a," pamela constable talks about her experiences covering that region. >> sometimes people will say things critical of the united states or of the west. that is more common than somebo dy saying something offensive about being a woman or causing problems. people tend to be, generally speaking, speaking very broadly now, more helpful to a woman than to a man. they can also try to take advantage of you in various ways, but generally my experience has been that if they are not going to like something about you or are going to mistrust something about >> one on what your sunday night at 8:00. 8:00tch sunday night at p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. >> the western history

association hosts a panel entitled, does the west matter? about thears talk west geographically, politically and socially, and discuss the broader role of regions when discussing the past and president of the united states. this was part of the organization's 2019 annual meeting. afternoon. i'm the president of the wha. tois my great pleasure welcome you to the presidential plenary session. does the west matter? the future of regionalism in american history. there are 150 sessions taking place at the wha, but the presidential plenary brings us all together in one place. introducing this panel, i want to take advantage of our and invitepresence,

the immediate past president of the wha, from arizona state university, to open the session with a native lands acknowledgment, a statement that feels crucial to who we are as a historical organization that cares deeply about the past, and is particular about the past of this part of the world. -- and in particular about the past of this part of the world. >> i would like you to repeat after me. ee see mah pee. language,ditional what you just said is very good. i said hello, how are you? and you said, good. [laughter] i want to welcome you. i'm an american indian, american indian scholar, and we are in

the land of the northern paiute. since historic times we are also in the land of the southern paiute, mojave, washoe. western shoshone end all these other people. so being here, there is not always an indian president -- an indian presence, but this really establishes the american indian presence. and it is for us as historians not are forget -- not to forget the native people where they are, that native people are part of the past, part of the president certainly part of the future. [applause] thank you, john. this year's plenary addresses a simple question, and perhaps an odd question for the western history association to even think about. does the west even matter

anymore is a defined field of historical study? andy indeed, does -- and indeed, does regional matter in american history? as people are increasingly linked by transportation, the internet, shared forms of popular culture, does regionalism have the salience it did say my in the 19th century, when despite shared political cultures, different regions of the country had distinct histories revolving around slavery, colonialism, the displacement of naval -- the displacement of native peoples. or, why was 19th century history so different? we have an exceptional panel of scholars today, not all of whom focus on the american west, but all of whom wrestle with questions of regions and geography in their work. to introduce them and to moderate this conversation, i want to turn the session over to my colleague and friend william cronan from the university of

wisconsin madison. bail, welcome back to the wha. bill got -- .ill, welcome back to the wha names of can see the our panelists. i'm not going to give me their biographies. they all have powerful reasons for being a rn things to say about this particular question. i will note the interesting paradox about the session title. the title in the subtitle are not quite synonymous in their meeting, as marty said the word even would suggest. does the west matter is a different question then, does region matter? be what regions ought to addressed and thought about and thinking about the past of another regional entity, the united states, north america, what are the boundaries of the

work that counts as the focus of the field called western history? what we have at this table are people whose work centrally focuses on the west, people whose work is he in hybrid space with the west, people whose work is in regions that are often not considered west in the way that this organization now defines west. i will introduce the panelists without giving backgrounds. they will speak in the order you see on the screen. every so often, one of the speakers will have images or maps that i am going to manage. they will each speak for five minutes to eight minutes. i will be the timekeeper. i will then ask if they want to respond to each other in any way. i may ask one or two or three questions based on what i heard them say, and then we throw this open to questions on comets -- questions and comments from all of you. as you listen, please think about things you would like to be brought to this conversation i mightst, region, and

add the category place. one thing i cherish about everybody on this panel's work and most people in this room is is place basedness, which something we all share here, however we think about the category region. on your right, we have ed ayers from university of richmond, tie a miles from harvard, susan lee johnson from university of nevada las vegas, george sanchez from university of southern california, and lisa brooks ana si from amherst college. susan, start us off. susan: thank you, bill. holding in my hand a deck of cards. can you hear me?

hand, stayg in my --se, a deck [laughter] that tells the history of the american west. i got they cards a quarter attury ago as a party favor a retirement party for a beloved mentor of many of us here today. at the dinner a bunch of people were milling around the table where the cars were being handed out. among us was one person who, after writing a dissertation, went on to a career in film and on the stage. one some of us wished out loud we could have more than one deck of cards, he quipped, it is the west, just take it. [laughter] myriad, casual interactions and observations

that remind be how crucial it is to keep studying the history of places that have been called the west, and processes we have termed variously and contentious contentious lee frontier and conquest, colonialism and imperialism. just take it is not equipped of course, it is a critique born of academic inquiry and historical trauma. it is also a form of indigenous whom are -- indigenous humor, not always allegedly funny outside indian country, although western historians get the grim joke. non-western historians get it as well, because taking was a continental, hemispheric and global process for which the west stands as an entity. i just learned how to pronounce that word. how a part came to stand for the whole has its own history. it is as much these casual interactions and observations as

it a years of writing and teaching american western history that drive home to me the continued relevance of not just place-based history of which i am a fan regardless of also of histories that fit, however uneasily, under a western banner. the uneasy fit is often the west'sbecause the discontent provoked productive conversations about connective histories, the longing for citizenship, about self-determination and sovereignty. west'sspeak of the discontent, i meet for example -- i mean for example borderlands history that comprise mexico and canada, pacific ocean and island-based histories at the histories of appalachia or the great lakes, and alaska too.

