'Eminent Domain' panel

Center for Great Plains Studies Author

03/14/2025 Added

12 Plays

Description

The Center teamed up with Angels Theatre Company and the Rural Reconciliation Project for a discussion related to the upcoming performance of "Eminent Domain." Playwright Laura Leininger-Campbell, Director Timothy Scholl, and UNL Law Professors Jessica Shoemaker and Anthony Schutz talked about family farms, corporate interests, and bringing this Nebraska story to life. Part of the panel included short readings from the play.

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[00:00:00.000]We're very pleased to have you all tonight. My name is Margaret Jacobs. I'm the director of the
[00:00:04.080]Center for Great Plains Studies, and we're really excited to partner with Angels Theatre Company
[00:00:10.920]and with the law school on this event tonight. And it's an unusual event for us to have a playwright
[00:00:18.920]and actors at our events. We're really thrilled to be working with you all. And I want to start,
[00:00:25.860]you know, this is about eminent domain. It's all about land. And so I want to start with
[00:00:32.260]acknowledging the origins of this land. The University of Nebraska is a land-grant institution
[00:00:39.280]with campuses and programs on the past, present, and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca,
[00:00:45.280]Ota, Missouri, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples, as well as those of the
[00:00:53.080]relocated Ho-Chunk, Sack and Fox, and Iowa.
[00:00:55.840]And we always like to take a moment to really think about that, and not just do it as a
[00:01:04.460]kind of quick announcement, but to really think about what it means to be on that land
[00:01:08.840]and be a land-grant institution that really benefits from the land that was taken by Native
[00:01:16.380]people, or taken from Native people.
[00:01:19.080]So I want to introduce our moderator tonight, Jessica.
[00:01:25.400]Jessica Shoemaker, who is the Steinhardt Foundation Distinguished Professor of Law.
[00:01:30.680]Jess asked, Jess told me just before that she didn't like people to read bios, but I'll
[00:01:39.680]try to, but that can be dangerous, because I know some things about Jessica.
[00:01:43.840]She might not want the naps, but anyway, she's been recognized both nationally and internationally
[00:01:51.720]for her work on adaptive change and pluralistic land.
[00:01:55.100]in your systems as well as property loss power to shape the contours of human communities and
[00:02:00.940]natural environments and she gave an amazing nebraska lecture a couple months ago about
[00:02:05.900]property law which is something i never thought i would say somebody gave an amazing lecture about
[00:02:11.020]property law her work focuses specifically on issues of racial justice and agricultural
[00:02:17.580]sustainability in the american countryside and on systems of indigenous land tenure and land
[00:02:23.180]governments in the united states and canada and from 2018 to 2019 she served as the fulbright
[00:02:31.660]canada research chair of the aboriginal land and resource rights of the university of alberta
[00:02:36.540]faculty of law and from 2021 to 2023 she held an andrew carnegie fellowship and jess is also the
[00:02:46.380]co-director of the rural reconciliation project which i'm sure she's going to tell you a little
[00:02:50.940]bit about um and so we're going to be talking a little bit about that in just a moment so if you
[00:02:53.160]want to go ahead and share your screen so welcome to jess and she'll run the rest of the program today
[00:02:57.000]thanks margaret margaret didn't say that I only got to be a carnegie fellowship because margaret
[00:03:08.440]taught me how it was the first carnegie fellow that we had in nebraska and is an amazing director
[00:03:13.720]of the center uh so margaret and all of the center staff who put this together thank you
[00:03:18.200]so much and thanks to everybody for coming for what will be a really interesting and
[00:03:22.920]conversation and engagement with a really fascinating and provocative play
[00:03:27.160]so as margaret said i'm joe shoemaker i'm not going to introduce our panelists i'm going to let
[00:03:32.520]them introduce themselves uh but let me just say to start kind of our general agenda for the
[00:03:37.000]meeting we're really lucky to have the playwright and the laura campbell and timothy scholl the
[00:03:42.920]director of angel's theater company to introduce this really provocative play that's going to
[00:03:48.360]premiere at the lied center soon we'll get to hear from some actors and see some
[00:03:52.680]vignettes from the play and then i'm just asking questions so i don't know why margaret gave such
[00:03:57.400]a great introduction to me because we're going to hear from all of these folks about the really
