The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam : : Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau / / Erika Marie Bsumek.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2023 English
• VerfasserIn: Bsumek, Erika Marie,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.) :; 18 b&w photos, 8-page color insert

The second highest concrete-arch dam in the United States, Glen Canyon Dam was built to control the flow of the Colorado River throughout the Western United States. Completed in 1966, the dam continues to serve as a water storage facility for residents, industries, and agricultural use across the American West. The dam also generates hydroelectric power for residents in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and Nebraska. More than a massive piece of physical infrastructure and an engineering feat, the dam exposes the cultural structures and complex regional power relations that relied on Indigenous knowledge and labor while simultaneously dispossessing the Indigenous communities of their land and resources across the Colorado Plateau. Erika Marie Bsumek reorients the story of the dam to reveal a pattern of Indigenous erasure by weaving together the stories of religious settlers and Indigenous peoples, engineers and biologists, and politicians and spiritual leaders. Infrastructures of dispossession teach us that we cannot tell the stories of religious colonization, scientific exploration, regional engineering, environmental transformation, or political deal-making as disconnected from Indigenous history. This book is a provocative and essential piece of modern history, particularly as water in the West becomes increasingly scarce and fights over access to it continue to unfold.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- A note on terminology -- Introduction -- 1. Religious expansion -- 2. Instruments of dispossession -- 3. Structures of erasure -- 4. Political maneuvering -- 5. Legal paradigms and dispossession -- Epilogue. dispossession and possession -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Illustration credits -- Index