crown charter to the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) granted a vast trading territory including substantial parts of the northern Canadian Plains and a portion of North Dakota and Minnesota. Furs were brought from a network of posts for shipping out of Hudson Bay, primarily at Fort Churchill and York Factory. Most of the posts and their commercial activities were outside of …

Review Of Circle Of Goods: Women, Work, And Welfare In A Reservation Community By Tressa Herman, Alice Littlefield

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

This slim volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary reservation economies in the Northern Plains, a subject that has received insufficient attention from anthropologists. Berman's narration demonstrates the intersection of kinship, the informal economy, ceremonial exchanges or goods, government assistance programs, and the cash economy on the reservation, home to the affiliated Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara tribes who were settled there in the 1860s. Her analysis addresses several themes: the circulation of goods within a symbolic system of social and power relations; the centrality of women in kinship and community relations: and the reorganization of reservation economy …

Review Of The Farm As Natural Habitat: Reconnecting Food Systems With Ecosystems Edited By Dana L. Jackson And Laura L. Jackson, Richard Levins

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

The Farm as Natural Habitat shows how wildlife need not be banished to distant parks but can and should be integrated into our farming systems. Editors Dana and Laura Jackson have organized a delightful collection of eighteen essays, linked by insightful transitions, addressing "the connection between the grocery list and the endangered species list, between farms and nature." A related theme concerns the "bullying notion" that holds the advance of industrial, habitat-destroying agriculture as inevitable.

Review Of Lewis And Clark On The Great Plains: A Natural History By Paul A. Johnsgard, Andrea Laliberte

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

In Lewis and Clark on the Great Plains: A Natural History, Paul A. Johnsgard takes us on the Lewis and Clark trail from Kansas to Montana, describing the flora and fauna Meriwether Lewis and Williams Clark encountered on their historic journey in 1804-1806. Johnsgard focuses on species initially described or discovered by Lewis and Clark and on known species for which the explorers uncovered new biological information. Readers will not only discover which species Lewis and Clark first identified, but why in some cases the explorers failed to be credited wit ha discovery because that species wasn’t formally named …

Review Of The Hell Creek Formation And The Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary In The Northern Great Plains: An Integrated Continental Record Of The End Of The Cretaceous Edited By Joseph H. Hartman, Kirk R. Johnson, And Douglas J. Nichols, Russell Jacobson

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

The Hell Creek Formation (especially near the Fork Peck Reservoir and the Cedar Creek Anticline in east-central Montana) has been extensively studied over the years to evaluate changes in terrestrial floras and faunas across the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary. The research round in this volume, however, contains important new data from the lesser studied eastern outcrop area of western North Dakota, South Dakota, and nearby areas, along with new analyses of data from the well-studied areas around Fort Peck Reservoir. The compilation or new research is based on years of field studies that, for the most part, have not been published. …

Review Of Geology Of The Lewis & Clark Trail In North Dakota By John W. Hoganson And Edward C. Murphy, Richard Josephs

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

Stephen Ambrose would he proud! During this bicentennial commemoration of the most intrepid expedition in American history, a plethora of hooks on a broad range of topics dealing with the "Journey or Lewis and Clark" have made their appearance. Hoganson and Murphy have taken an intriguing look at one segment or the journey-the physical environment or North Dakota where the expedition spent more time (213 days) than in any other area that would become a state during its two-and-a-half-year-long journey from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. As mandated by Thomas Jefferson, a major goal or the expedition was to …

Review Of Enduring Legacies: Native American Treaties And Contemporary Controversies Edited By Bruce E. Johansen, Taiawagi Helton

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

Even casual observers know of disputes between Natives and non-Natives over governmental authority or natural resources. In the nearly forty years since tribes gained direct access to federal courts, they have been pursuing their rights with increasing fervor. With rare exceptions, those rights are declined in a treaty. Indeed. treaties provide the foundation for the hulk or the relationship between Tribal Nations and the United States and remain a vibrant source of tribal, international, and federal law. Nevertheless only a small fraction of the general public understands the text of these documents. Interpreting treaty language requires an understanding of the …

Great Plains Research, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2005 - Editorial Matter

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

No abstract provided.

