Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

The Musical Landscape Of Sinclair Ross's As For Me And My House, Philip R. Coleman-Hull

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In his essay "Sinclair Ross in Letters and Conversation," David Stouck recounts Ross's humble reactions to the array of criticism given to his first and most famous novel, As For Me and My House:

"You understand the [Bendeys] perhaps better than I do, or at least did when I was writing. For when I was writing I was participating and when you participate you often don't understand or see. More was coming I suppose than I knew." In this same vein he has often remarked that critical articles about the novel amaze him-discuss ions of Chopin and George Sand, …

This Week At The Opera House Popular Musical Entertainment At Great Plains Opera Houses, 1887-1917, D. Layne Ehlers

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Americans in the years immediately preceding the twentieth century clung to a naivete reminiscent of the manifest destiny days. Novels, newspaper accounts, and old-fashioned, rousing melodramas on the stage all displayed a predilection for an American way which showed that moral good, coupled with patience, would triumph, providing it remained within carefully proscribed social and ethical limits. "Home Sweet Home," the most popular song of its time, celebrated the simple virtues of hearth and family.

Nowhere was this vision of life more apparent than in the Great Plains. By 1877 the days when Chimney Rock and Scotts Bluff welcomed trail-weary …

Powerful Feelings Recollected In Tranquility Literary Criticism And Lakota Social Song Poetry, R. D. Theisz

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The anthropologist and ethnomusicologist William K. Powers, in his Beyond the Vision: Essays on American Indian Culture, laments that the discipline of ethnomusicology-and music pedagogy-with its emphasis on the vocal and instrumental "art music" traditions of musically literate peoples has been lax in accepting anthropological theory. Thus, Powers points out that ethnomusicology, where it is concerned with the music of oral, indigenous cultures, adheres to outdated theories on "primitive" music and displays a telling absence of ethnographic abilities.¹ Reflecting Powers' judgment, it seems to me that the conceptual seams between anthropology, ethnomusicology, and musicology are rather formidable.

At …

The Power Of Symbolism: Disarmament In Northern Ireland, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article explores recent events in Northern Ireland to highlight the import of symbolism in the resolution of political conflict.

"Wild Men" And Dissenting Voices: Narrative Disruption In Little House On The Prairie, Donna M. Campbell

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Long considered to be a work celebrating traditional pioneer values, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has in recent years come under increasing attack for its stereotypic racial representations and attitudes. In one notable instance, novelist Michael Dorris describes trying to read the novels to his daughters and stopping because of the unfavorable depictions of Native American characters and Ma's "unreconstructed" bigotry. Dorris and others present a compelling argument about the potential negative effects of such representations, yet to dismiss the work as though Wilder's vision of other races represents a …

Citizenship And Treaty Rights: The Indian Association Of Alberta And The Canadian Indian Act, 1946-1948, Laurie Meijer Drees

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In the spring of 1946, J. Allison Glen announced a public inquiry into Canada's federal administration of Indian Affairs and the Indian Act. In Parliament on 13 May 1946 this minister of Mines and Resources responsible for Indian Affairs moved "That a joint committee of the senate and house of commons be appointed to examine and consider the Indian Act ... with authority to investigate and report upon Indian administration in general" including treaty rights, band membership, enfranchisement of Indians, Indian schools, and "any other matter or thing pertaining to the social and economic status of Indians and their advancement."! …

Notes And News

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Contents:

Frederick C. Luebke Award 2000
California Indian Conference
Internships at the American Folklife Center
Intertribal Bison Cooperative Conference 2000

"Going To Indian Territory": Attitudes Toward Native Americans In Little House On The Prairie, Philip Heldrich

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Since its first printing in 1935, Little House on the Prairie has been a perennial favorite among countless readers. The Little House series itself ranks consistently as one of the most commercially popular of all times. However, Little House on the Prairie, the second book in the series, has become the center of numerous controversies. Yellow Medicine East School District, in Granite, Minnesota, which serves a portion of the Upper Sioux Community of that region, stopped class reading of the book, citing disgust with the text's portrayals of Native Americans. Such action follows a similar banning of the text …

