Yellow Bird: My heart belongs to the Great Plains
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Filed Under:
Opinion
"When Bismarck State College gave Charles Bowden, National Geographic writer, his say again Monday evening, I was surprised that he’d returned to the state. After all, Bowden — who spoke at the 2008 Alliance Summer Geography Institute — is best known as the writer who raked our state over in the January issue of National Geographic.
In his story titled “The emptied prairie,” Bowden called North Dakota a place where “the earth and sky mutinied against the settlers.”
He used words such as abandon, faltering, failed, dust, depression, wind, suicide and isolation like a mallet, pounding the state into gloom.
His article almost made me mutiny as a reader of National Geographic. I see the Plains as a holy place. I see the abandoned houses as markers of where we’ve been and the wind as the voice of the land."
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Dorreen Yellow Bird: My heart belongs to the Great Plains
(The Grand Forks Herald 6/11)
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