Rural Communities

Garret Zastoupil (University of Wisconsin) Regenerative Communities, Settler Colonialism, Decolonial Futures in North Dakota Coal Country In the 1970s, the North Plains experienced rapid industrial development through the emergence of coal mining and power production. This growth was precipitated by increased demand on rural electrical cooperatives driven by the dual pressures of suburbanization and industrialized farming. This presentation will present a portion of a study examining how rural residents are (or are not) creating post-coal futures and enacting a just transition on the Northern Plains. Jess Shoemaker (Professor, UNL) and Anthony Schutz (Professor, UNL) The Rural Reconciliation Project This presentation will explore how a reckoning and reconciliation framework might inform broader work on the future of rural people and places, which are now often situated on the losing side of a perceived rural/urban divide. This divide is frequently imagined as situating significant social, economic, political, and racial differences along geographic lines, and dialogue about these differences tend to take on a universalized sense of gospel, without enough room for more nuanced and complex questions about the past, present, and future of rural landscapes and communities. (Moderator: Peter Longo) Part of the Reckoning & Reconciliation on the Great Plains summit.