[00:04:01.160]interesting and provocative themes about land and legacy and rural community and family that are
[00:04:07.080]evoked from this play but i will just say that we're really honored to get to do this both with
[00:04:12.040]angel's theater company and with the center for great plain studies which i think is just the
[00:04:16.200]best example on campus of true interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work and i'm always
[00:04:22.440]grateful to get to partner with the center anthony and i and he's my co-director on this
[00:04:27.160]on the rural reconciliation project and i'll let him introduce himself i'm the real expert
[00:04:31.400]on rural nebraska and law but we decided to start the rural reconciliation project at nebraska to
[00:04:37.640]kind of build on that interdisciplinarity and that approach of thinking about the future of
[00:04:41.640]rural people and places and the relationship of the special relationship that law plays
[00:04:46.360]and the law kind of hits differently across rural landscapes so our project is about kind of
[00:04:52.200]bringing people together bringing kind of different disciplinary approaches together
[00:04:55.880]to ask really tough hard questions about the challenges facing rural communities and rural
[00:05:00.680]places and the the sort of possibilities for the future like where we can go from that
[00:05:06.680]and right now our focus we're doing a sort of series of programs about
[00:05:11.320]rural stories and telling rural stories in a more complex and honest not you know just purely
[00:05:17.400]the kind of stereotype or kind of simplified flat outline that a lot of a lot of people
[00:05:21.960]have about rural people in places but kind of in all of this complexity so this is a perfect
[00:05:26.360]segue for that and perfect um events in this series and we're just so grateful to get to
[00:05:30.520]partner with it for all of you for coming but you don't want to hear from me so i'm going to
[00:05:33.880]let our panelists introduce themselves and what they bring to the panel and their orientation to
[00:05:39.000]it and then we'll get started so laura thanks very much um hey everybody my name is laura
[00:05:45.400]leininger campbell um i'm the playwright i live in omaha right now um
[00:05:51.720]i started um i've i've been a complete theater kid since i was really young and was
[00:06:01.320]really in love with acting and um when i went to college i i was you know had my sights set
[00:06:09.080]on acting and doing that whole new york thing that everybody you know rolls their eyes out but i tried
[00:06:15.560]and sucked so um i ended up coming back home to omaha
[00:06:21.480]back in like 1996 and there was a lot of theaters that are in omaha and i ended up you
[00:06:27.960]know working a real job and then also doing as much theater as i could and i think it was
[00:06:34.280]probably i think maybe 10 12 years ago now i had been doing a lot of adaptations of classical
[00:06:41.800]works for the jocelyn uh literary festival in omaha if anyone's familiar with that
[00:06:47.560]and i have a close friend her name is ellen strew she's a
[00:06:51.240]well-known playwright in omaha she gave me a little book and and it was a little tiny
[00:06:57.640]journal just on the inside it said i know that you have real stories in you and i had known her from
[00:07:03.400]like doing her plays and she was like why don't you sit down and write one of your own and eminent
[00:07:08.440]domain was the first one and when i wrote it i wrote it with um an eye to my own background
[00:07:16.040]i'm originally from grand island nebraska my mom and my dad are both from rural
[00:07:21.000]nance county my mom's from outside of palmer my grandparents had a ranch out there it's
[00:07:28.040]still part of the family and then my dad went to bullerton high and they were high school
[00:07:31.960]sweethearts and all that stuff so um i wanted to tell stories about things that i had known
[00:07:39.400]and people in my family that i know or how do i say this it's not a it's not a literal retelling
[00:07:50.760]of stories but i wanted to tell stories that had echoes of my own childhood and my own upbringing
[00:07:56.680]and the people that i care about very much and i thought that a very good way to create some kind
[00:08:05.400]of inciting incident was to talk about something which was very much in the news at that time and that
[00:08:12.920]was the building of the kxl pipeline so i went and i actually met a lot of the farmers that were a part
[00:08:20.520]of um the work to to resist that pipeline i went to norfolk for a hearing i engaged with bold
[00:08:27.640]nebraska um and it was such a great experience like seeing it from their eyes and and i can talk
[00:08:35.080]a little bit about that later but now i'm done so i'm going to hand this over to tim go ahead
[00:08:40.680]hello everyone i'm timothy scholl i'm the executive director of
[00:08:46.280]angel's theater company uh by the way i've seen it
[00:08:50.280]a hack she does not suck not at all but you'll hear from you more later it's all
[00:08:56.120]i'm not an actor except when i'm in the classroom sometimes
[00:09:02.600]my name is anthony schutz i grew up in nebraska i grew up in elwyn nebraska which is out in gosport
[00:09:08.600]county south central part of the state uh went to a high school that or went to a k-12 school that
[00:09:13.960]had all those 200 people in it uh went to carney for undergrad went to law school here and wound
[00:09:20.040]school i grew up on a farm my family still farms my brother farms the farm that my grandfather built
[00:09:26.920]and then my dad added to a little bit and that he's still operating so that's and i teach
[00:09:32.440]agricultural law and water law and state local government law and land use which is where some
[00:09:38.120]of the amethyst stuff comes in so hopefully i have something worthwhile to contribute
[00:09:41.560]thanks for having me great thanks so much so we're going to just get
[00:09:46.200]started with the first reading or an actor from the play and i think timothy
[00:09:49.800]is going to introduce it uh yeah so the first thing i need to tell
[00:09:53.400]you is the actor has asked me to tell you this is not full-bore
[00:09:57.480]they're going to read the selection with some feeling but you have to come to the show to
[00:10:04.120]see the full board okay so so i'd like to introduce uh richard nielsen and you guys
[00:10:11.800]and anthony delaney and they're going to read a section from early in the play
[00:10:19.880]when matt salinas who is the attorney who comes in to help the family is introduced
[00:10:27.560]to the family and he has some questions from there so we'll just start from there
[00:10:31.160]mr salinas i'm so sorry adair mcleod oh nice to finally meet you in person
[00:10:49.320]this is my dad robert mcleod my brother bart guys this is the attorney i told you about matt salinas
[00:10:55.640]salinas uh yes please call me matt a mexican lawyer yes that is where my family's from huh
[00:11:02.520]is that going to be a problem no are you a politician i work for an organization that's
[00:11:07.320]helping none of this is about politics i just want these pipeline people to leave me alone i
[00:11:12.040]don't want to be some poster child for a cause like some kid from the easter seals i'm a humble man
[00:11:19.080]i promise we won't need you on a poster if you hire me i'll be your lawyer when they come at
[00:11:23.480]you with the order of eminent domain and they will be coming ken what about you i'm going to
[00:11:28.360]help matt i thought you were helping me now i got to pay something to join a club it's better this
[00:11:32.600]way there are other families stop are you telling me you flew all the way back here to hang our
[00:11:37.080]troubles on somebody else's clothesline dad come on you know this i can't represent myself it's
[00:11:43.960]unethical for me to represent my own family i know you know this stop talking to me like i'm
[00:11:48.840]adult i guess i'll speak to his in charge then so is this thing going all the way to the supreme
[00:11:53.960]court nebraska's probably you know what eminent domain is right it's when the state can take your
[00:11:58.920]land for public use exactly public use like a highway or a bridge except in this case
[00:12:04.040]only one party benefits a private company oil revenue for canadian energy i don't understand
[00:12:10.040]why it's okay to take someone else's land so a company can get a job of it
[00:12:14.040]and never saw this coming of course you didn't oh you have an opinion on that no i'm just
[00:12:18.600]looking at what do you think i brought this on myself no but you weren't paying attention you
[00:12:23.560]got a bone to pick with me the news has been talking about this for at least a year did you
[00:12:28.120]listen the map of the proposed line has been out there for months did you see it there were public
[00:12:33.640]hearings did you go i'm a little busy from sun up to sunset if you haven't noticed i don't know
[00:12:38.200]well mom certainly would have seen this coming and she would have kicked your tail into town
[00:12:41.640]to get on top of it it's so much easier to just be the victim and let everything happen to you
[00:12:46.280]isn't it do you want to talk to me about your mother
[00:12:48.360]you want to have that chat let's go
[00:12:50.520]no
[00:12:51.880]matt i'd like you to be my lawyer i'll pay your retainer today
[00:12:56.680]that won't be necessary
[00:12:57.560]it is when i am
[00:12:58.680]okay
[00:12:59.400]i'm going to apologize to you for my daughter's behavior
[00:13:02.520]always been smart but it's carried away by her emotions
[00:13:05.800]i wonder if that might be a liability not my fault
[00:13:09.080]i don't care about politics
[00:13:11.160]i don't care about sides doesn't matter which side of the fence you're standing on
[00:13:14.920]we all drink the same water
[00:13:18.120]that was great thank you so much
[00:13:29.560]okay so so this is clearly a play and as laura mentioned this is a play that is
[00:13:35.400]at least inspired by not specifically or exclusively about existing pipeline controversies
[00:13:41.320]that occurred recently across western nebraska most notably of course keystone xl in the plate
[00:13:47.880]the pipeline is really this urgent external threat uh to this rural community into this family farming
[00:13:53.720]family in particular at least for some of the characters so anthony um as the lawyer on the
[00:13:58.680]panel other than me but you are the one that's answering questions so i didn't ask you anything
[00:14:02.760]can you help us kind of situate this discussion so the title is out in a domain where does that
[00:14:09.160]have a domain kind of fit into these questions and these resource conflicts across the west
[00:14:13.320]and how does this fit into this wider theme about threats or changes to rural communities
[00:14:17.640]sure so i think i mean i think maybe one of the best ways of approaching is probably the
[00:14:23.160]broader scale as opposed to the narrower scale with like eminent domain specifically but you
[00:14:27.240]know one thing that's really interesting about that little conversation is how
[00:14:30.040]how ron keeps saying it's not about politics it's not about politics right but but a lot
[00:14:35.560]of this dispute and a lot of agricultural profitability is entirely determined by
[00:14:42.040]politics right which which so it seems to be at least to me somewhat of an objection to the
[00:14:47.400]idea that that rob's fate is set by people is being affected by maybe set by people that
[00:14:54.040]that exist way beyond his area of control right and that's that's difficult right it's difficult
[00:15:00.200]it's a position that farmers have found themselves in for 70 80 90 years right is that is that
[00:15:06.840]their ability to continue to do what they want to do is determined by people who they don't
[00:15:12.760]have any authority over and for people who who really are sort of in a position
[00:15:17.160]of power and position control whether that's federal policy makers state policy makers
[00:15:22.280]in some instances or somebody like this who's been imbued with the power trains
[00:15:26.920]canada or whomever has been imbued with the power of the state and so more specifically this idea
[00:15:33.640]that trains canada or an oil company can utilize the power of the state to take land for public use
[00:15:40.120]is sort of a one focal point for that sort of broader struggle that i think a lot of
[00:15:46.920]producers feel like it's not about politics but it but it is right and it's that political change
[00:15:52.680]that they find themselves struggling with i think from time to time and so i don't know if that
[00:15:58.360]fully answers the question but if you want more explanation about what in the domain is and some
[00:16:03.000]of the challenges to it but that's kind of what i saw in that conversation yeah i wonder if timothy
[00:16:09.000]you might want to add on so it'd be interesting i think to hear about angel's theatre company
[00:16:13.240]in particular and kind of why you picked this particular plan to produce and
[00:16:16.680]what you're trying to achieve with it okay so that's going to delve into a lot of very
[00:16:22.200]personal mythology um i grew up on a farm i grew up on a farm in india and um for better or for
[00:16:32.200]worse the issues that are in this play are the issues that i have faced firsthand we didn't have
[00:16:39.400]a pipeline coming through but we talk about external threats to the land and then the internal
[00:16:46.440]threats to the land and those come in the way of something that we'll see a little bit later
[00:16:52.680]with the play of legacy you know my father farmed and his father before him farmed and vice versa
[00:17:01.160]all the way back we've had the same family farm in the generation for over 250 years
[00:17:05.480]and i'm the one who broke it so uh that comes with uh guilt it comes with legacy
[00:17:16.200]it comes with all of those things but the other thing that you see in the play is that
[00:17:21.000]the farmers themselves are trying to make it so their children can make that choice and my father
[00:17:30.520]passed away in 2015 but i will never forget the fact that i did have that choice so it's a very
[00:17:39.080]personal play from that perspective i i first read this play looking for plays that we
[00:17:45.960]do in a program called the salon reading series and i found it and contacted laura right away not
[00:17:53.560]only for the personal connection but because i think this is a play that does something that
[00:17:58.520]theater must do and that is it asks questions i really dislike going to the theater that tells me
[00:18:06.920]what to think or how to think and so i always look for plays that ask questions that engage me about
[00:18:15.720]what are the issues that you're facing the other thing that i think is really critical with angels
[00:18:21.080]is we want to be very connected to our community and make sure that we're asking questions that are
[00:18:27.560]important to the people of the community and sometimes those are local stories sometimes those
[00:18:32.360]are national stories but we want to make sure that the play is the centerpiece of a conversation so
[00:18:38.760]we like to start that conversation ahead of time like tonight then we like to have the play so we
[00:18:45.480]can see how that plays out and then i want to see those conversations continue into our community
[00:18:52.200]continue into the lands around us and make sure that we are using this play as a vehicle
[00:18:58.920]to spark knowledge and change around our community everywhere so those are a couple
[00:19:05.080]of things that i think are really important for angels in particular with the kind of
[00:19:09.560]company that we are and then some personal reasons why i responded specifically to
[00:19:15.240]this play laura and i've had many conversations i know she's she knows a lot about kind of the
[00:19:21.960]personal side of this as well and so this is a bit of a hey this would be a really good project
[00:19:29.240]for angels but it's also a very personal project for me so i appreciate the opportunity to talk
[00:19:35.160]about it and to to start this conversation in a very fruitful and i hope um you know a way that
[00:19:42.200]makes some progress great thank you
[00:19:45.000]um so laura in the play um clearly the pipeline is a really dramatic external event that really
[00:19:52.360]like brings kind of the crescendo at least to the initial kind of conflict and that happens in the
[00:19:58.280]world right like that's part of our political response and collective response too we're all
[00:20:03.160]familiar with the controversies around pipeline citing and pipeline controversies um but the
[00:20:08.120]play is really intimate too right so there's a kind of macro political what's happening with
[00:20:12.600]the pipeline and then there's this really personal
[00:20:14.760]series of multiple conflicts about this very particular family in a very particular place
[00:20:20.120]so i wondered if well what i wonder if you could introduce the next reading but if you want to
[00:20:24.040]share anything kind of in advance of that really just i hope you can react to the next reading too
[00:20:27.880]i'll just hand the mic to you to say whatever you want um i'm going to build on what timothy was
[00:20:34.440]saying and and when you start thinking about the legacy of a family farm there's so few not so
[00:20:44.520]few but they're getting less and less every year and um you know lands right now you know may be
[00:20:52.840]based about you know there's a lot of controversy right now you know around pipelines you know it's
[00:20:58.600]moving to carbon pipelines it's been around water rights you know and and i think every generation
[00:21:05.480]you know for you know my family and then for the people that came before my family it the land
[00:21:14.280]and being on that land changes you and it is you know i think something that builds part of your
[00:21:22.600]character and i could tell a thousand stories about all of these things and trouble that i run
[00:21:28.040]into on the farm you know but it still informs like who you are and and there is an expectation
[00:21:33.960]because you learn i think in my mind and i think why this upcoming scene you know matters is that
[00:21:44.040]it's a recognition point for the main character rob because this is um when they're coming back
[00:21:50.680]okay so this is this is a a revelation moment um where he is finally seeing
[00:22:00.360]that he cannot control where his children are going to be going with their lives
[00:22:07.880]and that is i think as as jimothy was saying it's it's a burden
[00:22:13.800]burden burden's not the right word but it's something that like is lies close to the
[00:22:18.760]bone i think for the elder generations who have been stewards of the land and then for
[00:22:24.040]the the children who have been raised on that land but have dreams and and that intersection
[00:22:32.120]of where that is and and the choices neither neither one is right neither one is wrong but
[00:22:37.320]what makes you make those choices i think um aligns with the questions
[00:22:43.560]that timothy was referring to it so it gives you a lot of empathy to say what if it was like this
[00:22:50.760]for someone it lets you see what is happening on the other side of the fence for someone and and