Little Squatter On The Osage Diminished Reserve: Reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Kansas Indians, Frances W. Kaye

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Laura Ingalls Wilder was a person of her time and place. She fictionalized her memories to give what she honestly believed was the truest possible account-true in deeply human ways as well as in accurate details-of one family's settlement history on the Great Plains frontier. I have never really liked her work. While my sister read all the Little House books, I read ... Zane Grey. That I do not share Wilder's values and point of view is no argument against the books-I do not share Zane Grey's values and point of view, either. But Zane Grey is not held …

The Pre-Settlement Platte: Wooded Or Prairie River?, W. Carter Johnson, Susan E. Boettcher

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

The pre-settlement Platte River is commonly described as a mostly unwooded prairie river, comprised of water, sand, and wet grassland. However, primary historical accounts do not support this prairie river concept. Instead, the early accounts and quantitative information from the General Land Office survey indicate that, prior to settlement by European immigrants, the Platte was a wooded river traversing a prairie landscape. Woodland was reported as dense on innumerable islands in the channel, but scattered along on the outer banks. This woodland was cleared during exploration and early settlement. Thus, the openness of the post-settlement river observed early in the …

Strengths And Stresses Of Omaha Indian Families Living On The Reservation, Douglas A. Abbott, Glenna Slater

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

We studied current strengths and contemporary stresses of Omaha Indian families living on the reservation in northeast Nebraska. Interviews with 60 tribal members revealed that major family and tribal strengths included: extended family support, spiritual values and religious practices, community generosity and support, Omaha culture and traditions, and a determination of many tribal members to recognize and overcome their problems. Respondents also identified major stresses that included: alcohol use, family breakdown, tribal leadership, unemployment and their children's education. Social Interaction Theory suggests that the identification of stresses should be more common than the identification of strengths by an oppressed minority. …

Great Plains Research, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2000 – News And Notes

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

Contents:

Call for papers
Conferences

Review Of Hazardous Wastes In Rural America: Impacts, Implications, And Options For Rural Communities By Steven H. Murdock, Richard S. Krannich, And F. Larry Leistritz. Lanham, Larry E. Erickson

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

Hazardous Wastes describes the goals, methods, results, and conclusions of a research study, funded by the US Department of Agriculture, on the consequences of hazardous waste processing and storage sites in rural America. The inquiry compared current conditions and patterns of recent socioeconomic change in communities affected by waste facility siting and development with those that have experienced other types of recent development and with communities that have experienced only baseline patterns of change. Fifteen communities in five states (Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah) provided information for the study.

Review Of The Making Of The 1996 Farm Act By Lyle P. Schertz And Otto C. Doering Iii, Roy Frederick

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

Schertz and Doering have produced a useful, comprehensive volume that details key actions leading to passage of the 1996 Farm Act. Although both authors are distinguished economists, the book is more about the political process-and associated policymakers-than economics. It should have lasting value, if for no other reason than that the 1996 legislation differed greatly from the twenty or so farm acts preceding it. For anyone who has wondered why the outcome was different in 1996, this book is must reading.

The authors begin, correctly, with a chapter on the 1994-95 setting for farm legislation, since farm bills are typically …

Review Of Men As Women, Women As Men: Changing Gender In Native American Cultures By Sabine Lang, Claire R. Farrer

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

Some prefer to read books by going directly to the crux, bypassing any Preface or Introduction. To do so with this book would create confusion, as Lang uses terms idiosyncratically. She defines her terms well, however, presents justifications for employing them, and provides an overview of the study and how she came to write it in both its English and German editions. All this is vital information for those approaching the text.

It has become standard among scholars writing in English to refer to people of mixed, blended, or other genders using first the term for the person's biological sex …

Review Of American Indian Population Recovery In The Twentieth Century By Nancy Shoemaker, Dean R. Snow

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

One might expect a book on American Indian historical demography to be a lugubrious recitation of catastrophic losses accompanied by tiresome moralizing, but this slim volume gives us ethnohistory at its best. In place of thick descriptive narrative, Shoemaker offers us a refreshingly concise empirical analysis. Conclusions are not simply assertions, but concise statements supported by data presented in clear tables and graphs.

