Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of The Encyclopedia Of Saskatchewan: A Living Legacy, Patrick Brennan

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Saskatchewan celebrated its centennial as a Canadian province in 2005, and the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan resulted from the admirable desire to make a lasting commemoration of that milestone. When one considers that the project had a tortured history of chronic underfunding, and, as a result, failed to engage many in the scholarly community, the final product, flawed though it might be, is still a remarkable success.

The goal of the Encyclopedia, publisher David Gauthier informs readers in an introductory preamble, was to create "a substantial memorial to the people of Saskatchewan that highlights their achievements and provide a comprehensive …

The Militarization Of The Prairie Scrap Drives, Metaphors, And The Omaha World-Herald's 1942 "Nebraska Plan", James J. Kimble

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Some of the most unusual weapons deployed by the United States in World War II hailed from Phelps County, Nebraska. For over thirty years, two cannons had flanked the entrance to the county courthouse, serving as a memorial to the Civil War. In July 1942, county officials directed that the cannons be removed; they were again to serve as munitions in an American conflict. From Washington, President Roosevelt himself lauded the county's sacrifice and suggested that others might consider making a similar contribution to the war effort.

Not even the president was certain, of course, that the cannons would still …

The Good, The Bad, And The Ignored Immigrants In Willa Cather's O Pioneers!, Renee M. Laegreid

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Willa Cather's move to Nebraska as a child, the people she met there, and the seemingly endless prairie around her captured her imagination and became the inspiration for her novel O Pioneers! In this work, Cather introduces her readers to the diversity of immigrants who settled in the area around her home in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Cather's novel represents the age-old appeal of the West-hope, optimism, mystery-as well as the Janus-face dilemma of acculturation: the longing to partake in all that the new land has to offer and the reluctance to give up a rich and comforting cultural heritage.

While …

Review Of A Godly Hero: The Life Of William Jennings Bryan By Michael Kazin, Troy Murphy

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan represents the first major biography of Bryan published in almost forty years. Michael Kazin's well-written and engaging book complements Edward Larson's Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods (1997), in providing another useful corrective to the misguided yet common understanding of Bryan that emerged from popular histories of the Scopes trial. Kazin successfully illustrates why Bryan belongs in the "top rank of American leaders" of the reform era, arguing that only Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had a greater impact on politics and political culture in the …

Review Of This Is Not A Peace Pipe: Towards A Critical Indigenous Philosophy By Dale Turner. Toronto, Dennis Mcpherson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

By his own admission, Wittgenstein's famous imperative "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" can be paralyzing for Dale Turner. Turner says "I am indigenous, yet I am not an indigenous philosopher; and therefore I ought not to place myself in the privileged position of explaining the meaning of indigenous spirituality." Dale feels that "In a European philosophical context, having invoked a term like 'spirituality' [he] must then explain how this normative term is to be used in its rightful place and do so in the English language." Why must Wittgenstein's imperative be paralyzing? You cannot know what …

Review Of One West, Two Myths: A Comparative Reader Edited By Carol Higham And Robert Thacker, Keith Thor Carlson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Collectively the eight essays in One West, Two Myths provide readers with a solid introduction to the comparative approach to historical study. The forty-ninth parallel serves as the volume's focus. And though the surrounding region has had, and retains, certain social, cultural, and economic commonalities, the book clearly argues that the international border is real and meaningful-despite its geographical arbitrariness.

The lead essays, by three senior historians of the Canadian and American Great Plains (Elliot West, Donald Worster, and Gerald Freisen) provide what are essentially historiographical engagements with the region as viewed through the prisms of social geography, the myth …

Review Of Saskatchewan: A New History By Bill Waiser, Max Foran

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Bill Waiser's sweeping narrative of the history of Canada's most identifiable agricultural province was published as part of Saskatchewan's centennial celebrations. Wonderfully written in an authoritative but engaging style, Waiser's "Saskatchewan" is a story of challenge where buoyant hopes and dashed dreams were acted out by generations of people whose origins and backgrounds were as diverse as the physical environment they settled.

Two dominant themes underpin Waiser's narrative. The first is the enduring presence of a rural order built around "King Wheat," one that through the years, in both good times and bad, became the focus around which Saskatchewan defined …

Review Of Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward By Charlyne Berens, Peter Longo

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

There is little doubt that Chuck Hagel will be remembered as one of the leading statesmen in the domestic and global political scene. Indeed, Senator Hagel should be of keen interest to students, scholars, lawmakers, and citizens in general. Charlyne Berens's Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward is therefore a timely read for concerned onlookers. Yet, as Berens illustrates, the Chuck Hagel story is more than an account of a beltway career.

