Remedies for a New West
320 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback
Release Date:07 Jun 2009
ISBN:9780816525997
Remedies for a New West
Healing Landscapes, Histories, and Cultures
The University of Arizona Press
This wide-ranging collection of essays is intended to provoke both thought and action. The pieces collected here explore a variety of issues facing the American West—disappearing Native American languages, deteriorating air quality, suburban sprawl, species loss, grassland degradation, and many others—and suggest steps toward “healing.” More than “dealing with” or “solving,” according to the editors, healing addresses not just symptoms but their underlying causes, offering not just a temporary cure but a permanent one.
The signs of illness and trauma can seem omnipresent in today’s West: land and soil disrupted from mining, overgrazing, logging, and farming; wildlife habitat reduced and fragmented; native societies disturbed and threatened; open space diminished by cities and suburbs; wilderness destroyed by roads and recreation-seekers. But as these essays suggest, the “treatment program” for healing the West has many healthful side effects. Engaging in the kinds of projects suggested by contributors is therapeutic not only for the environment but for participants as well. Restoration, repair, and recovery can counter symptoms of despair with concentrated doses of promise and possibility.
The more “lesions” the West has, this book suggests, the more opportunities there are for westerners to revive and ultimately cure the ailing patient they have helped to create. The very idea of restoring the West to health, contributors and editors contend, unleashes our imaginations, sharpens our minds, and gives meaning to the ways we choose to live our lives. At the same time, acknowledging the profound difficulties of the work that lies ahead immunizes us against our own arrogance as we set about the task of healing the West.
The signs of illness and trauma can seem omnipresent in today’s West: land and soil disrupted from mining, overgrazing, logging, and farming; wildlife habitat reduced and fragmented; native societies disturbed and threatened; open space diminished by cities and suburbs; wilderness destroyed by roads and recreation-seekers. But as these essays suggest, the “treatment program” for healing the West has many healthful side effects. Engaging in the kinds of projects suggested by contributors is therapeutic not only for the environment but for participants as well. Restoration, repair, and recovery can counter symptoms of despair with concentrated doses of promise and possibility.
The more “lesions” the West has, this book suggests, the more opportunities there are for westerners to revive and ultimately cure the ailing patient they have helped to create. The very idea of restoring the West to health, contributors and editors contend, unleashes our imaginations, sharpens our minds, and gives meaning to the ways we choose to live our lives. At the same time, acknowledging the profound difficulties of the work that lies ahead immunizes us against our own arrogance as we set about the task of healing the West.
Various ideas from Remedies for a New West can, and should, be applied on a national and international scale.’ —Voices From the Earth
'This important collection is a gift to all of us who care about the West. It belongs on the shelf of every Westerner who questions the narratives of the past and wants to contribute to those of the future.'—Tucson Weekly
Readers who are more interested in the humanities may well find themselves reading about ecological issues, while scientists interested in the latter may read about the humanities. This book is valuable because it shows that restoration activities in both realms are equally important, and that they inform one another in unexpected ways.’—Peter Friederici, author of Nature's Restoration: People and Places on the Front Lines of Conservation
Patricia Nelson Limerick is the faculty director and board chair of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, where she is also a professor of history. She is the author of The Legacy of Conquest, and many of her most notable articles, including “Dancing with Professors: The Trouble with Academic Prose,” were collected in 2000 under the title Something in the Soil.
Andrew Cowell is an associate professor in the Linguistics, French, and Italian departments at the University of Colorado, where he specializes in linguistic anthropology and anthropological approaches to literature and verbal performance. His work in French and Italian focuses on medieval literature and society, and he has just completed a book entitled The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Violence, Performance, and the Sacred.
Sharon K. Collinge is an associate professor of biology and environmental studies in the Environmental Studies Program and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado. She is a conservation biologist and restoration ecologist whose research focuses on understanding the ecological consequences of human-induced changes to natural systems.
Andrew Cowell is an associate professor in the Linguistics, French, and Italian departments at the University of Colorado, where he specializes in linguistic anthropology and anthropological approaches to literature and verbal performance. His work in French and Italian focuses on medieval literature and society, and he has just completed a book entitled The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Violence, Performance, and the Sacred.
Sharon K. Collinge is an associate professor of biology and environmental studies in the Environmental Studies Program and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado. She is a conservation biologist and restoration ecologist whose research focuses on understanding the ecological consequences of human-induced changes to natural systems.
Richard L. Byyny, M.D.
Prologue: The Lessons and Lesions of Conquest
Patricia Nelson Limerick, History
Introduction: Healing the West
Andrew Cowell, Sharon K. Collinge, and Patricia Nelson Limerick
Part 1 Saving What’s Out There, Preventing Further Decline
1 Healing the West with Taxes: The Navajo Nation and the Enactment of Sovereignty
Sarah Krakoff, Law
2 Indigenous Languages of the West: A Prognosis for the Future
Andrew Cowell, Linguistics
3 “Oh Give Me Land, Lots of Land”
Allan Wallis, Public Policy, and Gene Bressler, Landscape Architecture
Part 2 Recovering What’s Been Lost, Healing Injury
4 Reversing the Trend of Habitat Loss in the American West: The Uncertain Promise of Ecological Restoration
Sharon K. Collinge, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
5 Recovering the West: Mexicans and the Memory of Tomorrow’s Landscape
John-Michael Rivera, English
6 Healing with Howls: Rewilding the Southern Rockies
Hannah Gosnell, Geosciences
7 A Scholar Intervenes: Matachines, Ritual Continuity, and Cultural Well-Being
Brenda M. Romero, Music
8 Cleaning Up Abandoned Hard-Rock Mines in the Western United States: Can and Will Communities Take the Lead?
Joseph N. Ryan, Civil Engineering
Part 3 Lessons from Conflict
9 The Klamath Basin as a Proving Ground for the Endangered Species Act
William M. Lewis Jr., Environmental Sciences
10 Hope in a World of Wounds: Sustainable Stewardship in Colorado
David M. Armstrong, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
11 Open Wound from a Tough Nuclear History: Forgetting How We Made Ourselves an Endangered Species
Len Ackland, Journalism
Epilogue: Healing the West over Time
Patricia Nelson Limerick, History
Notes
About the Editors
About the Contributors 3
Index
