The Great Plains, the Buffalo Commons, and the Constitution of Regional Identity

In 1987 Deborah and Frank Popper published their famous "Buffalo Commons" proposal, which predicted continued decline and depopulation in the US Great Plains, suggesting that large parts of the region should be returned to a pre-European state. Prompted by the Poppers' later embrace of regional metaphor, this article argues that conflicting metaphors of regional identity within the original proposal put many Great Plains residents in a place of unresolvable tension, disrupting a constructed sense of place and limiting options for positive reception.