but the west's discontent are just places outside the customary boundaries we draw around the so-called american west, the pacific ocean, southern and northern borders of the continental u.s. and either the mississippi river or the line that is roughly the 90th meridian. are alsos discontents humans for whom the idea of the west represents less promise and more violence, dispossession, trentmination, dis-friend dass disenfranchisement, expulsion and incarceration -- including those we have come to call asian americans, latin americans, latinx people. what i talk about the west's discontents i'm reminded of a conversation with a historian in the 1990's.-- in his graduate students in the chicano history worried about

their relationship to new work of western history, a field toward which they felt ambivalent at best. when his students asked howd navigate those waters, how to stay true to their intellectual commitments while claiming space in the profession, dave told them, ride the wave, ride the wave, baby. he wanted his students to get -- he alsoe also you knew that malibu and the rest of the west would never be the same. dave was right. a generation of scholars studying the west's discontents meeting intoe wja a site where you will reliably hear about indigenous people and places, and prophecies in north american places we now consider midwestern or southern. you might share a comparative piece that looks at colonialism and more than one world region,

in north america and australia, perhaps, a civic or caribbean islands, though i can see the word caribbean appears only once whiles year's program, pacific appears 26 times. racialht here talk on dimensions of city-suburb relationships in chicago and denver in washington dc. that last example is wishful thinking on my part. a paperately wanted like this as i finished the book that traces the lives of 20th-century white women, amateur historians and westerners, who wrote about kit navigated those urban relationships even as they imagined the hinterland passed that differed from the western history white men, including those in the wha, were producing. of a comparative urban study, i did the work on

denver and washington dc and and chicago myself. i slogged through fairfax county looking for sources. cities,ories of these their neighborhoods and suburbs, are distinct, but also comparable unconnected, not least by the 300 letters with three different postmarks that the two white women exchanged while they confronted a new racial future and constructed a novel western past. remains a part that fords for a whole extractive colonialism and the exercise of power. the west in that sense is a vector of violence routinely invoked to justify all manner of misrule in the present. -- i incurred this

when i move to las vegas and asked why individual units in my condominium could access individual trash and recycling services and others had no access to recycling. the answer had to do with garb -- answer had to do with where garbage trucks could and couldn't maneuver but this did dumpstersn why trash could not be placed alongside the dumpsters for us. a heated conversation followed. hoa boardrated officials hit on the idea of appealing to me as a midwestern transplant. she thought i would shut up when she declared, this is the wild west. [laughter] she was sadly mistaken. a scale of one to 10, where one is the least egregious and location of the west to justify misrule and 10 is the most two.ious, this was a

but knowing how such invocations, both implicit and explicit, can escalate to excuse for arse, from calls border wall, to unconstrained land development, two white supremacist groups, to homophobic entrance phobic murders, i thought it nonetheless. i have not won the battle yet. battlees though, the itself is a bright ball of joy. i am thinking of last spring's music marvel, which let the air out of the west and blew it back up into a shape shifted thing defiantly black, country and queer. if you miss the old town rose phenomenon, just pretend what you -- pretend you know am talking about, grab your phone, get out of the room, do a quick google search and grab your earbuds.

what you will see and hear if you click on the music video is the end product of a process that started when a minor 'lternet personality, li bought a dutch beat from a producer and it powers a song about a guy that is going to take the old town road and is going to rise until he can't know more. [laughter] the song went viral and debuted on three billboard charts, including the hot country songs list. beyoncé's daddy's lesson was excised from the genre in 2016, hot country quickly dropped old town road as insufficiently country, that is, to black. asked, --nell s x had ass, li'l na

top 100 billboard song that was on the list for 19 weeks. can't nobody tell him nothing. [laughter] so write a horse. right away. make the west work for you. right until you can't know more. [applause] -- rid until you can't no more. [applause] george: it is delight -- a delight to be invited. -- my perspective on regionalism is , myed by my own location birthplace in los angeles, california, a city that is often written out of the west altogether, by individuals who have fled the city for other locations they believe embody more of the true west, and at

times by western historians themselves. after sitting in traffic on a los angeles freeway for hours, many a former angelino has left, vowing never to return to this monster of a city, yearning for open space, environmental speeds and a front -- environmental space na frontier. and mentor patty limerick's new center of the colorado, had, literally removed metropolitan los angeles from its configuration of the western region. concept of regionalism in the u.s. were shaped primarily by the most significant national events of the 19th century, the civil war and the angle contest -- on the anglo conquest of the west, regionalism may seem an ancient way to acknowledge knowledge of the first 30 of the first 30 the 20th century. third of the 21st century. maced --em akron it

it may seem anachronistic, but regionalism plays an important role in the way people bring meaning to their lives, even if those regions have changed. take los requires we angeles and las vegas seriously as regional centers of meaning, if we are to embrace realities of regionalism for the 21st century. these cities cannot be examples of what the west has negatively become, or what nearby locations do not want to become to remain in the physical west. so to move our conversation forward, i want to offer other critical interpretations of thatnalism for our era, may be as important as north, south, east and west that served us so long as historical writers. some are well-established and others may be in formation, but each will push us to acknowledge what we mean by regionalism and

identity. i will take responsibility for each of these new formations. they were shaped by ongoing conversations with my students at usc. relatively noncontroversial to at least speak of a coastal culture in the u.s. that is positioned next to that part of the u.s. that is between the coasts, what is derisively termed as flyover regions or what trump has referred to as the real america. while california, seattle and hawaii seem to connect with the boston-new york-washington corridor, the boundaries of the coast are harder to define. where do we put las vegas? nevada? increasingly politically and affect as connected to or the more volatile california? there is data that would support the coast as a region.

