Author Samuel Western

TITLE: A Pluralistic Mindset

Welcome back to a brand new season of the Modern West! Boy, do we have an incredible lineup of stories in the pipeline for you. From how people are dealing with the housing crisis in the West, to how tribes are reclaiming their artifacts and finding novel pathways toward healing, to the story of the abuse of a wolf and how it tore apart a community. That’s the tip of the iceberg. When I try to pinpoint what it is that ties all these stories together, it’s that most of these stories aren’t black and white. The heart of them lies in the middle somewhere. In the grey zone, let’s call it. And the best way to understand that gray zone is to trace back the history to its beginnings. 

Samuel Western:  My name is Samuel Western and the title of my new book is called The Spirit of 1889, Restoring the Promise of the Great Plains and the Northern Rockies. 

Okay, this guy. Samuel Western. He’s a master at tracing back the beginnings of issues in the American West. You might call it his super power. He’s made appearances on this podcast in the past. I’ve been a big fan since his book Pushed Off the Mountain, Sold Down the River: Wyoming’s Search for Its Soul, which is now a bonafide classic. But he’s an economist actually – taught at the University of Wyoming for years and covered the Rocky Mountains for The Economist magazine for 25 years. And sure, his lens is always financial. But somehow he marries that with history and culture in ways that get at that gray zone in truly revelatory ways.

And now he has this new book that looks at the visionary constitutions of five western states and how they’ve lost their way. I think our conversation sets up this season about the gray in between to a tee. 

Melodie Edwards: I wonder if you could just start by telling me why 1889 was just such an extraordinary year for Western states.  

SW: The wheel was turning for states giving up territory-hood and applying for statehood, and 1889 was sort of the witching hour. These states suddenly decided that they had a window and had struggled before to become states because they didn't have various qualifications: they didn't have enough population and they didn't have enough assessed valuation. But suddenly they saw there was this push coming and it was quite successful. 

ME: You had mentioned in your book that, in 1889, these states all either wrote their constitutions or they renewed their constitutions. What was kind of surprising about all of these constitutions?  

SW: These states would be North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Now the Dakotas until 1889 were called the Dakotas. It was not North and South, but as soon as the separate constitutions were written, each was given abandoned territory status and were given statehood.  

I think what was surprising was their pragmatism. They were poor, they did not have enough people, and they really put ideology on the back burner. ‘How can we create all the necessary players and foundations for statehood?’ Because of that, they were relatively inclusive and they had to walk this balance between attracting corporations and yet not being under the thumb of corporations. That was a big ask because North Dakota, for example, the Northern Pacific Railroad owned one fourth of North Dakota. They didn't pay any taxes, so they were pragmatic, they had to be inventive, and they had to be inclusive. 

In my mind, one of the things I have so valued about the West and the Great Plains is that there is a pluralistic mindset, where it doesn't matter where you came from. It's what you are today. It doesn't matter who your daddy was or your mom was. It's who you are. There's been this sort of pragmatism pluralism that I saw started to shift. I'm like, ‘What's going on? I don't understand this.’ At first, it was just in Wyoming and it all started actually when I wrote Pushed Off the Mountain, Sold Down the River, which came out in 2002.

But then I kind of said, ‘Wyoming doesn't operate in isolation. What's going on in our universe around us?’ So I just started making notes and writing paragraphs and putting ideas together. In 2010, I wrote a book proposal called Tribal America and the book publisher thought that was the silliest thing they'd ever heard of. ‘Sorry, go away.’  Well, shoot, dang! But the idea didn't go away and it kept growing. I said, ‘No, something's going on here.’ Then I started [thinking], ‘Okay, if you're really serious, you better start doing a deep dive into historical research and start doing interviews.’ 

ME: It seems like one of the things that you were looking for as you were going and delving into these deep original sources is our original values, as you call them, of the 89ers, (I love that term). And what did you find in terms of the unifying values? There was still a certain kind of brand of conservatism, but I wonder if you can talk about what that looked like back then.

SW: Oh, that's a great question, Melodie, and it really is at the heart of the book. It’s that most of the men (and they were all men who were the delegates here), were fairly conservative, which is to say they backed the gold standard, they wanted minimal debt, a lot of the features of sort of classic conservative thought. But again, they were very pragmatic. They had this huge task for them. How could they finance the state? What could they have for revenue streams? It was a unique combination of values of safety and security and tradition, mixed with a sort of a sense of adventure and open mindedness, and it produced, I think, fairly unique documents.

