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B o o k R e v ie w s 3 3 3 able to imagine a way for Native American historical and cultural perspectives to coexist with white society. William Justin Harsha and Sarah Winnemucca, on the other hand, do not resort to clichés of the tragic and inevitable erasure of Native American culture. For Railton, both Harsha and Winnemucca create multivocal texts that put different perspectives into dialogue with one another. Of particular interest to scholars of western American literature is Railton’s reading of Harsha’s Ploughed Under (1881). Critics seldom pay close attention to Harsha’s novel, often dismissing it as stylistically flawed or briefly mentioning it as the impetus for Jackson’s taking pen to paper to write Ramona (1884). Railton, however, argues that the text’s fictional Native American first-person narrator constitutes a powerful and revisionist voice that distinguishes it from other Indian reform novels of the decade. The strength of Railton’s project lies in its close readings of voice as a trope or theme in the construction of alternative, dialogical historical narra­ tives. For example, his reading of the connections between voice and Native American ethnicity in Jackson’s Ramona is especially focused and insightful. More often than not, the close readings provide the reader with a sense of the competing languages which alternate, more dialogical historical constructions contested and revised. However, because Railton does not provide an in-depth explanation of his methodology, it is sometimes not clear what larger points the chapters are making about voice, history, and the social question at hand. He employs the terms heterogbssia, language systems, and dialogic, but in his close readings, “voice” does not always have the composite, polyphonic, and quotational character that is central to Bahktin’s theory of dialogism. Explaining his methodology and defining his terms in greater detail would have given his points more clarity and emphasis. Struggle over Utah’s San Rafael Swell: Wilderness, National Conservation Areas, and National Monuments. By Jeffrey O. Durrant. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. 258 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by Lyra Hilliard Utah State University, Logan Sixty-five percent of Utah’s land is controlled by the Department of the Interior (41). While this has created many treasures in the National Park Service, com­ peting claims for multiple uses of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands has often created local nightmares. In Struggle over Utah’s San Rafael Swell: Wilderness, National Conservation Areas, and National Monuments, Jeffrey Durrant positions the recent controversies over the San Rafael Swell within the larger debates over federally managed lands in the West. Under a new conservation system created in 2000, many BLM areas are increasingly focused on “landscape conservation,” allowing “local residents” to be “engaged in management and policy” (101-2). Many locals, however, don’t 3 3 4 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n l it e r a t u r e F a l l 2 0 0 8 see this happening in practice. The fact that the federal government can seem­ ingly waltz into a community’s backyard and interfere with local habits of land use remains a source of fierce contention. At the heart of the controversy is the idea of multiple use that allows room for everything from ranching to rock climbing, from off-highway vehicles (OHV) to contemplative hikes. In theory, public lands should strive to accom­ modate multiple groups with multiple purposes. In practice, not all activities can logistically coexist. It is because of the conflicts over multiple use that the management of the BLM has increasingly become more visible. “We can expect more restrictions, controls, and limitations ... for the same reasons that they were initiated in the first place—there are far more of us on public land pursuing an ever-widening array of activities” (206). Perhaps most illuminating is Durrant’s inquiry into why the San Rafael Swell, and, more broadly, environmental protection in Utah, has been such a fiercely contested issue at all. With the help of chapter 6, in which he publishes oral histories from representatives of both sides of the debate, Durrant suggests that the...

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