The Struggle for the land : indigenous insight and industrial empire in the semiarid world

Summary: At an 1887 council when his people were told to learn farming in the semidesert region east of the Wind River Mountains, the Shosone chief Washakie exploded with "God damn a potato!" His instincts were all against the cultivation of semiarid land. The relationship between the buffalo hunter and the potato eater–between indigenous peoples and industrial empire–is the basic theme of the studies in The Struggle for the Land. As the editor, Paul A. Olson, points out in his introduction, the theme is as old as the biblical battle between the descendents of Nimrod, the city dweller, and of Abraham, the pastoralist. But the environmental cost of developing the world's semiarid regions is a new and urgent concern. Soil erosion, the loss of lands to dams, the pollution of once productive regions through mining, and the destruction of native food plants have everywhere decreased the quality of life for indigenous peoples, who have been forced to adopt the Western agricultural practices, property concepts, and economic institutions that created the environmental crisis.