Berens offers a fine journalistic account of Hagel's life, including his upbringing, and how Nebraska's political and environmental variables helped mold his character. She tells us, for example, that

in …

Title And Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

Volume 27 / Number 2 / Spring 2007

Contents

The Militarization Of The Prairie: Scrap Drives, Metaphors, And The Omaha World-Herald's 1942 "Nebraska Plan"

The Good, The Bad, And The Ignored: Immigrants In Willa Cather's 0 Pioneers!

Vengeance Without Justice, Injustice Without Retribution: The Afro-American Council's Struggle Against Racial Violence

Review Essay: Centennial Saskatchewan

Book Reviews

Notes And News

Review Of Flint Hills Cowboys: Tales Of The Tallgrass Prairie By Jame F. Hoy, Richard W. Slatta

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Jim Hoy, professor of English at Emporia State University, has ridden and written about the Flint Hills region of east-central Kansas since the 1970s. His earlier works include The Cattle Guard: Its History and Lore (1982), Prairie Poetry: Cowboy Verse of Kansas, with Vada Snider (1995), and a prequel to the present book, Cowboys and Kansas: Stories from the Tallgrass Prairie (1997). Hoy aptly describes his work as "part memoir, part history, part ethnography." Moreover, "this paean to the Flint Hills is my thanks to the land that has nurtured my life and nourished my soul."

After introducing the …

Vengeance Without Justice, Injustice Without Retribution The Afro-American Council’S Struggle Against Racial Violence, Shawn Leigh Alexander

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

wr 1 he Negro's friend has dwindled to a Smith & Wesson pistol, a Repeating Rifle, 50 rounds of ammunition for each, a good, strong nerve, a lesson in good marksmanship, and then use." That was the call from the editors of the Wichita Searchlight on January 19, 1901, just one week after the streets of Leavenworth, Kansas, witnessed the burning of Fred Alexander, a twenty-two-year-old black Spanish-American war veteran. The brutal murder of Alexander horrified many African Americans throughout the region, who decided that it was time to stand up and let their grievances be heard by argument and …

Review Of With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian And Aboriginal Relations In Colonial Canada Edited By Celia Haig-Brown And David A. Nock, C. L. Higham

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This collection of essays focuses on a specific group of Euro-Canadians: those who "recognized injustices" and "allied themselves with Aboriginal people who also saw the injustices and were actively resisting them, and worked in a variety of ways to address them." Yet the authors approach their subjects with a critical eye, realizing many of these efforts were concentrated on aboriginal peoples who missionaries thought adopted "appropriate and/or useful aspects of Christianity, European dress, and settlement into farming villages or business ventures." Additionally, the authors realize some of the actors in the book "struggle[d] to reconcile their Christian morality with their …

Review Of Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving The West Through Women's History Edited By Sarah Carter, Wendee Kubik

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West Through Women's History arose out of the same-named conference held at the University of Calgary in 2002. This edited collection brings together a broad spectrum of contributors and a variety of "modes of expression." The incorporation of region and gender is an ongoing theme; it is, as well, the "glue" that holds everything together throughout all of the articles. The major contribution of the book is the connection among gender, place, and the processes that shaped the diversity of women's experiences in the settlement of the Canadian West.

There is a broad range of articles, …

Review Of Going Indian By James Hamill, Todd Leahy

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Since the publication of Hazel Hertzberg's The Search for an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements (1971), scholars have struggled to understand the development of an ethnic Indian identity among the nation's Indian population. Anthropologist James Hamill's work comes as close as any to explaining how an ethnic Indian identity can supplant a tribal one. In exploring the dynamics of creating culture and identity, Hamill focuses his investigation on the state of Oklahoma, which holds over seventy distinct Indian groups. The shaping forces for identity, Hamill explains, are not broad culturally based principles, but rather shared historical experiences. As Hamill …

Review Of America's 100th Meridian: A Plains Journey Photographs And Text By Monte Hartman, David Mcmillan

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Photographs come in many guises: tools of advertising, personal mementos, scientific data, reportage, self-expression. A tree can be photographed as a representative of a specific species in a field guide, a casualty of a lightning strike in a newspaper, a symbol of strength for an insurance company, or an object of beauty interpreted by an artist. Each manner of photography reflects a different relationship the photographer has to both subject matter and form. The photojournalist, for example, has an obligation to appear neutral, to be the unbiased eyewitness to the subject matter depicted, which is usually an editorial assignment. The …

