Unlikely alliances: Treaty conflicts and environmental cooperation between Native American and rural White communities.

摘要

The dissertation compares alliances of Native Americans and rural whites (particularly ranchers, farmers, and fishers) in the 1970s–2000s in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. It asserts that the level of interethnic cooperation is a key element in the success or failure of a movement for protection of a multiethnic rural area. The dissertation explores how and why certain groups of rural whites and Native peoples joined to protect a natural resource (such as fish or water) that had previously been a source of conflict between them. A perceived outside threat—such as a mine, dam, power plant, transmission line, or flight or bombing range—facilitated new bonds between local Native and non-Native communities. The alliances redrew perceived community boundaries to define neighboring ethnic “outsiders” as “insiders” who are dependent on common natural resources or a land base. These “geographies of inclusion” were more pronounced in areas that had experienced the most intense interethnic conflict over natural resources. The “particularist” assertion of Native American identity had not been in contradiction to a “universalist” project to bring together Native and non-Native communities. Interethnic unity strategies based solely on universalist commonalties (such as environmental protection) tend to fail without a concurrent process of equalization that respects particularist differences (such as Native treaty rights). Most strategies for ethnic conflict management focus on the national scale and the common bond of political citizenship. Ethnic conflict managers have not paid adequate attention to local or regional territorial identity as one strategy for addressing socially based conflict in multiethnic settings. A territorially based, multiethnic “place membership” may be more effective than “state citizenship” in lessening ethnic conflict and increasing cooperation between local communities.