The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau

by Erika Marie Bsumek

The second highest concrete-arch dam in the United States, Glen Canyon Dam was built to control the flow of the Colorado River throughout the Western United States. Completed in 1966, the dam continues to serve as a water storage facility for residents, industries, and agricultural use across the American West. The dam also generates hydroelectric power for residents in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and Nebraska. More than a massive piece of physical infrastructure and an engineering feat, the dam exposes the cultural structures and complex regional power relations that relied on Indigenous knowledge and labor while simultaneously dispossessing the Indigenous communities of their land and resources across the Colorado Plateau. Erika Marie Bsumek reorients the story of the dam to reveal a pattern of Indigenous erasure by weaving together the stories of religious settlers and Indigenous peoples, engineers and biologists, and politicians and spiritual leaders. Infrastructures of dispossession teach us that we cannot tell the stories of religious colonization, scientific exploration, regional engineering, environmental transformation, or political deal-making as disconnected from Indigenous history. This book is a provocative and essential piece of modern history, particularly as water in the West becomes increasingly scarce and fights over access to it continue to unfold.

336 pages, Hardcover

Published January 2, 2023

About the author

Erika Marie Bsumek is assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.

Reviews

[Brendan Thomas]

For the last 60 years, scholars and activists have repeatedly told the story of Glen Canyon Dam. Depending on who you ask, it is a story of environmental degradation or untrammeled progress, one of rampant capitalist greed and destruction or unseemly--but necessary--political compromise. No one, however, as Erika Bsumek shows in this incisive book, has examined the dam in the context of the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Bsumek argues, however, that one cannot understand the dam without understanding it as an "infrastructure of dispossession," the latest chapter in a centuries long saga of erasure and conquest. Throughout the book's five chapters, Bsumek narrates the longue-duree story of the dam's construction, finding its roots in the arrival of Mormon settlers in the early nineteenth century who sought to "make the desert bloom" by diverting water from Native communities. This logic of dispossession further undergirded white exploration in the region, as non-native scientists and academics gained understanding of the Colorado Plateau from Native interlocutors and guides, even as they used this knowledge to drive further marginalization and erasure. Glen Canyon Dam was the next--and logical--step in this process, building on this history of dispossession to create a new infrastructure inextricably linked in the practice of settler colonialism and erasure. The dam came to represent this in spite of Navajo efforts to control its future, largely because, as Bsumek shows, non-Native academics, politicians, and boosters drove the construction and maintenance of the dam, as they built on centuries of knowledge and policymaking that had ignored and erased Native people. It did not have to be this way, however, as Bsumek argues that recent federal efforts to manage land in the Colorado Plateau--in the case of Bears Ears National Monument--have been drive and guided by Native communities. Although the history of Glen Canyon Dam is one of dispossession and erasure, its future, Bsumek argues, need not be.

[Frank]

There are a lot of books about the Colorado River, Glen Canyon Dam, and the Colorado Plateau--but this one stands out. The book shows how the combination of the social infrastructure in the Western United States laid the foundation for the physical infrastructure, resulting in what Professor Bsumek terms the "infrastructure of dispossession." Weaving together this narrative requires tying together threads about the settlement of the Colorado Plateau, the LDS church, scientific explorations, the controversy over the dam's construction, and the legal challenges at Rainbow Bridge National Monument that failed in the courtroom. It certainly helps to have an existing knowledge of the Colorado River's history and issues before reading--this book explicitly does not center on many figures or events that are the focus of other narratives, but it helps to know about them--but if you have that foundational knowledge you'll discover a new perspective and version of the river's history, people, connections, and issues.

[Hannah Green]

Great history of Glen Canyon Dam and the ways it is built atop Indigenous dispossession. Sometimes felt repetitive and like it could have gone deeper/presented more primary sources alongside discussions, but really informative and important history.

[Kennedy Butterfield]

I was really surprised by how much I struggled to engage with this book which is likely largely my fault. The topic is so interesting to me and I’m into the framing. I thought she did a good job invoking the variation in how land theft happens (I guess “infrastructures of dispossession”)

I think the writing was just sort of dull and I’m noticing that I get frustrated when a book is so “I argue…” like over and over again. Academia loves this apparently but for me I feel like I should be able to piece together the content without someone having to explicitly repeat the same argument all the time.

There are so many poems I want to write about hole in the rock.