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This new book by David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, is long, winding, and sometimes exasperating. I was making my way through its treatment of…
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I don’t know whether it is on account of the nostalgia that oozes from that stanza, or because of my delight in the discovery of a new-to-me prairie…
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Historians of the Nonpartisan League, our great farm movement of the early twentieth century, have known all along that the leaguers were a singing lot.…
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Years ago I had the honor of meeting Paul B. Sears, the ecologist from Oklahoma, author of the 1935 jeremiad, Deserts on the March. He came to Emporia…
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In an unlikely turn of events, a poem by an Englishwoman about a soldier in the French Foreign Legion traveled to America to become a cowboy ballad. The…
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Eureka! Found it. Lately I’ve been looking into the origins of all the old standard folksongs of the Great Plains. Operating with the advantages of…
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“As Henry stepped out of the door, he noticed a peculiar cloud in the west, too light in color to be rain, or even dust. He called Rosie to the door to…
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If I use the word “pastoralism,” it’s usually misunderstood. People think I’m talking about clergymen, possibly of the Lutheran variety--when really I’m…
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A week ago I confessed to being an unabashed academic, and I’ll tell you what’s more: I work in the academic area known sometimes as “the liberal arts” (a…
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If you’re a regular listener to Plains Folk, then you know you’re dealing with a farm boy. I’m the guy who buys out other heirs and nurtures hopes of…
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All over the Great Plains the figure of the “old settler” emerged as an object of celebration. Old settler’s picnics were a regular event in hundreds of…
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One evening in April 1933, in Crosby, in the northwest corner pocket of North Dakota, a seventeen-year-old farm boy named Raymond Semingson, the son of…