Review Of A New South Dakota History Edited By Harry F. Thompson, Paula Nelson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In some academic circles today the study of governmental units-nations or states-is passe. Race, class, and gender, categories of analysis that are "stateless," rule the discourse. That is unfortunate for the study of history. Politics and political designations matter. They shape the lives of the individuals who live within them and create or limit the possibilities for individual achievement within their borders. Herbert T. Hoover and John E. Miller, both scholars of South Dakota and its peoples, have collaborated to write portions and edit the entire anthology of substantial chapters and thoughtful essays. Harry Thompson, archivist at the Center for …

Review Of Civil War On The Missouri-Kansas Border By Donald L. Gilmore, John M. Sacher

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Donald Gilmore seeks to redefine our understanding of the conflict on the Missouri-Kansas border during the Civil War era. He contends that biased histories have long portrayed Kansans as innocents who suffered depredations at the hands of lower-class Missouri bushwhackers- a pejorative term that historians continue to use. These histories place special emphasis on William Clarke Quantrill, whom they almost invariably depict as a demonic leader of savages. According to Gilmore's corrective, if anyone should be blamed for the atrocities of the border war, it should be the abolitionist Kansans. Kansans, including Jim Lane, James Montgomery, and "Doc" Jennison, had …

Review Of Hidden Treasures Of The American West: Muriel H. Wright, Angie Debo, And Alice Marriott By Patricia Loughlin, Courtney Vaughn

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Patricia Loughlin has written an excellent work about three female scholars specializing in Native studies on the frontier, more specifically Oklahoma. Loughlin couches her analysis of Muriel H. Wright, Angie Debo, and Alice Marriott in terms of Nancy Parezo's concept of "hidden scholars." They comprised scores of early twentieth-century women who wrote for scholarly and popular audiences about Native people. Ironically, the three subjects in Loughlin's book were conceptually part of this larger movement but often worked in isolation. Although Debo did teach at West Texas State College, and Wright was editor of The Chronicles of Oklahoma, especially Debo …

Review Of A History Of Migration From Germany To Canada, 1850-1939 By Jonathan Wagner, Hans Werner

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

German speakers have been important migrants to the Great Plains, but in Canada most came not from Germany, but from Eastern Europe. Given the low numbers that came to Canada from the Reich itself, Jonathan Wagner's study is more about explaining the country's failure to attract Germans than about their actual migration. According to Wagner, this failure can be explained by Canada's later and less complete industrialization, which meant that its "perceived needs could not win converts in the more industrialized Germany." While Canada was seeking immigrants to farm the wide-open spaces of the Canadian prairies, Germany was already an …

Review Of The Women There Don't Treat You Mean: Abilene In Song By Joe W. Specht, John Wheat

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

What's in a name? If that name is "Abilene" and it rhymes easily with other poetic phrases and occupies a mystic landscape in the popular imagination, then there's quite a bit. That is the basic message of this modest but surprisingly complex essay in cultural geography that traces the presence of Abilene, Texas, in some sixty popular songs over the past century. Author Joe Specht, librarian and music historian at McMurry University in Abilene, has collected music and files on this subject for many years and finally brought it all together with recent interviews with many of the songwriters themselves. …

Review Of Sovereign Selves: American Indian Autobiography And The Law By David ]. Carlson, Hertha D. Sweet Wong

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In Sovereign Selves, David ]. Carlson presents an original, thoughtful, and convincing argument that early Native American autobiography was profoundly shaped by Native "engagement with colonial legal discourse." Even more dramatically, he proposes that such an engagement framed post contact Native self formulations. In short, the federal legal system constructed notions of the "Indian" (child of the forest, ward of the state, etc.) that Native autobiographers both accepted and refashioned.

Well read in legal, historical, and autobiography studies, Carlson takes the scholarship of Indian law further than most by showing not merely its tangible effects on Native populations, but …

Review Of The Heavy Hand Of History: Interpreting Saskatchewan's PastEdited By Gregory P. Marchildon; On The Side Of The People: A History Of Labour In Saskatchewan By Jim Warren And Kathleen Carlisle; & Saskatoon: A History In Photographs By Jeff O'Brien, Ruth W. Millar, And William P. Delainey

