On the settler ‘heritage’: Deborah Gewertz, Frederick Errington, ‘From intensive agriculture to prairie heritage: a paradox of land repurposing in Eastern South Dakota, USA’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 2016 | settler colonial studies blog

On the settler ‘heritage’: Deborah Gewertz, Frederick Errington, ‘From intensive agriculture to prairie heritage: a paradox of land repurposing in Eastern South Dakota, USA’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 2016

31Jul16

Abstract: In this paper we take up Tania Li’s question ‘what is land’. While her interest is in how land becomes inscribed so as to make it investable, ours is in reversing the sequence so as to make long-inscribed land de-investable. We focus on a family farm in Eastern South Dakota which was bequeathed to the US Fish and Wildlife Service in order that its tilled fields of industrially produced corn and soybeans be replaced with native, tallgrass prairie. The process – one of de-inscription – involved evocations of settler heritage which, ironically, provided a prairie-friendly justification for massive prairie destruction.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed