The Family Ranch: Land, Children, and Tradition in the American West by Linda Hussa, Madeleine Graham Blake

Abstract

THE FAMILY RANCH:LAND,CHILDREN, AND TRADITION IN THEAMERICAN WEST byLindaHussa photographs by Madeleine Graham Blake University ofNevada Press, Reno, 2009. 272 pages. $24.95 cloth. "Self-sufficiency," Linda Hussa argues in this thought-provoking book, "is difficultto attain but paramount and worthy of the effort" (p. xxvii). In awork thatconsiders the"mothering dynamic" of families raising theirchildren ina "classroom of quiet horizons," Hussa explores the ways ranch families in theGreat Basin inte gratedwork, leisure,education, and landscape during the late twentiethcentury.Hussa pres ents a seriesof intimatevignettes,profiling the experiences of sixdifferentranch families in a montage of recollections thatconvey moral and ethical themes.Hussa depicts a rancher ethic revolving around family, land, and livestock. In a work that lacks footnotes, bibliography, or other scholarlyapparatus, theonly support ingdocuments areMadeline Graham Blake's evocative photographs showing parents and childrenworking together against those quiet horizons. Hussa presents these themes in loosely structured life-histories, apparently gleaned from undocumented conversations and interviews. These narratives, told from the perspective of transitional figureswho were either children of ranching parents or parents of ranching children,depict a culture of rural fundamentalism that embraces producerist, familyvalues. Hussa foregrounds people who conveyed their values and traditions across generational lines by sharing hard work with their children on family-based ranches and farms.Homeschooling figures prominently in these stories and photos (for example, the McKay, Harper, and Stoddart families on pp. 129,171-77, and 15-17). The author acknowl edges that other ranch families took a differ ent approach, but thisbook presents families who preferhomeschooling as a component of ranch life. Hussa's largely autobiographical chapter, "Eminent Domain and Land Use: Cattle Free in '93," questions theforeshortenedperspective of unnamed environmentalists, scientists, and federal agents whose decisions transformed remembered landscapes of rancher-managed cattle and rangelands into a government managed "wasteland" where people "pro duce nothing" (p. 28). Voices in these stories particularly criticize agents of the federal government for causing problems for rural folk;position family ranchers and farmers as "holistic,"production-oriented, land stewards; and praise cattle as beneficial to the ecosystem (p. 144-45). The familieswhose storiesHussa privileges as exemplars of producerist, rural values are impressively varied. They include families of interracial adoption, a singlemother who adopted a teenaged girl,and a Shoshone family thatblends reservation lifewith commercial ranching. Most chapters focus on multi generational familiesofEuro-American origin, butHussa emphasizes the restorativepotential of ranch lifefordisaffected or disadvantaged orphans. Despite its important attention to racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, the book lacks context in previous scholarship that examines closely related landscapes of rural lifeand ranch families. Kenneth Porter's studies ofAfrican Ameri can workers in thewestern cattle industry might better inform the discussion of the McKay family's children, for example, and Hussa's lingering discussion of adoption impressionistically dismisses the Haitian landscapes thatproduced those children. The Walker family story is similarlyvague on the closely intertwinedhistory of cattle ranching and Indian labor in theAmericanWest. Nancy Langston's recent study of cooperative, adap tive management in the Malheur and Klamath Reviews 487 districts as an outgrowth of numerous, con flictingdemands for the samewater resources and tribal treatyrights,orWilliam Robbins's discussion of similar issues along theKlamath inhis recentLandscapes ofConflict,might also better informHussa's stories involving the Klamath water crisis of 2001 and theKlamath River Coalition ofConservation Districts. Hussa focuses on the Walker and McKay familystoriesonly in the latter half of thebook, which veers into disconnected paragraphs critiquing federal land managers and legal decisions. Hussa only vaguely linkstheseasides to the stories and concerns of the McKay and Walker families and theirvalues. Earlier chap ters that focus exclusively on Euro-American families more closely integrate their stories with policy discussions. Methodologically, Hussa's book is strongest where itfollows closely Studs Terkel's formula inWorking. Terkel's classic study introduced each narrative voice with a briefbackstory and thenused each person's words to tellhis or her own story inways that revealed producerist notions of value and virtue in theworkplace while also illuminating underlying class and racial tensions.Hussa's stories similarly ideal ize physical labor as a transcendent ethical force and teaching tool, but she selects narra tives thatoveremphasize ruralityas a unifying identitywhile underplaying class, racial, and gender difference as...