This Land is My Land: Rebellion in the West

by James R. Skillen

Among American conservatives, the right to own property free from the meddling hand of the state is one of the most sacred rights of all. But in the American West, the federal government owns and oversees vast patches of land, complicating the narrative of western individualism and private property rights. As a consequence, anti-federal government sentiment has animated conservative politics in the West for decades upon decades.In This Land Is My Land, James R. Skillen tells the story of conservative rebellion-ranging from legal action to armed confrontations-against federal land management in the American West over the last forty years. He traces the successive waves of conservative insurgency against federal land authority-the Sagebrush Rebellion (1979-1982), the War for the West (1991-2000), and the Patriot Rebellion (2009-2016)-and shows how they evolved from regional revolts waged by westerners with material interests in federal lands to a national rebellion against the federal administrative state. Cumulatively, Skillen explains how ranchers, miners, and other traditional users of federal lands became powerful symbols of conservative America and inseparably linked to issues of property rights, gun rights, and religious expression.Not just a book about property rights battles over Western lands, This Land is My Land reveals how the evolving land-based conflicts in the West since the 1980s reshaped the conservative coalition in America-a development that ultimately helped lead to the election of President Donald J. Trump in 2016.

290 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 10, 2020

Reviews

[Dani]

Another book for my history class that I think genuinely could be very interesting but I just feel like I had to read it too quickly to get anything from it. This book tells the story of different "wars" and rebellions over land ownership and use in the west, particularly in Nevada and Oregon, and specifically over the use of federal lands owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Much of the controversy over the land came from conservatives who felt that the reach of the government was too far and too strong. He covers three main events/eras to make his argument. I found his conclusion very interesting, along with his focus on religion as a factor in conservatism. Again, I had to read it too quickly, and it was too long to read too quickly. I would say it was too detailed...but what's a book written by a historian without a large amount of detail?

[Allie Vandewege]

The chapter on the creation of the new right and how it relates to western public land policy = beautiful so interesting loved it so much. Most of the rest was a litttlllleeeee too detailed oriented for my liking , buttt some great ethnographic research and overall interesting