Review Of Giving Voters A Voice: The Origins Of The Initiative And Referendum In America By Steven L. Piott, Allen Cigler

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

Recent decades have shown renewed interest in using the initiative and referendum, typically viewed by reformers as devices with the potential to broaden citizen awareness and participation, thereby curbing the influence of special interests in the policy process. To others, such direct policy making by citizens strikes at the very heart of representative democracy: considered deliberation by elected officials is bypassed and public policy may not he well thought out.

The Impact Of Higher Energy Prices On Great Plains Crop Farm Expenditures, Jeffrey Williams, Richard Nelson, Michael Langemeier

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

Use of energy-intensive inputs in agriculture in generally considered to be unresponsive to price increases in the short run. An increase in diesel and natural gas prices directly increases cots of energy used on farms for irrigation, machinery operation, and heating. Energy-intensive production inputs such as fertilizer prices also increase due to higher energy costs. This study assesses the impact of substantially higher energy prices in 2000 and 2001 on whole-farm production costs on 983 Kansas farms using actual whole-farm data. It is hypothesized that the impact on fuel, irrigation energy, and fertilizer costs will be significantly more than the …

Depopulation And Rural Churches In Kansas, 1950-1980, Robert Wuthnow

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

Discussions of religion in the rural Great Plains present two radically different images: one of declining and abandoned churches, the other of surprising in congregational vitality. Both images purport to describe how rural churches are adapting to declining population, but neither view has been examined very systematically. Kansas provided a natural laboratory in which to examine the relationships between religion and rural depopulation. From 1950 to 1980 Kansas experienced the sharpest decline in number of farms in the state’s history. Yet population change in rural counties varied widely. I compare 39 rural counties that experienced the greatest depopulation with 30 …

Review Of Farm Communities At The Crossroads: Challenge And Resistance Edited By Harry P. Diaz, Joann Jaffe, And Robert Stirling, Kenneth Bessant

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

Farm Communities at the Crossroads is a collection of works by twenty-nine authors dealing with the "transformations in farming and farm communities." The metaphor of a "crossroads" is aptly invoked to draw attention to the complex overlay of social, economic, political, and knowledge processes affecting rural society. The two themes of "challenge" and "resistance" are central to the conceptual organization of the hook, which incorporates issues such as the changing nature of farm work, rural restructuring, community development, the farm crisis, technological change, and agricultural policy development. The volume contains twenty-six articles organized into seven sections, the first of which …

Review Of Engineering The Farm: Ethical And Social Aspects Of Agricultural Biotechnology Edited By Britt Bailey And Marc Lappe, Clark Wolf

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

During the last two centuries, America's Central Plains have been transformed by agriculture. But during the past thirty years, agriculture has been transformed by biotechnology, by the rise of bigger and bigger farms, and by the influence of corporate research and marketing of seeds, pesticides, and other agricultural products. This book collects a set or important essays critical or the technology that has shaped and irrevocably changed our agricultural institutions in recent decades. The authors included are almost all uniformly critical or biotechnology, corporate farming, and the internationalization of' agricultural markets and trade rules. Their essays are passionate, articulate, and …

Review Of Faces Of The Great Plains: Prairie Wildlife Photographs And Field Notes By Bob Gress, Text By Paul A. Johnsgard, James H. Shaw

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

Bob Gress, director or the Great Plains Nature Center in Wichita, provides, an extraordinary set or photographs for this coffee-table book. The text is by Paul Johnsgard, emeritus professor or biology and the author or more than forty books. A color map on page xiv showing the distributions or grassland types follows the recent trend toward limiting the shortgrass prairies to regions south or the Nebraska-South Dakota state line. The opening sentence defies the common perception or the Great Plains as simply "flyover" country and sets the tone for the text: "Few geographic regions or North America offer a greater …

Review Of The Tos Hand Hook Of Texas Birds By Mark W. Lockwood And Brush Freeman, Kent Rylander

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

Several authoritative checklists of Texas birds have been published since the first one in 1912. As is typical of most checklists, all appeared in the conventional narrative format--a tradition for checklists that seems impossible to give up, even though range maps have long been used effectively in bird books. Now, with the publication of Lockwood and Freeman's Texas Ornithological Society volume, we have at last a Texas checklist that allows us the convenience of referring to shaded distribution maps.
Maybe narratives are more "scientific" than maps. But are they really? Listing the counties that border the range of a species …

Review Of Great Wildlife Of The Great Plains By Paul Johnsgard, Gregory A. Smith

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

Few authors have done more to increase awareness of the history, ecology, and inhabitants of the Great Plains than Paul Johnsgard. Great Wildlife of the Great Plains follows in the tradition of Johnsgard’s Birds of the Great Plains: Breeding Species and Their Distribution (1979), Prairie Birds: Fragile Splendor in the Great Plains (2001), and Faces of the Great Plains: Prairie Wildlife (2003). In Great Wildlife of the Great Plains, Johnsgard focuses on some of the most notable and characteristic terrestrial species in the region as well as additional species of conservation concern: 121 total species including 74 birds, 28 …

Surviving English, Connie Schomburg

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

Noncredit English as a Second Language (ESL) classes often serve as a starting place for new immigrants aged eighteen or older who want to learn "survival English." The students attending these classes are widely diverse in terms of motivations, educational and cultural backgrounds, English-language fluency, life experiences, and learning styles. Classes are designed to equip these adult learners with basic English-language abilities in the context of the situations they are likely to encounter daily at work and in the community. This personal essay explores the challenges faced and the strengths revealed by students in these classes as witnessed by an …

A Charismatic Iranian American Engineer, Jane Meehan

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

This is the story of Iranian engineer Mostafa Jamshidi and his twenty-five years in Nebraska: his student days, his experiences with the immigration department and his eventual citizenship, his work history, and his personal life as told by his English teacher and surrogate mother, His language skills, soccer playing, and personality enabled him to combat his homesickness and the harassment of the immigration officials. The University of Nebraska at Omaha and the Nebraska Department of Roads gave him a place to learn and grow despite the time and geography in which he was born. The Great Plains, with its friendliness, …

We Welcome The New Immigrants, John Defrain, Rochelle L. Dalla, Douglas A. Abbott, Julie Johnson

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

From the very beginning of this project we have focused on taking a balanced approach to identifying the strengths and challenges of new immigrants in the Great Plains. Discussions of change in our world invariably focus on problems, and only occasionally on the strengths. We set out to look at new immigrants from a different perspective, in our view, a more realistic perspective: seeing the inherent strengths they possess as newcomers to our region and the gifts they bring, and examining the cultural assets the newcomers and the longer-term residents all can rely upon in working together to meet the …

East European Women And The Battle Of The Sexes In American Culture, Nanda Dimitrov

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

How do women from patriarchal cultures adapt to gender equality and feminism in the Great Plains? How do women from Eastern Europe change as a result of living in a gender-neutral environment? The study (I) identifies the major cultural differences that Eastern European women perceive between gender-related norms in Eastern Europe and the American Midwest, (2) examines the strategies that women use to cope with these differences, and (3) investigates when encounters with American feminists help and when they hinder immigrants' adaptation.

Eastern European culture is characterized by a greater separation of gender roles and little concern about sexism. Women …

A View Of Sudanese Refugee Resettlement Through Nebraska’S Print Media, Mary Willis, Constance Fernald

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

The print media has the potential to educate the general public about newly arriving Great Plains populations, influence refugee resettlement programs, and motivate volunteers to assist in transitions. Thus, accuracy of news items is crucial to successful assimilation of new populations to host communities. In this paper, we provide results from a content analysis of eight Nebraska newspapers regarding Sudanese refugees. We focus on refugee population descriptors, cultural characteristics, resettlement issues, and refugee goals to determine what could be learned about refugees from Sudan if one used local print media. Consistent with theories of stereotyping, results suggest that limited, and …

Concerns Of Hispanics And Service Providers In Southwest Missouri, James Wirth, Susan Dollar

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

This descriptive study identifies the key concerns voiced by the Hispanic community and service providers in rural southwestern Missouri. Three surveys were conducted in 2001 with 381 Latino adults, Latino youth, and human service providers located in over 20 rural cities and towns throughout southwest Missouri. Demographic information, socioeconomic status, and mobility patterns of Latino respondents are profiled, and their housing, educational, and healthcare needs are reported. Language barriers, legal and documentation issues, a lack of job availability, and nonacceptance in the broader community are identified as key concerns of Latinos. Human-service providers identified language barriers, a lack of understanding …