[00:22:56.840]for me that that's most important in my writing it's it's not a um i want people to be able to see
[00:23:05.480]and empathize with both sides and i think that's when real conversations can get started so um but
[00:23:13.320]this scene is is going to be uh rob and his daughter adair and there has been a
[00:23:20.600]significant event that's happened and it has left the entire family very shaken and i'll just let
[00:23:29.640]them start reading if that's okay oh um so you're talking about killed in it yeah okay um and there
[00:23:38.600]is a um a metaphor that i used inside this play and
[00:23:43.560]st kilda is a place it's off the isle of sky in scotland um
[00:23:49.240]i i'd already been to scotland on a trip in 2006 and i was just i'm still obsessed with all of it
[00:23:59.160]but there is a island that is called saint kilda um and if you go to it now you can take
[00:24:06.120]a boat out there and it's absolutely barren and there are just little um stone
[00:24:12.840]fences that are left you can still see the outlines of the cottages that were there
[00:24:16.280]um and and there the reason why is is because there were too little of the people left on
[00:24:27.800]saint kelda they couldn't sustain the children all left it was in 1930 they wanted to go to the
[00:24:32.920]mainland they had jobs that they wanted to go to and all of the elders were left and so that's
[00:24:39.000]that's why saint kelda is the way that it is they were all evacuated
[00:24:42.600]it
[00:24:46.920]did you talk to jane yes i just got off the phone how is he he's resting he's stable
[00:25:08.200]they're bringing in a neurologist in the morning to make sure he's okay
[00:25:12.360]dad you okay i'm fine i'm fine i think the adrenaline's wearing off
[00:25:16.840]have you heard anything from jane she just called he's okay they could use a drink
[00:25:22.680]i'll hook you up he's a good boy yes he is good lawyer too did you talk to jane
[00:25:32.360]yes how is he he's resting dad we'll head in first thing tomorrow
[00:25:38.280]everything's a fog there are these pictures flashing through my head
[00:25:42.120]the hospital the barn but they're all jumbled together out of sequence i remember person
[00:25:48.280]after person after person telling me i'm lucky that bart's lucky i have a lot of those flashes too
[00:25:54.680]but there are things what things things i don't think i know what i don't know what i don't
[00:26:03.320]remember i don't understand what are the things that happened today that i don't remember
[00:26:06.840]what did i say to him that made him do this what did i not remember to say to him that
[00:26:11.880]that that could have happened i remember what you said we all said a lot of things things we
[00:26:17.400]shouldn't have said the things you can forgive listen to me they're all things you can i can't
[00:26:22.680]remember your mother i can't remember her eyes i only remember the end i i can't remember the
[00:26:29.160]beginning i can't remember her last words to me they were that she loved you saint kilda
[00:26:35.000]i remember saying killed oh god the dogs who is saint killed
[00:26:41.640]the dogs the compromise the villagers could leave but no animal could remain so they all
[00:26:49.160]let their dogs down to the pier tied stones around their necks and threw them into the ocean
[00:26:54.680]dad what are you talking about the dogs i can't stop seeing the dogs they drowned all their dogs
[00:27:00.040]in the ocean they were so trusting the lawyer oh god what have i done i don't understand
[00:27:07.080]please dad tell me what you mean listen to me when the villagers evacuated
[00:27:11.400]there were still some small children with them you're scaring me the children thrive
[00:27:15.960]they moved away from there and they were fine and we will be fine bart will be fine none of
[00:27:20.680]this is worth it without you i would burn this place to the ground if they knew that
[00:27:25.640]it would keep you safe i know dad i know i know
[00:27:41.800]that's a light moment
[00:27:42.600]clearly there's a lot of there's a lot in the play there's a lot going on and a lot
[00:27:51.080]of key players about community level change and personal change and grief and betrayal
[00:27:57.000]and the weight of history so after an emotional moment i go to anthony sheds
[00:28:03.320]who's perfect in this moment anthony
[00:28:10.920]you're lovely in every way i wonder if you without getting too personal
[00:28:15.080]um you're someone who grew up in a family farm the western university kind of referenced that
[00:28:19.160]now you teach law and lincoln i wonder if you could kind of structure a little bit like how
[00:28:23.880]you think about these issues of place-based attachment and land-based legacy maybe you're
[00:28:29.640]feeling long-winded kind of the role of law and shaping some of these choices like is the