Shoemaker steers clear of the 1492 population debate in order to focus on demographic recovery, which occurred in the twentieth century after the aggregate US Indian population reached a nadir of 237,000 in 1900. She does this …

Review Of The Fontenelle & Cahanne Trading Posts: The History And Archeology Of Two Missouri River Sites By Richard E. Jensen, Thomas D. Thiessen

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

More than a mere archeological site report, this volume is an important contribution to the history and archeology of the fur trade of the American West. It tells the story of two early nineteenth-century trading posts that operated, sometimes in competition with one another, during the same approximate time and in the same region. Cabanne's Post was situated near the mouth of Ponca Creek north of present-day Omaha, Nebraska. Fontenelle's was located about fifteen miles to the south and gave one of its several historical names to the present city of Bellevue. Although the ownership of each post changed over …

The Platte As A Prairie River: A Response To Johnson And Boettcher, Paul J. Currier, Craig A. Davis

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

Johnson and Boettcher (2000) question the status of the presettlement Platte River as a prairie river, and they argue that it was "a wooded river traversing a prairie landscape." Here we review evidence in support of the prairie river concept, suggesting the channels of the Platte were predominantly open and largely absent of trees. Direct support for a prairie river is found in the detailed map drawn by Lieutenant Woodbury in locating the site for Fort Kearny in 1847. Woodbury showed a thin strip of timber, located in an area that appeared to be elevated above the influence of active …

Thinking Like A Dune Field: Geologic History In The Nebraska Sand Hills, David B. Loope, James Swinehart

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

The Nebraska Sand Hills region is a giant dune field that is presently stabilized by prairie vegetation. During numerous severe droughts within the last 15,000 years, the dunes have lost their plant cover and have migrated freely. Wetlands between dunes are extensive in the central Sand Hills and are connected to the High Plains (Ogallala) aquifer. Lakes and wetlands were formed when dunes blocked and deranged stream systems. Evaporation of water from wetlands may benefit adjacent dune vegetation during extended droughts, by locally increasing humidity and rainfall. Buried bison tracks are abundant within the dunes, suggesting that grass and water …

Review Of The Land Of Prehistory: A Critical History Of American Archaeology By Alice Beck Kehoe, Raymon Wood

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

The Land of Prehistory is a comprehensive-indeed, encyclopedic - and insightful introduction to the history of Americanist archaeology. Well written and comprehensible to both lay and professional readers, it traces North American archaeology from its European foundations through such contemporary themes as the new archaeology, postmodernism, and NAGPRA (though, curiously, only paying lip service to gender studies). It will be a useful, if often controversial, textbook for courses in introductory archaeology, the history of archaeology, and for seminars in archaeological method and history.

It is impossible to deal adequately with the volume's richness of detail: bare listings must suffice where …

Review Of Saving American Farmland: What Works, Lonnie L. Schulz

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

This well-organized, comprehensive reference on protecting America's farmland provides, along with a brief history of the nation's loss of irreplaceable agricultural resources to urban sprawl, an account of the successful techniques and strategies state governments and communities have used to protect farmland and support agriculture.

Great Plains Research, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2000 – Awards

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

Contents:

Establishment of the Charles E. Bessey Award
Leslie Hewes Award
Great Plains Research Junior Academy of Sciences Award

Use Of Fatty Acid Stores By Larvae And Adults Of A Nebraska Salt Marsh Tiger Beetle, Cicindela Togata Globicollis Casey, W. Wyatt Hoback, R. L. Rana, D. W. Stanley

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

Tiger beetles are common predators in open habitats throughout the Great Plains, including the eastern salt marshes. Adult tiger beetles are active searchers that attack and eat small insects. By contrast, their larvae are sit-and-wait predators that form permanent burrows and depend on prey moving within striking distance. We hypothesized that adults and larvae of the tiger beetle, Cicindela togata globicollis Casey, would differ in their utilization of lipid (fat) energy reserves, such as fatty acids, based on differences in the likelihood of starvation. To investigate this, we determined the fatty acid profiles from larvae and adult tiger beetles. We …