the largest number of homeless in this country reside in california, new york, washington, dc and hawaii, and these regions are known as diverse sites of multiculturalism. specifically to los angeles, i am intrigued by relationships of bilingualism, culture and the culture from miami to los angeles including the new south, texas, mexico and arizona. a wide swath of sun belt states have not only tied their economies together since world furtherbut have been joined by an expanded border culture which stretches south to latin america and the caribbean for people and commerce. population, where now exist more mexicans and puerto ricans, can get tied to this region by the sunbelt and the rust belt that are critically

shaping identity formations this century. we can see the southern half of the u.s. has as many if not more connections to population centers in mexico, central america, and the caribbean, as they do to other sites in the u.s. one can talk of a walking inture -- a mexican culture los angeles or north carolina, for example. same as whenthe people discuss the culture of iowa today to define southern california. and there is a half-baked notion of a wall of the southern border. the chinese have had an enormous cultural effect on many parts of the u.s. and latin america, but it is harder to see that limited to a regional phenomenon. but i note the recent u.s. immigration policy is rapidly transforming the border region refugees from

africa, asia, and the middle east gathering mexican border cities and frustrated attempts to enter the united states. what happensd by to our notions of region when we take seriously the migration of indigenous populations from latin america to locations in the united states. indeed the diversity of indigenous people and the needsg of the term itself to be re-examined with populations across the u.s. that identify as indigenous. populations of people from latin america have populated the american south and rural areas of california and washington and cities across the country. the meaninghaping of indigenous and providing a more hemispheric notion of land and heritage that those of us that remain u.s. centered. finally and maybe controversially, we need to think of a belt of white supremacy in this country. it is often shaped by local

policies intending to keep white europeans a majority culture. i will give you my interpretation, you may have your own. moving west to east, we include arizona and utah, idaho, montana, maybe parts of oregon. the white supremacy belt with then make its way east to the mountain west and midwest before settling in parts of texas and the old south. white supremacists can be felt in every state and region of this country, but it is important to understand where this movement has strength, whether measured by population, anti-immigrant laws, white supremacist groups or gun sales. clearly, the west and south are the only regions of meeting of u.s. history that cannot be sustained, but regionalism continues to help us identify patterns of culture, population and meaning that are useful to understanding the diversity of the u.s. experience. i hope we can identify other

regions in our discussions that can be as useful as the ones i have been able to come up with. thank you. [applause] >> over there, hi. hello, everyone. thanks for being here. i hope to work together with all of you to solve the question of whether the west matters. when i was asked to join the battle -- join the panel, i did not know if i would accept or what i would say. my work mostly focuses on the south, the u.s. southeast, and recently on the midwest.

and i struggle sometimes to make the case that this work is western history. but here is one of the ways i have done it. back to my dissertation research and early scholarship and early scholarship in my work on oklahoma and about how throws a wrench into things when we think about familiar and set boundaries of place. where was this place lightly populated by native americans, where black slavery, slave notlts and lynchings were common occurrences. choctawed to a colleague from oklahoma that obama might as well be the south. and shedropped,

strongly disagreed with the supposition and its connotations . oklahoma has slightly taken on moral valences. is oklahoma in the midwest, the south, the west, or in a morphed indian country that did and could exist nearly anywhere at any time? and what use is regional understanding anyway, but grappling with the social dynamics of a place like oklahoma, where many people immigrated from someplace else by the early 1900s, and where transnational movements as well as perhaps identities became normative for a sizable portion of the population, including seminoles, who repeatedly diverse -- traversed borders, and african-americans, who were

argued in a recent study flatly rejected of stand still. away at thears boldfaced imprint of regional and the west, including the indigenous west, has long or even always been a landscape of people in motion. oklahoma bears the mark of other places, often eastward, from whence people came, and it bears this mark and collective memories, cultural practices and and gender power relations. this kind of southern oklahoma i am projecting seems to exemplify regional exceptionalism. but i will take it one step further to say that i am calling it isma the south, and if so this was a very odd south to where black people flocked at

the turn of the 20th century in search of a haven that would give them safety, security and economic opportunity. , as oklahomam is indicates, the rule of region. once we drill down into the substrates of our oral history research, predetermined geo-social zones don't act the way we expect them to. i should not have been surprised, therefore, when my research took me briefly to montana and revealed black women from the south, some formerly yamsved, who were growing at stagecoach stops, opening cafés along the yellowstone river. we should not be surprised racial heritage was twisted there because these white women

and could link elbows with military husbands, for these black women, the race and gender dynamics of the south's were perpetrated in the west. -- and theomething notion of a western difference. the absence of centuries old systemically entrenched and widespread black slavery a loud for broader opportunities and new social compacts. ralph ellison said about his birthplace, oklahoma, for black was faked.raphy

african-americans could have --e better in the west but and faring relatively well in the west came in large part at the expense of indigenous people. this was a western difference with a price. it would indicate the reality of regionalism. differenceee this even as we recognize that regional boundaries have always been her original, political, and porous. thanks. [applause] i have to begin with my own oklahoma story. i gave a talk there one time and i said --are we and the south or the west?

and as someone raise their hand and said we are in the west. and i said -- why is that? and they said because we believe in freedom. i have to admit that i have talked it through these issues before. i have organized talks on regionalism at johns hopkins. collection, in that my friend, reflecting on my attempts to dislodge ingrained ways of thinking about the south that western is had sometimes been atheist. -- atheists. it does suggest that the south and the west -- we have a kind

