Paul Berne Burow

This study examines how Indigenous and rural communities with strong cultural ties to landscapes and land-based practices are impacted by environmental change in Nevada and California. It investigates changing configurations of plants and animals on landscapes as they intersect with the cultural practices of Paiute people and ranchers on public lands by attending to experiences of social belonging and sense of place among rural communities and the role of environmental governance in managing novel ecosystems, cultural resources, and the restoration of native species. How does environmental change shape social belonging for Paiute people and ranchers in rural communities of the Great Basin? How are novel ecosystems affecting environmental governance by land management agencies and Indigenous governments? And how does indigeneity figure into these communities’ understanding of ecosystem change and the governance of “natural resources”? This study engages three groups of people: Paiute people from the Bridgeport Indian Colony, ranchers from multi-generational family operations, and federal land managers with the USDA Forest Service in order to better understand how new socioecological configurations of humans, plants, and animals shape each other under settler colonialism. This holds great import for navigating environmental change in the Anthropocene on socially and ecologically vulnerable rural landscapes.