Occupational Segregation Of Women On The Great Plains, Ann Mari May, Robert Watrel

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

Despite large increases in the participation of women in the paid labor force, occupational segregation by sex continues to be a significant characteristic of the labor market in the US. To better understand occupational segregation, we developed a new measure of occupational segregation that allows us to identify "female-dominated," "male-dominated," and "integrated" occupations. We use the new measure to examine differences in occupational segregation in the Great Plains states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, compared with the US as a whole. Our results indicate that more women on the Great Plains are employed than expected, given male …

Review Of Transcontinental America, 1850•1915, Volume 3 Of The Shaping Of America: A Geographical Perspective On 500 Years Of History By D. W. Meinig, G. Malcom Lewis

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

The editors of the Journal of Historical Geography considered the publication of the third volume of Donald Meinig's "magisterial historical geography" to be so important as to merit a sixteen-page special feature: an account of the project by the author followed by invited commentaries by Cole Harris and Carville Earle (JHG, January 1999). Meinig explains that "America" refers to the United States, though "other Americas" (Canada, Mexico, Panama, etc.) are considered in presenting it in "a broader geographic context... ." The Shaping in the series title announces an emphasis on "form, morphology, spatial patterns, [and] geographic structure"; in the author's …

Great Plains Research, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2000 – Contents

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

Contents

Great Plains Research Awards
Feature Article
Critical Dialogue
Social Sciences
Book Reviews
News and Notes

Great Plains Research, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2000 – Critical Dialogue, Svata M. Louda

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

With the following articles, we are pleased to initiate a new section, called "Critical Dialogue," to be published whenever a manuscript is accepted that we think addresses a particularly important, potentially controversial issue in the Great Plains. The purpose of the section will be to present alternative perspectives on such issues, to inform our readers and to stimulate rational discussion of the data available for science-based policy and management decisions. Thus, we will invite and peer-review a reasoned response to the stimulating manuscript, and we will provide the original author(s) with an opportunity for rebuttal to that response.

Review Of Uphill Against Water: The Great Dakota Water War By Peter Carrels, John M. Donahue

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

Students in my Water, Culture, and Power course must read Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert (1993), but Peter Carrels's Uphill Against Water will now become required reading as well. Carrels provides a grassroots perspective on twentieth-century water policy in the United States that complements the more macro analysis in Reisner's work. Writing in his hometown of Aberdeen, South Dakota, Carrels tells the story from the vantage point of farmers who were supposed to be the beneficiaries of the massive Oahe Irrigation Project in northeastern South Dakota. How over a thirty-year period they became its successful opponents is the story line of …

Production Agriculture Versus The Environment: The Role Of Statistics, Linda J. Young

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

Corn production in the United States provides an example of the agricultural changes that have occurred in recent times. Because all such agricultural activity potentially can affect the environment to some degree, the challenge is now to quantify and understand those effects. Although monitoring of the environment for such effects is not new, the procedures often fall short of providing reliable quantitative data. One example is the inconsistent, incomplete, and unreliable information currently available to assess US surface water quality and trends in that quality. The utilization of probability-based sampling designs could playa vital role in the improvement of information …

Review Of Unruly River: Two Centuries Of Change Along The Missouri By Robert Kelley Schneiders, John E. Thorson

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

With renewed discomfort, I return to my September 1997 issue of National Geographic, reading of China's grandiose Three Gorges Project. Construction of this immense concrete dam across the Yangtze River is well underway. When complete in 2009, the dam and reservoir will displace two million people and inundate four hundred miles of beautiful river and riparian lands. I want to lease a cargo plane, fly to China, and dump thousands of copies of Robert Kelley Schneiders's Unruly River on the cloistered leadership in Beijing, yelling at the top of my lungs, "Don't you see?"

Unruly River: Two Centuries of …