-- i want to talk in a different way today. i'm publishing a book that will have 80 original maps made by my colleagues. the book is called "southern journey." it is about migration, it is also about the rest of the country and other parts of the world. it is about regions because it fixates on people moving to and from regions. trace the paths that people took from the first census to the latest reports from the census bureau. the census counted black people separately from white people from heaven team 90 on. it did not include indigenous peoples.

it's other ethnic definitions are problematic as well. as you will see, the maps show problems of population growth in shades of copper or gold. of population decline appear in shades of blue. the brighter the intensity the greater the lost. this shows where the blood is flowing and draining. where the hotspots of arrival occur in each decade. i went -- i am sure you'll see patterns that i do not highlight. you're looking at the map rather than made. the point to present the map is not to illustrate an argument but as resources from which many insights can be gained. these maps show population growth and decline.

so we can avoid the problems from county problems. it shows the intensity and reach of the domestic slave trade and what proved to be its final decade accelerating in its forest migration of 2 million people even as we know it is heading for a great suicide. ofshows a continued bleeding virginia, kentucky, and coastal carolina for the fifth or sixth generation even as the mississippi delta becomes the center of the slave trade. it also shows the abrupt slowing of the slave trade into the former lands of the cherokee and georgia which have been exploited so hard in the previous do tecate that they had already fallen into decline for cotton production.

and most important for today's discussion, it reveals the breakneck spread of slavery ended texas. is gaining acceleration. this is where the civil war comes from. draining from the upper south. changet map is black 1910-1920. this is the great migration. earlier maps in the book showed that migration is the culmination of movement. the cities of the midwest can be seen on this map and they are bolstered by new african-american arrivals. so are the cities on the border. fed in these earlier days. surprising is the growth of the cities of the

delta and of appalachia. look how many black people are moving to the eastern seaboard. the great migration is not the great red arrow going of the mississippi river but rather a movement.ex and there are -- and there is plenty of african-american movement after the great migration. the next map is a white change in the decade of greatest outmigration of white people. few people would've guessed it is the 1950's. it shows the massive losses across almost all of the rural south. fed the growth of the west. there is a band stretching the breath of the continent was

losing people at the same time. it also shows the difference that many small migrations across the street can make. my mother, father, and i moved from the blue mountains of north carolina to the narrow band of shining copper in middle appalachia. opening new opportunities for them in a small, industrial town. migration does not have to be transcontinental to be significant. the movements from one county to another can hold a norma's consequence. the next map is foreshadowed to buy george's contents. new wave of is the the south. distributed across the south in communities large and small. claims for the five states where immigrant families are growing most rapidly.

california is the only exception. the final map is the change in asia and asian-american population. it shows they are moving from all backgrounds and many .ountries here is a fun fact -- more african-americans live in atlanta today than in san francisco. more in texas than in hawaii. here are my quick takeaways. if we follow all these people living such diverted history, allowing the past they trace to define our questions, we can see regions constantly being made and remade. history of the united states has been and still is being made by many "frontiers." in all directions. opening new territories for people of different backgrounds.

pulling the strands apart by race and ethnicity and weaving them back together offers a more integrated history than what we have had. democratic history -- half the people in these maps are women. everyone who left one place went to another. the power of the physical environment is evident on every map from the ruthless efficiency of the slave trade to the location of chicken processing plants and the emergence of new edge cities today. bar mental history pioneered by historians of the west is a model for a dynamic regional history. putting these perspectives together and thinking of other kinds of sources, we might work towards international history

and attention to the complex and shifting networks that cut across from the your boundaries of state and regions within the nation. we have seen transnational history. have a to portray u.s. history in ways that prevent us patternsng the ground and connections that work across the nation. we may have to see them in pieces to see the whole. it transnational he, we may have to look more closely internationally. -- intron nationally. circulated always among the regions of the united states. these regions have costly interactions. borders blurring and bending making them more interesting and useful. thank you. [applause]

lisa brooks. >> we have saved the east for last which seems appropriate here. i just want to thank everybody who has spoken and the organizers for inviting us into conversation with each other and i want to express my gratefulness for being here and to be invited a space that is not normally my home space. i hope i can provide some ideas that we can wrestle with. better things you have been talking about for decades. thank you for allowing me to be i wanted to send out a thank you to kristen simmons. i heard her speaking earlier today and it really grounded me in the history of the place. a shout out to her. i really like this idea of

international history that you have raised. i think that is kind of the way that my brain works. and i also feel like it fits perfectly with some of the maps i want to share with you. some of you have seen these before. maps asscribed resources from which insights can be gained, that is how i see them also. start with this concept of international history. i've always seen indigent is history as transnational. whether we are talking about the histories among indigenous nations or whether we are talking about the history ,etween indigenous nations whether we are colonies are european powers -- that history is almost always transnational. and i have to start with the

east because that is where i am from. to for me, it is interesting grapple with this idea of regionalism because it is hard for me not to think in terms of regionalism. i started with family history and then handed out to community history and river eventually ended up among history in guatemala. i needed to understand their stories to understand our stories about corn. my own region has expanded out in my lifetime to these transnational networks you are talking about. i want us to start with the question of what does it mean to be from the east? greet the first people to the don but it also means we are people born of that place, the easternmost place. it is interesting to me that

east in our language does not refer to all people living on the east coast. it is not a coastal orientation but it is a sense of being the people responsible for greeting the sun when it comes up every day. struggledinning, i with creating a map that would nationstate boundaries. of the united states and canada. my family -- my grandfather grew up in a house that was right on the edge of the border. he just had to cross the river which also crosses the border in order to get to canada. from the stories he told me, they did not inc. about that being real until prohibition came along. [laughter] then it got real. and sometimes the river was where you had to jump into to get away from the people regulating the border.