Now, I would say unique, lowercase U, because again, these documents borrowed heavily. But it was this combination of values that I was struck by when I did my research. They tended to carry forward as the decades went on until you could start to see the cracks were shown by the 1970s and 80s. 

ME: We sort of get thrown in these days as a conservative, very red state, that we are sort of the same as a lot of southern states in our values and in our conservatism. You even quote somebody who calls us “Alabama with antelope”. I loved that.  

SW: The old bureau chief from UPI, yes. 

ME: That was great. But you seem to take issue with that. You're saying that we come from very different roots. 

SW: We do. We come from very different roots. I think I make the point that the South was connected to Europe through trade, through indigo, through slaves, through cotton, through rum, through rice.

We had none of those connections. People came out here, they were generally, (especially in Wyoming) they were poor. But boy, during the Dakota boom, not many really wealthy people were coming out here. So our pragmatism and a sense of  the commonweal – I think that's the word that goes to the book, which can be a very loaded term – but I think that sense of the commonweal was quite unique to the 89ers.

It was different than the South or California or New Mexico. California had all the influence of the Spanish; New Mexico really had influence of the Spanish. We were liberated from those. They weren't breathing down our necks. 

I was talking to Tom Ray, who's the editor of Wildhistory.org the other day, and he was asking me, ‘What should young people reading our constitutions – plural – think about?’ One of them, Melodie, is how did Elwood Mead – who was then an engineer at Colorado State Agricultural University (it’s called CSU now) – how did he get his water system written in the constitution? That was radical. And I dug around. Anne McKinnon up in Casper probably knows, but it was really something else to make the concept that water goes with the land. You can't separate the water from the land. You can have reservoirs, private water. But that was such an egalitarian concept! It's not found in Colorado. It's not found in California. It's called the Wyoming system, which as you may know, was eventually exported to Australia. There's an irrigation system in Australia called the Wyoming system. I just thought that was fairly singular.  

ME: I'm so glad you bring up that water system because I've talked to Anne McKinnon about that exact thing, just what a marvel it is that that was something that we adopted. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how we have veered away from those original values that we are founded upon. What's changed and why? 

SW: It starts In a place that might strike you as odd. It starts at our permanent Wyoming Trust Fund. We have a sovereign fund worth $10billion, for which the legislature gets $450 million in interest every year. Because we don't have to worry about paying our bills, we worry about other things. We have a moat of money around Wyoming that protects us. It keeps us hidebound. We don't have to change. We don't have to accommodate. It has made us a magnet for people that want to come here and say, ‘Well, we're conservative. We don't want to change.’  

There were a number of things that I think happened. One was the 1980s and what happened both to oil and gas – $9.60 oil –  to what happened to agriculture. It introduced a real bitterness. We've always had a thing against the federal government. But the late seventies and eighties really stuck in people's craw and it didn't go away.  What it did is it opened up the lens for people who were generally of a libertarian bent. Llike abortion, people just didn't talk about that, things like that. Banning books. It was just like, ‘No, that's your own business.’

Yet Wyoming and North Dakota, which also has a permanent fund, a lot of the bills got paid, and so it was a petri dish, if you will, for movement conservatism to grow,  which is much more inclined to go to social issues. For years, people relied on the weekly newspaper, going to church, gossip sessions at the store. That's how they got their information. Or they could go to public radio, or they could go to the big three networks. But suddenly you had Fox Radio come in, you had Rush Limbaugh, they were singing the song to a lot of people. I think people were angry and desperate and therefore were susceptible and vulnerable. 

The historian from Western Wyoming College, now retired, Dudley Gardner, talked to me and said, ‘You know, I grew up in the southwest part of the state. It was the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church. That's it.  When the oil boom came, we got a lot of Texans and Oklahomans to come. They weren't Catholic. They weren't Mormon. They were pretty hard shell Baptist. He said, ‘It changed the culture of Sweetwater County,’  and I tend to give credence to that, that the oil boom that went on for so long, it really did change the culture of some parts of Wyoming. Sweetwater County traditionally was a Democratic stronghold. No more. 

I read a fantastic book when I was doing research called The Economics of Belonging. This Norwegian economist just said, when certain elements come to play, they prey on people's worst fears. They see their lives going down the tube, and they see what they consider their values being threatened. It's a perfect storm.

ME: You talk about a cognitive dissonance of community that is very fiercely independent. We have that rugged individualism that is just core to all of our values in the American West. But then there's just this reliance on federal policies, federal subsidies, things like that, that's just creating a real tension. I wonder if you can talk about that cognitive dissonance? 

SW: I think it's very real, and I don't think people recognize it very much. I had a segment of the book, and I took it out. My wife really suggested that I take it out, because I said, ‘Where are our registered independents? Shouldn't that be the party of choice for an independent Wyoming?’ I said, ‘No, that's too much about politics.’ I mean to try to play down politics and talk about values. To be independent is just, in that sense, just too damn scary for a lot of people. I mean, what sort of clout does an independent have if we have one seat in the house? It's just too scary, but I think that the cognitive dissonance is there. Especially in agriculture, not so much in stock or cattle and sheep, but in row agriculture for crops, crop insurance. Most farmers I talk to really hate crop insurance, but they're too frightened, too much risk. They say, ‘Ranching and farming is all about managing risk. We manage our risk by getting crop insurance.’ But I think this cognitive distance is real, and I think it creates a tension.  

ME: You mentioned that you tried to steer clear of that politics, and you're kind of trying not to think in terms of Republican versus Democrat, but to just really focus on, on values. Can you talk a little bit about why you made that choice?  

SW: I made that choice because what happens, Melodie, is when someone picks up a book and they start seeing someone lambasting the Democrats or lambasting Republicans, they'll either agree or they'll put it down. So I said, ‘Okay, what's the middle way?’ What's the way that plays down the D or the R and talk about values that have appeal on both sides? The news and the literature is just filled with this partisan – I would say, screed – some of it's amazingly written. But I didn't want to play into that.  

ME: What do you think that those central values might be? And are they still something that can bring us together? That there is still a commitment to some of those central values that we did install in our Constitution? 

SW: I worry about the idea of the commonweal, which I think is so prevalent in these constitutions, of that being chipped away. There is an element of the conservative party in this country that does not favor public education. We, in Wyoming in particular, but North Dakota, we are over the top about public education. I think it is so central. Anybody who has looked at the West historically (and you certainly have), when a school goes, that's it.  So I think education, even though there are individuals who don't want public schools, I think that is a central value. 

I think another central value is public lands. Man, I just think that is so baked into the identity of Wyoming. It’s public lands and access to them. I think public education and public lands are two values that are part of our DNA. 

The third one is – for all these states, not so much Idaho – is a reverence for agriculture. For Wyoming, it's stock growing, and for the Dakotas, it's row crops. In Montana, it's both. Agriculture is changing so fast, and it's leaving so many people behind. But that doesn't take away the fact that people still hold ag as a very important cultural icon for them. I don't know how that's going to play out. 

ME: What you're bringing up is really interesting and it seems like the Rock Springs Resource Management Plan and the debates that we've been seeing there are a really interesting example of Wyomingites trying to find a new way to engage with the federal government. There's something about it – especially in Wyoming that I've seen with public lands management, wildlife management – that there is this willingness to co- govern. Let all the stakeholders come in and sit down. It seems like those old values that you're exploring  at the heart of those efforts.  

SW: I think the fact that Dave Friedenthal passed the Wildlife Trust Fund, which benefits wealthy landowners. But we didn't take the path of we are not going to enrich or give those bastards any more than they already have. We said, ‘That's not the point. The point is the wildlife.’ That was really, just what you're talking about, which is like, ‘We're going to let this go because there's something greater at stake, which is wildlife,’ which is so much of a Wyoming value.  

But I agree, the Rock Springs Agreement was just another example. Our friends in Washington did not do a good job and they got spanked, man. They should have. It's like, come on! There's a lot of examples, but one is, trona is a central part of Wyoming's mineral industry. As I read the original plan, I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ If I was in the trona industry, I would say, didn't anybody talk to him?

But yes, that was a good example of why people have a bitterness and resentment for their federal government, because I don't think they do their homework when they come to talk to Wyoming. 

ME: I think you mentioned that you feel like President Trump represents the antithesis of a lot of these values. I just wonder if you can explore a little of how it feels like across these 89'er states that there's a willingness to join up with Trump's vision for the future that you feel like is steering us away from our core values.

SW: I think the central one is a pluralistic society in which no person is above the law, and Trump is an authoritarian. Love him or hate him, he is an authoritarian person. Authoritarianism is a value. We have never embraced that. We've always geared – not always successfully – but toward transparency.

I mean, [we have] the Simpson family, and that's about as big as a dynasty we get in Wyoming. That is probably my greatest worry is that we are a relatively pluralistic, inclusive  society, and Trump is an authoritarian, exclusive narrative, and I think that is in direct contrast to the values in our constitution.

ME: Can you talk a little bit about how you went about researching this book and trying to answer a lot of these questions that you raised?  

SW: I did an awful lot of reading, and because of COVID, I was forced to do it online. But then part two was hitting the road and going to research rooms in North Dakota and South Dakota, and looking at primary documents for the people that I wanted to talk about in the book. 

But third was to go and talk to people in the field. Go talk to these ranchers. They were unbelievably generous with their time, and they were also torn.  For a long time, farmers were Democratic. The Democratic Party, which they've almost completely abandoned by. They feel they have been forgotten, and that's not a good feeling. 

Going to Wallowa County, Oregon, which is out of my little group, I knew a fair amount of Wallowa County, and I said, ‘Okay, if I am going to advocate for something like this, why don't you go to a place that has put these in play?’ So I went to Wallowa County, and Melodie, I'm so glad I did.  Because it's not an idyll, they are a work in progress. It's an isolated county, it's five hours from Portland, four hours from Boise, no airport. It's a traditional resource base of timber and ranching. They have made so much progress in lowering the enmity, in lowering the polarization, and understanding they gotta get along. The other thing that these guys, as a community, understood is that, it's not about them, it's about their kids. It's about where are their kids going to end up?

ME: From going out and doing some of those journeys to these other communities, bringing those lessons back to these other states that have kind of lost their way, what lessons did you find that you might be bringing back? 

SW: That polarization is overrated. We see it as a way to get what we want. We will put somebody as the other, and thereby we will show that they're evil and bad, and they have no ideas worth considering. I think when you take a step back, it's like, ‘Well, maybe that isn't the case.’ Melodie, it really starts at a local level. 

The other place that I saw a reduction in polarization, even though it's a very conservative place, is Petroleum County, Montana, which has 480 people. Try running a county on 480 people. Try running a county that has an assessed valuation of a million dollars. Try having a school. They saw, if they kept this polarization between town and the country, they were going to fall. They had to come together and say, ‘This can't only be about agriculture.’ Agriculture has to be included in the narrative in a different way. And these – it was women, of course it was women – these rich women got together and they bought buildings and went in and fixed them up and made youth hostels and coffee shops. One of these women said, ‘We don't go to the bar anymore and cry into our beer. We go to the bar and celebrate what we've done.’ I thought that was a great way to look at it. But it was because they could see, financially, that they were in a tough place. They had to do something.

In Wyoming, financially, we are not in a tough place.  We have a lot of money. I remember years ago, I think when I was doing research for Pushed Off the Mountain, Sold Down the River, I was down in the archives in [the University of Wyoming’s] Coe [Library], making myself sick looking through that damn microfilm, and I saw when Milward Simpson was elected governor, the first thing he did was, 1954, he asked the federal government to send Wyoming hay. That's how poor we were.  We didn't have enough hay. Not send us Title IX money, but send us more hay. And man, has our narrative flipped. So I just think there's an inclusivity that has to happen. Somehow, you know, people have to realize, again, it's about their kids. It's not about them.

If you’re interested in hearing more about Elwood Mead and the Wyoming water system, we go into depth about it in our series The Great Individualist. Check out the episode called Slow Waters Run Deep. There you can hear my interview with the great Wyoming water journalist Anne MacKinnon. Fascinating stuff. 

Sam also references the intrinsic value of schools to making sure our rural communities thrive. Back in 2020, I talked to him about that concept in great detail in our series Ghost Town(ing) and encourage you to go back and listen to it if you haven’t already. Check out episode 2 called Bust Town.

MUSIC ATTRIBUTION: 

• Far, Far Away by Beat Mekanik is licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License.

• ONE FINE DAY by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

(with author Samuel Western)

Episode 1 of Season 10: The Gray In Between

Wyoming economist Samuel Western is a master at tracing back the beginnings of issues in the American West. He’s an economist with a deep fascination for history and culture that get at “the gray in between” in truly revelatory ways. He talks with host Melodie Edwards about his new book The Spirit of 1889.