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

CENTENNIAL SASKATCHEWAN

In their pictorial overview about the northern prairie city of Saskatoon, Jeff O'Brien, Ruth Millar, and William Delainey note that the opening decade of the twenty-first century contains three significant centennials for Saskatchewan, a land described by journalist Peter Gzowski as "that most Canadian of provinces." In 2005, Queen Elizabeth II joined Canadians in observing the centenaries of this western province as well as its restive sibling, Alberta. During 2006, residents and officials recognized the hundredth anniversary of Saskatoon, the largest city in Saskatchewan and home to the majestic University of Saskatchewan. For 2007, similar celebrations are planned …

Notes And News- Spring 2007

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

NOTES AND NEWS

CALL FOR PAPERS

PLAINS INDIANS AND THE MAORI

CALL FOR PAPERS

CALL FOR PAPERS

Review Of The Science, Impacts And Monitoring Of Drought In Western Canada: Proceedings Of The 2004 Prairie Drought Workshop Edited By Dave Sauchyn, Madhav Khandekar, And E. Ray Garnett, Virginia Wittrock

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

Drought is not an unusual phenomenon on the Canadian prairies or the U.S. Great Plains. There were many short-term droughts in the prairies during the 20th century that generally lasted one to two years (e.g., 1961, 1988). The Canadian prairies multi-year drought event (1999-2003+) has been considered similar in severity to the 1930s drought years.

The 2004 Prairie Drought Workshop resulted in 76 scientists and resource managers gathering in Calgary, Alberta, to share information on drought science, impacts, and monitoring. Presenters examined the impacts on agriculture, stream flow, forests, and ground water, including potential impacts under a changed climate. Though …

Review Of Prairie Time: A Blackland Portrait By Matt White, David Taylor

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

Nowadays, the Blackland Prairies of north Texas are the kind of landscape most people think of as great for subdivisions and strip malls: generally flat, easily bulldozed, and not too far from Dallas-Fort Worth. Prairie Time: A Blackland Portrait traces a similar utilitarian vision of the prairie in 19th-century pioneer descriptions as well: good for plowing, grazing, and-once the buffalo and Native Americans are exterminated-not too far from outposts of commerce. The book serves as an environmental jeremiad for a place too easily seen as useful and thus too often ignored for preservation. Matt White gives readers a context in …

Evapotranspiration Estimation And Scaling Effects Over The Nebraska Sandhills, Venkataramana Sridhar

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

Quantifying evapotranspiration (ET) over vast ecosystems such as the Sandhills of Nebraska is crucial in linking the surface, subsurface, and atmospheric processes affecting a region. There are numerous methods of obtaining large-scale ET estimates, but most are constrained by the availability of data. This study investigates implementation of an approach that uses a simple land-cover-based standardized tall (ETrs) and short (ETas) surface reference crop evapotranspiration and crop coefficient to compute actual ET over various spatial and seasonal scales. Subsequently, computed ETrs was used to get the preliminary estimate of regional ET over the entire Sandhills at the 30 m scale …

Review Of Native Americans In The School System: Family, Community, And Academic Achievement By Carol J. Ward, Jon Reyhner

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

The title of this volume promises more than the content delivers. The heart of the book is information from Ward's 1992 University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, which focused on the social and cultural reasons leading to students dropping out of school. Her first two chapters provide a good review of research on dropouts and Indian education; the following six focus on the results of her 1987-1989 study of 698 Northern Cheyenne, Crow, and white high school students attending the Colstrip Public, St. Labre Catholic, and Busby Tribal Schools in Montana. Fifty-two percent of the students in this study were Indian, …

Great Plains Research, Volume 17, Number 1: News And Notes

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

No abstract provided.

Review Of Soils In Archaeological Research By Vance T. Holliday, Rolfe D. Mandel

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

When I teach geoarchaeology, I tell students on the first day of class that "soils are the canvas for much of the archaeological record." Just as an artist's canvas holds and affects the paint, soils hold archaeological materials, and soil-forming processes strongly influence the preservation and spatial pattern of cultural deposits. Given this close relationship between soils and the material remains of humans, we have long needed a treatise that addresses all aspects of soils from an archaeological perspective. Vance Holliday's latest book, Soils in Archaeological Research, does this and more.

Evaluation Of The College Experience Among American Indian Upperclassmen, Terry Huffman, Ron Ferguson

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

This article reports partial findings from a five-year study that examined the attitudes, perceptions, and expectations regarding higher education among a sample of American Indian students attending a predominantly non-Indian university. Most notably, this article examines some of the factors associated with two specific personal assessments of the college experience: (1) the impact of college upon their appreciation of Native American heritage and (2) the level of satisfaction with the college experience.