the stories my grandfather told me were funny but they also embedded important ideas and legal concepts in my mind. when i first tried to map our territory in a way that would help me understand our history, at the time, these maps, the best mapping program available could not connect rivers across the borders. the map you see here is like a second wave. after i had a faculty position and could afford to pay someone to create this kind of base map. can be soof regions influenced by these ideas of the nationstate. here -- i want us to think about the problem of regions when they are defined within nationstate boundaries as opposed to the dynamic movement

migrations of communities and families and individuals who have always crossed the boundaries and sometimes have crossed them in ways that have ended up with great damage to their persons and their families. i also just want to bear in mind of the way -- of places like new england and how they have been determined by colonial still aes and this is boundary people are invested in. when of the things i have been part of is a collaborative work -- to challenge us to think about not just the native homelands within new england but to understand that as new england is creating itself, these territories persisted for

100 years and they still persist today. it is a mistake to say for example that settlers made towns in vermont when vermont did not exist until 1791. or that settlers were in maine when they actually were in very specific native american hometowns. i want to challenge all of us as historians to be accurate in naming the native places that historically at the time these places did not have any other identity. they were not even overlapping identities. and i do believe that places have identities. one other example is that there is a question about what the west is. as you all know well, the question of the west -- the

naming of the west shifts so much. i joke about when i think about the west, i think about iroquois and shoshone. were't that is what we talking about today. ,ven in the ohio river valley in the 1790's when nations were gathered there and they were a separate confederacy from the united dates and british canada, they referred to as people of the east because -- they refer to mohicans as people of the east. based on the constantly moving dynamics, relationship between people. ask more than anything else today what it would mean to think about shifting our sense of region in ways that may not

center human beings. and i'm drawing on indigenous customs.- what does it mean to belong to a as the leader talked about in the 1730's. and how will that change our shavings of the koch and a if we are looking at watersheds. and what has happened when rivers move. rivers are always moving. i am thinking here also of the incredible work that is being done now to map the mississippi river including some of the work cartographer, it is doing that is centering them assisted the -- the mississippi as a dynamic space. i also want to have us think

about the ocean waters as josh reed has done. really centering movement within oceans. way oceans conserve serve as connecting spaces among people. also, this map of the westssippi -- for us, the is also the place where corn came from and corn stories connect us in the east down throughout the great lakes and down through the mississippi and territories into what is now mexico and guatemala. these rivers connect us a across oceans and land spaces. whether we are talking about the emergence of corn and corn stories and its travel throughout the continent before there was a united states or whether we are talking about the

migrations of indigenous peoples across these boundaries, either way, we are talking about a isry map that transcends and also impeded by nationstate and linguistic boundaries. this is a very old the map. the last thing i want to mention what it would mean to think about regions as ecosystems with other than human beings at the center. withrrent of session is the movements and migrations of coyotes into the east from the west. we can argue that the west is by all means coyotes's territories. if you don't know this yet, go to your backyard and you'll see this. this map shows the migrations of coyotes. i really want to ask -- what would it mean for us to think

about regions in that way? mapping.oyotes are and i want to think about what coyotes are teaching us about this. thank you. [applause] >> i want to do what i promised i would do which would be to give panelists an opportunity to ask each other questions or to comment on remarks that others have made or to move the conversation forward in whatever way seems appropriate to do given what you have heard. >> i would like to put something on the table and add it to the space.

after first saying how appreciative i am of the comments that have been made, what i am thinking about is a combination but not exactly of what lisa pointed us to. having to do with rivers and the environment. and something that george said which has to do with the importance of the west and regional identities of people today. i just want to throw out there -- i'm not sure how to say it -- the question of what does climate change mean for regional identities? is there a way that changing ormate will remake regions have people intensify their definitions? think about how we might continue to survive and live in

reimagine in the face of climate change. the irony of the south florida hsing because it is the sun belt and so has this brief inent in the sun and now, large part the coasts are beginning to flood. to define yourself against the rust belt. seems to bedwest the repository of somewhat entrepreneurial energy but it can also seem to be so portable that it can be drained into the south. i love the south. is going to have a very short period in which its climate was its advantage. i worry that it is going to be inundated on the borders and dried in the middle.

same issue, the one thing i would point out is that there is no way to understand migration from guatemala today without understanding climate change. what is happening to agriculture , what is happening to the way of life in guatemala. that is fundamental to understanding the shifting migrations from the south. to understand the way our policies of immigration do not come to terms with climate change in any capacity. even when it is so clear that it is affecting everything about the movement of peoples. one of the effects of climate change is going to be massive migration. from a lot of places in the world to other places that people can survive. that is fundamental and we are already seeing it but we cannot come to terms with migration being a function of climate put itbecause we have

always international contexts. for me, the relationship between different regions and climate change is only going to be intensified. as people tried to get to a place where they can actually survive. and it is going to be really a challenge to enact policies that not just recognize climate change but recognize that it will lead to massive movements of people. >> other comments? so, i want to ask a question which is in a way to invite you for a moment to return to the title. does the west matter? the future of regionalism in american history? you have all said quite wonderful things and i'm really grateful for what you are shared in this conversation so far. i think i have heard a loud and clear ringing endorsement of regionalism and that it matters but i think i have also heard an

