"Living Symbols of the Historic and Pioneer Spirit of the West": Impacts of Settler Colonial Logics on the Management of Range Equines in the United States
| dc.contributor.advisor | York, Richard | |
| dc.contributor.author | De'Arman, Kindra | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-01-10T14:54:47Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-01-10 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Legally required federal management of horse and burro (donkey) populations on the American West rangelands has proven to be a challenge for the United States government. Federal management has resulted in more than desired population numbers, environmental impacts, legal contestation, and unsustainable operating costs. Ultimately, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency tasked with overseeing most herds through their Wild Horse and Burro (WHB) Program, is tasked with “maintaining healthy horses on healthy rangelands”. However, for many of their herd management areas, they have been unable to achieve these goals. As horses and burros are socially imbued with different cultural meanings, there are many factors that constrain or enable different social and managerial approaches to addressing concerns about horse and burro overpopulation. In this dissertation, I provide one way to think about federal lands management challenge by orienting within the social history and context of settler colonialism. The analyses reported in this dissertation come from a portion of a larger BLM-approved empirical research project focused on WHB Program decision-making more broadly. Over the course of 22-months, I engaged in interviews, field observations, and textual analyses as part of an institutional ethnography on WHB program decision-making. This dissertation shows that settler colonialism is ongoing and structured into the BLM’s WHB Program through organizational, political, and legal mechanisms. These mechanisms were developed long before current WHB Program personnel and largely exist outside of their decision-making discretion. Through this dissertation I problematize the settler colonial context as that which has informed environmental, cultural, and structural contexts for which people are concerned. | en_US |
| dc.description.embargo | 2025-07-26 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/29243 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | |
| dc.rights | All Rights Reserved. | |
| dc.title | "Living Symbols of the Historic and Pioneer Spirit of the West": Impacts of Settler Colonial Logics on the Management of Range Equines in the United States | |
| dc.type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Department of Sociology | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Oregon | |
| thesis.degree.level | doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph.D. |