[.ca] What You See in Clear Water: Indians, Whites, and a ... (ISBN 0679735828)

From Amazon.com:
Seventeen years ago, journalist Geoffrey O'Gara left Washington, D.C., for northwest-central Wyoming to take a job covering environmental and resource issues concerning the Rocky Mountain region. He settled on the outskirts of the Wind River Indian Reservation, and over the years became deeply attached to the land, its people, and the story of "two cultures that have been arguing for 150 years over the same beloved country, and trying to find a way to share it." What You See in Clear Water traces the history of the reservation from its beginnings, when the Shoshone Indians signed a treaty entitling them to a region encompassing some 44 million acres, to the present, when a century and a half of cuts and revisions have reduced the reservation to 5 percent of its original size. The Shoshones have been compelled to share what remains with their traditional enemies, the Arapahos, and today, both peoples grapple with the familiar hardships of reservation life: poverty, high suicide rates, persistent health issues, and the hostility and indifference of their non-Indian neighbors. For the past two decades, much of that hostility has centered on a highly charged clash between the Indians and whites over water rights to the river that runs through the reservation. Although O'Gara's narrative is anchored by the ongoing debate over who will decide the fate of the Wind River--and the lives of the people who depend on it--the story deftly and compassionately illuminates the larger conflict that has persisted ever since the European settlers came to the Americas. "It is the unfinished struggle between Native Americans and the whites who surround and threaten to subsume them--once a military conflict, now a cultural war, complicated after all these years by the fact that neighbors, even antagonistic neighbors, know one another in intimate and sometimes affectionate ways." And it is O'Gara's deep concern and abiding affection for the Wind River's inhabitants that give his book its power and its grace. --Svenja Soldovieri

My Dad's biography:
One of this books central characters is the former state engineer of Wyoming...my dad. I picked up this book for the soul purpose that it had to do with my dad. It was kind of interesting reading about what he has done at his job during the course of almost MY entire lifetime. It's an excellent book and I reccomned it to anyone looking for a good non-fiction book to sink into.

Beautifully human:
This book is rich with geographical details of Wyoming and history of the Shoshone and Arapahoe people. O'Gara skillfully and lovingly describes the Wind River Valley like a sculptor shapes his beloved work. He is an excellent storyteller. What I loved most was O'Gara's deep attention to human relations, personal histories, and character. He always tells the tale with the human in the center. He never proselytizes or places blame. He doesn't demonize or romanticize. Also, the Native Americans are depicted as people, not political images or symbols. It's easy and fun to read, yet never strays from reality. I loved reading it. I wish more stories about Native Americans were told so warmly and truthfully.

An excellent case study of modern day water politics:
The author manages to guide the reader though a conflicting set of water resource issues on the most legally confusing of all landscapes... the Wind River Reservation. Lined up across the court-room aisle sit the anglo farmers who tap the river for irrigation and the native residents wanting to restore the "in-stream flows" to support the trout fishery. Its a conflict the author uses to drive the story forward, but is only a single thread of a much richer story. The author interleaves the battle over water rights with the history of both the Shoshone and Arapaho and the opening of land within the reservation for white settlers. The author's love of the Wind River Reservation is evident in his first hand accounts describing the area's geography and natural history. This book succeeds by tying together the story's long and interconnected threads into a comprehensive picture of water politics.

Absorbing story of the struggle over who owns a river:
Author Geoffrey O'Gara uses two decades of legal wrangles over control of the watershed on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation to explore two centuries of the collision between whites and Native Americans in the West. He accomplishes this feat in 300 pages by presenting the story as a human drama, focusing on the lives of individuals, living and dead, each with their own aspirations, history, and personality. On the one hand are the white farmers who have settled legally within the boundaries of the reservation, "reclaiming" arid land with water provided by federally funded irrigation systems. On the other are the Indians of two tribes, Shoshone and Arapaho, historically antagonistic, reduced by over a century of conquest and together discovering a new-found strength to resist the will of state and federal governments. Among them are the college-educated, the young drop-outs, the old who still remember some of the lost Indian culture -- a wide range of people challenging easy ethnic stereotypes while at the same time representing the social ills that plague the reservations: poverty, unemployment, alcoholism. It is a Dickensian cast of characters. A third group of key figures in O'Gara's story are the non-Indian professionals whose lives become entwined with reservation residents as the struggle over water rights heats up: engineers, hydrologists, conservationists, bureaucrats, lawyers and judges. The endless legal battles bring to mind Dickens' "Bleak House." Court decisions progressively yield more ground to the Indians, and appeals take the case against them all the way to the Supreme Court, yet after $50 million in legal fees, the issues remain unresolved. While O'Gara makes an effort to maintain a journalist's objectivity throughout the book, his underlying sympathy is pretty clearly with the Indians, whom he gives the lion's share of the book to. Seeming to acquire privileged information in his interviews, he also points out that as a journalist he is often permitted to know what will best serve the Indians' purposes. He must still question its veracity and speculate about the rest, based on what seems to be extensive research in public records and historical accounts. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the American West, its history, cultures, geology, topography. The book is organized as a journey upstream, along the river's two main branches, into its headwaters in mountain glaciers. In fact, it's a good idea to have a map of Wyoming at hand for reference. As a companion to this book, I'd recommend Frank Clifford's "Backbone of the World," which explores some of this same subject matter and introduces readers to many other inhabitants up and down the Continental Divide.

A page-turner for anyone who loves The West:
O'Gara has masterfully woven together past, present and future in this rich account of the Wind River Basin, its people and their struggle for self preservation. O'Gara's intimate knowlege of the social, political, economic, legal, and geologic issues that converge in this complex and fascinating story is as impressive as it is vast. He describes the land with skillful and clear-eyed detail, and he tells the story with a respect and compassion that must only have come from someone who has lived in and loved the West for many years.