insistence that it is not a fixed category and in fact what is interesting about region is precisely its dynamism which in a funny kind of way seems to be inviting western history back to an older version of itself. it was the place most reliably and u.s. history where the dynamism of regions and the change of regions was central to the focus of what people worked on though that has in some ways this -- diminished in the last 30 years for good reasons and reasons that got lost along the way. i am hearing loud and clear that regions matter and if anything will become more interesting and more complicated as we move into a dynamic future that none of us understand. i am curious how we should understand the west in that context. and i am not asking for a debate about whether at

the west is a place or a process or a region or a frontier. .hat is not what it want to ask what i do want to ask is as we imagine a future of this object of interest and study of so many people in this room from home we have all learned so much, thinking about the dynamism that has been talked about here, what should we be looking to the people who study the west -- what is the contribution that we imagine coming from that space? dyed, uh -- maybe the most in the wool western historian here -- what i think as i listen to these four just brilliant sets of remarks is i am totally

on board with everything they have to say about changing regions and their porous borders and their changing borders and a kind of place-based history that takes into account climate change and animals and people. at the same time. i'm struck by how a particular meaning of the west, the hold that it still has culturally and it comes from a very small particular moment, i think, primarily in the 19th century but it reverberates out and, at least in the remarks i gave today, it reverberates out mostly in kind of negative ways so i guess i'd like us to think a little bit about the interplay between changing regions and porous borders and the kind of

cultural hold of very negative reading of what the west is. i guess it's not negative for everybody but yeah. >> i guess in southern history, one of the things that people have been focusing on is that region is more in people's heads than it is anywhere else and that the more we start adding subdivision named after plantations and all of that sort recycling y obtuse of the worst part of american history, the more people hold on to an identity that there's something in the south that's worth preserving. for the first time in american history, the south is the estination of african-american migration, that people are moving in large numbers to the south. people whose families had been in slavery and segregation.

obviously the south in their minds is not the same south is in the minds of the people defending the statues and confed rat flags. it's almost as if the quicker it's disappearing, the more determined so much people seems to be holding on to it. living in charlottesville and richmond, i've seen a lot of this kind of -- well, we were at a hearing about the monuments on monument avenue and a white woman stood up with a t-shirt with a confederate battle flag on it and a child holding each hand and she cried and said why does everybody else get to have an identity except us? you're taking away every -- what do we have? why does everyone else get to be proud of who their family has been but we don't. this gives you a sense of where region lives and in some reason why these artifacts that seem to be so empty now seem to be

carriers that i at least wasn't hearing until people started screaming about them. >> i want to comment on this idea that the west is in an le's heads and that it's imagery that's very powerful. is it dangerous or maybe is that positive? >> put the microphone closer. sorry. >> thank you. coming back from little nazx and old town road, which was sort of a riveting song and it seems to be a song about black oppression and about this notion of freedom that can be had in the west. you get on your horse and you can just go. there's an exit door there. there exists no such door in other places of the country. this connects to what has been called the yee-ha agenda. [laughter] i think this happened online somewhere, which is an african-american embrace of all

things west, which connects to this idea of kind of a liberatore identity. that seems positive but exactly, exactly and what's behind it? we know what's behind it. a complicated picture, for sure but some of that complication is very ugly. i guess i'm wrestling with the question of where does this imagery exist. can i -- it be used for good? has it always been used for hill? >> a very brief comment. atlanta hip-hop seems to me to be a good -- not in an abstract sense by rather in the sense of reclaiming something, an identity. so just one -- >> that's where it started, right? >> i just want to be down with that [laughter] >> ok, that goes on the program

director. >> another thing that i'll point out is the increasing battle over historical memory in latin -- history. the work of monica munse martinez. the work of others. there's a spate of new works which are really talking about battles on the ground over historical memory in specific places in which latinos, not for the first time but actually are making headway in making sure that the violence enacted against them and the things that give them meaning in particular places are given the same credence as other people's memories so it's not a question of only one kind of historical memory but an actual battle over the historical memory attached to place, which i think is fruit and feel is incredibly important in the west. i think the west is just

beginning, actually narcs proo says of sort of different populations saying wait a second. this history is not remembered here and it's overwhelmed by a different kind of history and we're not going to take it anymore. we're going to actually battle it out now on historical societies in terms of mourments, in -- monuments, in terms of national parks, in terms of a whole range of issues that we've just begun to recognize as having real resonance for populations in the west and i think that's -- maybe other parts of the country have engaged in those battles for -- more often but i think that's just beginning in the west and it's going to reshape the way that public history is done in the west, i think in a lot of different ways. and you're, at least in the fields i know, that's really -- we're at the start of that process at this point. >> i think that's something,

too, that i can say is in many ways just beginning in many parts of the northeast too. honestly, my mind is still circling around what you were talking about with people migrating from guatemala. tya's question, as well as what everyone is talking about now. movement of people towards where there's water is going to be a really important peelts of our future here and people who have been displaced from corn and other plants that have been sustainable. two plays where they can't go that -- do that any longer, actually is going to be huge in the future and how we remember our history, actually, will have everything to do with how we manage water, how we cultivate plants. if we forgot that the markers of

places like where i'm living now. place like bloody brook as places of honor and sacrifice where actually it was more about resource extraction. that if we can't mark our public history in a way that grapples with the damage that the quest for resource extraction has done, then our futures are looking very bleak, i think. if we can't. if we can't change public history and the perception of public history in that way. >> i want to move, as i promised , to the audience and invite people to make comments or ask questions. if you'll forgive me, to make one comment of my own as an environmental historian sitting here as chair and combining what several people have said. for me, one of the paradoxes of, in quotes, the west and the rag