Examining Strengths And Challenges Of Rapid Rural Immigration, Rochelle L. Dalla, Francisco Villarruel, Sheran C. Cramer, Gloria Gonzalez-Kruger

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

Intensive, in-depth interviews were conducted with 45 non-Hispanic white residents of three rural Nebraska meatpacking communities. The purpose of the investigation was to document (I) perceptions of community change; (2) community-wide benefits of a new Latino population; and (3) strategies for strengthening multi-ethnic rural communities. Data were analyzed using Thematic Analyses (Aronson 1994). Application of the findings, for strengthening rural communities, is discussed.

The composition of rural populations is changing at a remarkable rate largely due to immigration (movement into a country in which one is not a native) and migration (movement within a country). The population growth of US …

A Case Study Of The Impact Of Population Influx On A Small Community In Nebraska, James Potter, Rodrigo Cantarero, X. Winson Yan, Steve Larrick, Blanca Ramirez-Salazar

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

This paper discusses the impact of population influx on small communities using the city of Schuyler, NE, as a case study. As a small city of 4,000 some residents, Schuyler experienced a proportionally significant population influx in the past decade largely due to an increase of immigrant population. Unlike large cities, Schuyler has fewer resources to cope with the impact of a drastic population increase on its physical conditions and environment. The population expansion also impacted its previously homogeneous social and cultural environment. Through surveying long-time and newly arrived residents and comparing responses of the two groups, the study revealed …

Strengths And Challenges In Chinese Immigrant Families, Xiaolin Xie, Yan Xia, Zhi Zhou

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

This qualitative study involved interviewing 40 Chinese Americans residing in Lincoln and Omaha, NE, and Naperville, IL, on their perceptions of family strengths and acculturative stress. Themes related to family strengths include family support leading to achieving a renewed sense of family, contextual support from friends and community, communication among family members, spiritual well-being, and balancing host and heritage cultures. Themes pertaining to acculturative stress are language barriers, loneliness, and loss of social status and identity at the early stage of immigration. New dimensions are being added to the current family strengths model. Implications for health professionals are provided.

Family, Peer, And Acculturative Correlates Of Prosocial Development Among Latinos, Maria Rosario T. De Guzman, Gustavo Carlo

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

The present study was designed to examine the roles of family cohesion and adaptability, parent and peer attachment, and acculturation in predicting prosocial behavior tendencies in Latino adolescents from Nebraska, A total of 63 Latinos (M age = 14.52 years) from Lincoln, NE, completed measures of acculturation, parent and peer attachment, family adaptability and cohesion, and tendencies to perform prosocial behaviors. Results of a series of multiple regression analyses suggest that acculturation negatively predicted pro social behavior tendencies (i.e., the higher the level of acculturation, the lower the tendency to perform prosocial acts). Peer but not parent attachment, and family …

An Analysis Of Refugee Resettlement Patterns In The Great Plains, John Gaber, Sharon Gaber, Jeff Vincent, Darcy Boellstorff

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

Great Plains communities have been experiencing an influx of refugees but many communities are unaware of the international and national context for refugee resettlement. This article explores patterns impacting US Great Plains communities. This leads to three specific questions: (1) How many refugees have been resettled since 1983 in the US, in comparison to the Great Plains region, and where are they? (2) What are the patterns of the refugees resettled in the US versus the Great Plains region? And, (3) What are some of the economic benefits that can be anticipated in the resettlement of refugees in the Great …

New Immigrants In The Great Plains: Strengths And Challenges

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

Our colleague and friend Dr. Nick Stinnett, a former faculty member at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is a pioneer in research on strong families. Stinnett is now a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa. He has defined family strengths as:
those relationship patterns, interpersonal skills and competencies, and social and psychological characteristics which create a sense of positive family identity, promote satisfying and fulfilling interaction among family members, encourage the development of the potential of the family group and individual family members, and contribute to the family's ability to deal effectively …

Great Plains Research, Volume 14, Number 2, Fall 2004 - Annual Index

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

Annual Index