imaginary tie-up that susan pointed to, is that on the one hand it carries this promise of starting over. of fleeing injustice, making a new life. moving on to a better future and that has been built into that myth for a very long time. even though, of course, there's violence all over that illusion of starting over and that's the second half of the paradox, which is at a moment of climate change and at a moment of a sun belt that was a zone of migration because of air conditioning that now peaks our electricity consumption in the summer rather than in the winter and added to the energy of making the south cool in that spay, the motion the -- notion that we can move on is itself a really dangerous assumption and now finally, to lisa's point, for me, one of the things i've always loved about western

history and all the place-based history that people have been talking about. if they remind us that it is an obligation. i would say moral, ethical and political obligation to know where you are. to know where you are and for me, rivers are profoundly a part of that it really is true what she said that modern g.i.s. mapping can't quect vector graphics to make river. study closely google maps and see if you can trace rivers. you won't be able to do it. and -- teaching a course on landscape history in the united states to my students two years ago for the first time was that they could name only one river, the mississippi. more than half of them did not know where the st. lawrence is and if i had to pick one river in the eastern half of the continent that is historically the most important.

i wouldn't pick the mississippi. it -- i'd pick the st. laurnts in terms of european influence and colon criticism. they didn't know where -- colonialism. it's not north of the boarder and they didn't think of it as the great lakes. they don't know where we are. one of the jobs we have, i think, is remind people where they are. in all the many meanings of where they are. i'm going to invite hands. if up a question for a particular panelist -- even though i would welcome questions that invite conferrings. if there are questions you want to just throw at the table, i'm not going to play traffic cop here, if i can avoid it. yeah. i will try to repeat questions when they're asked. or the recording, yes. and king at the title, what struck me and i thought

about this, the united states map. if we follow the patterns that have been established here, is there anything that will -- [indiscernible] can there be or is that just lost? >> i think most people heard the question. we start with the question does the west matter but beyond that question i gestured at the beginning is does the united states matter, is there a united states? one of the par gox dockses of --tern history is that for a an extended period, can it was the history of the united states and the role of the west in the united states, the meaning in u.s. history is a question -- the question i think the panel has been asked. >> yes, there is a united states. [laughter] doing bad things in the world right now. i think we have to recognize

that reality. and there hasn't always been a united states. i think that's an important part of what we're talking about. maybe in the shadows when bill asked the question where are we and says we need to be thinking about and asking where people are. that question might be answered very differently in 25 or 30 years. for the u.s. and for the west. we should be among the many people who are doing that thinking about what those possibilities might mean. >> also, if you can just go to this map here, there's a tendency, yeah, to any about the quiet, as the geographic territory that's static, right? and i think as this map shows, even after the united states existed as a nation state, right? it's -- its political and geographic boundaries were still very much in flux and the question that i actually want to

pose in response to your really excellent question is i'm going to paraphrase kalen callaway here who wrote this great book on the west and he asked a very profound question at the end, which i've heard in many spaces that i've traveled to, which is what happens if we think about the united states not as a place but as a time? as a moment in time. >> so i guess i'd like -- i want to think about the united states but i also just want to any about the category of nation states and think about the work of western historians that have taken that category very seriously and thought -- helped us to think about when nation states matter and when they don't matter. if you grew up in the united states and went through public schools here, you learned to aw maps as if first european

empires and then nation states made all the difference in the world all the time and so i'm thinking of michael witkin's book where nations don't even use the world. try to tell this history without using that word or to only use that word in a very critical and historicized sense. or "empires, nations and families." nation states come to matter but they come to matter kind of late in the story that she tells. or the first book about changing national identities in new exico and texas and it's a historical -- we're historians, we know this. it's a historical process so i

think it's less a question of does the united states matter but when donations happen and when donation states matter and how do they matter and, you know what does it look like when they on't really matter tall? >> >> we almost had a trial case of his in american history. the question now is could a civil -- civil war happen that's not geographically based. the civil war was two regions. we think back on it now but even during the war they were barely coherent holding helpses -- themselves together. i think one useful thing about history, i pointed out that abraham lincoln was able to persuade exactly 1% of white

northern democrats to change their vote to him in 1864. in the middle of the greatest crisis the south has ever faced. 47% of men would not vote for abraham freaking lincoln. and nobody would have predicted that so i'm sort of amplifying your question. slavery had never been stronger than what that first map i showed you. five years later it's gone. that's how quickly things can change. it's a liberating thing to ask that. >> one of the things that may ffect my answer.

if you apply that to the u.s. the united states is not a place but it's a process. right? it has a history. there are people who struggled if you ignore the process of the united states, you're fundamentally wounding the united states. i think about this in relation to people in this country who we love next to all the time, who are not officially in the united states. they have no legal standing to be here but they fight all the time to contribute to this society. they fight to take our class. they fight to get an education. they fight to same here. they fight for their families and communities and they also fight because it is the united

states. they are part of the process of creating the united states on a daily basis and then there are people who want to deny them that space. no, you're not part of the united states. you may be 10% of las vegas's population. you may be 20% of los angeles's population but you're not the united states. that's what they are told. so they are fighting on a daily basis to remain. and to prosper, to survive, to contribute. they look at what they do and they know they're contributing but that's deny told them. it is in those processes of becoming the united states that we have a nation. -- nation. and we can look in our own societies and see thatter occurring and see people passionate about that, even when they have no legal standing in this country and i always say if we ignore the u.s.'s process then we're doing harm to

ourselves. [applause] >> we have time for one or two more at the rate we're going. go ahead, yes. > thank you. first of all, thank you all for these comments. we've heard a lot oar people informing -- but we haven't heard a lot about place and the world's material concerns informing the region. i wondered if you could talk about that. >> some -- the question is we've heard a lot about people and less about the physical aspects of place and the questioner invites the panelists to talk about those non-people, material, physical attributes of place. >> i think that making these maps i see the difference that

10 miles makes about where you put a farm and everybody is trying to get near ware. you look at these patterns, they don't make sense then you turn of the magnification and say oh, there's the river. matters enormously. on the other hand the south has been called the cotton south for so long and now there are 11 counties in the south that grow cotton tall and it's grown in california. ironically it seems to me in some ways in our thinking, the material can limit our understanding of ourselves. we don't say you know where i live? i live in the soy bean south. which is what you do, right? i say this not to triflize your uestion but to suggest in some ways in imaginary, we can allow some generations to each the entire physical place and not be alert to all the meanings and

possibilities of physical -- a physical landscape has. again, i'm bringing it from a southern point of view. in some ways we've been naturalized to death. the west, i guess, had a flip side of that. i think we're not paying nearly enough attention to it on the microscale. we've lost any sen of why people of move where they did. on the other hand, there's kind of a commodity fetish in southern history where the commodty does the thinking for our history rather than the people entangled in that commodity. we'll pretend that was a partial answer. >> i mean, i think that's one of the reasons why i've always been so interested in space because i think that when we're talking about regionalism there can be a lot of focus on the way that people produce space but the

material reality is that constantly all the time all kinds of diverse animals and plants and other than human beings are always making space and producing space and they're doing it all the time and we benefit tremendous bli from it and we may not be producing space resip roically towards them in the same way. i had a student the other day come to the realization that although we were really dependent on trees for things like oxygen, for example, as well as many other things, that the trees didn't really need you. well, first of all, we've given them all of the carbon that they probably need for many generations to come but there are so many other animals that are producing carbon dioxide

that really, they don't need us so much so i think that really paying close attention to all of the other than human beings or producing space all the time and again, i go back to the language and the language is you can't call a tree or a coyote it, right? it would be grantically incorrect and as an english professor in this all of a sudden, i cannot withstand any grantal error in this all of a sudden so please don't call trees it. it's a shift that has to be made. i'm so struck by the points you're making and as you were making those points i was thinking about literally the farm workers who are actually producing us, right? i mean, when i eat a tomato that's been harvested and grown at great personal risk by a farm worker, that's what's producing me, right? i don't exist without that so i

think just thinking about those dynamics as much as possible is so important. >> we have just five minutes left. i'm going to invite the panelists. anybody have closing thoughts? any things that they hasn't had a chance to say? synthesis, rif fmbing s, parting shots? ok, i promise to the end on time so i'm going to do that. thank you all. let's thank the panel. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. isit ncicap.org] >> american history tv products are now available at the new c-span online store.

go to c-span store.org to see what's new for american history tv and check out all of the c-span products. this weekend on american artifact, we visit the smithsonian's national port rat gallery for a tour of the exhibit marking the centennial of the 19th amendment. here's a preview. > in 1917, -- decide told do something even more drastic than marching down pennsylvania avenue and a half pickett the white house and this is one of the first groups of picketters that were nonviolent that stood outside of the white house and basically declared their protest on the president on personal terms. they would carry banners that said mr. president, what will you do for women's suffrage? the president, of course, being

woodrow wilson, who had been elected in 193 -- 1913 and would carry out two terms as president and he did not endorse the suffrage cause until 1919. so at this point in 1915 and then in 1917 they start to p irving cket the white house. so there are two long years of picketting every day. they would stand outside of the white house and hold their silent sentinel as they were referred to by the press. thee they would leave their headquarters, which is across the square situated right in front of the house who. so the other side of lafayette square confuse the headquarters. they would carry their banners of purple, white, and gold. they had adopted purple into the suffrage color with alice paul's new group around 1913. and basically that was what they

did for two years and stood their ground. they also included. you can see there are college women. wearing the banners of which colleges they went too so they had days in which college women would protest or different state dell gages or even working women would protest too. so working women only had one day off a week from work so that was on a sunday. basically they couldn't protest unless it was a sunday and so we can talk about the working women here. where you see the title cover of the maryland suffrage news whocts a -- depicts a woman was white who was a seamstress who has been working for more than eight hours today, which

are more than working hours that are regulated by federal law. there were no laws that regulated working so working women felt that they were being abused and there were no laws that could protect them. so this woman had basically cradle at her sewing and the illustration was made by mary taylor and it was done for with one of the many suffrage chapters across the united states. the maryland suffrage chapter and it's among the collections of the american historical society. >> american artifacts. sunday at 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern. you're watching hearne history tv. american history tv. >> the house will be in order. >> for 40 years, c-span has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and

public policy events from washington, d.c. and around the country. so you can make up your own mind. created by cable in 1979, c-span is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. >> next, the lectures in history. colorado college professor santiago guerra teaches a class on marijuana regulation in u.s. history. he compares it to other controlled substances such as alcohol, opiates and narcotics. he also outlines key drug egislation from the early 1900 's through today. >> welcome to class, everyone. today we'd like to welcome our c-span viewers that are joining us, our class today. we're going to be covering a lot today. this css