[00:28:34.920]law or politics shaping some of these dynamics generationally i mean i don't know it was
[00:28:40.680]funny so we got the questions beforehand right and this one actually starts with without getting
[00:28:45.880]too personal which is really interesting to me because i think probably everybody in this room
[00:28:51.560]has something that rivals the level of drama exhibited in the play from time to time right
[00:28:57.320]i do i'm not going to share all of that with you in this particular place but
[00:29:02.840]that part of the play is very interesting because it it brings to mind sort of like what i think
[00:29:10.440]is sort of the key characteristics of farming in the the sort of farming that i witnessed throughout
[00:29:17.080]my life so far and that's a an activity characterized by two things uh one is is
[00:29:24.280]loss and the other is just continuation right um and so you know on my on my mother's side
[00:29:31.560]of the family that family lost all of their farm in the 1980s right and on my dad's side
[00:29:36.120]of the family that that farm sort of continued right through the 1980s
[00:29:40.200]in part because of interventions uh that helped facilitate facilitate that continuation in the
[00:29:47.160]in the 1980s farm crisis so you know i see the loss but i also see rob sort of coming
[00:29:52.440]to the realization that legacy isn't entirely and maybe isn't at all about land or anything
[00:30:00.760]in particular really sort of like the only thing that we can really give our
[00:30:05.000]children as we move forward are the memories of us that they'll be able to continue to have
[00:30:09.960]for for their lives right everything is finite in this in this in this scene and so i think
[00:30:17.720]that's a really interesting part of of it so it leads me to sort of question some of the things
[00:30:23.160]that you you write about which is how important is the land what do we really mean by legacy
[00:30:29.000]and is it all just about this sort of experience that we continue to sort of muddle through as time
[00:30:34.920]goes on uh and we try to be a little bit careful about not sharing anything that's a little bit too
[00:30:39.720]personal right when really that's all there is right and it's those memories that children have
[00:30:45.400]about the situations that you were in and how everything transpired that really is what takes
[00:30:50.040]them forward and gets them off the island and allows them to thrive so those are some of the
[00:30:55.000]things that i saw you know so uh timothy and laura i'll turn to you um what do you think about that
[00:31:03.480]so i mean in a way it feels like the place the land is kind of a character of its own in the play
[00:31:09.480]is this a uniquely rural story or what is the role of place in particular in this story
[00:31:15.720]i can go i do think of of the land as a character in this piece um because it it draws
[00:31:28.760]everyone together and and there are all of these nature dynamics that also are a part
[00:31:39.240]of this play and i think when i was writing it i i think you might have said something about
[00:31:47.640]this i can't remember but i wanted to make sure that everyone who sees this play
[00:31:55.880]and is from a rural area recognizes these people
[00:32:01.160]like recognizes the the the dynamics at play when you've got family coming over for supper
[00:32:09.000]you know and and all of the things that we just live it's you know I want to
[00:32:16.800]make sure that that was like a big part of it and and when it came to exploring
[00:32:22.320]the personal dynamics of the play and and the the realness of you know what
[00:32:31.500]everyone faces loss you know and and all of you know the threats of loss and and
[00:32:39.120]all of the threats that everyone faces on a daily basis when you live on the
[00:32:44.020]land and you're looking at the sky you don't know what's going to bring you so
[00:32:48.600]I did see the land as that character because I think one of the characters
[00:32:54.320]says something it nurtures us it feeds us you know it's and it creates who we
[00:33:01.120]are
[00:33:01.120]and our character is built on that yeah I would echo that I definitely think
[00:33:09.820]land is a character here every farmer I know has written their pro buck we are
[00:33:17.500]caretakers we are not owners in a real sense and I think that was one of the
[00:33:25.580]challenges for production
[00:33:28.620]And he's not here so I can talk about it, but my scenic designer and my lighting designer
[00:33:34.000]looked at me very odd because I said, "Okay, I need to get Nebraska inside the Johnny Carson
[00:33:42.620]Theater.
[00:33:43.620]How do I do this?"
[00:33:45.360]And it presented some real challenges, but I think if you're able to see the show, you'll
[00:33:52.360]see there is going to be a very big sky, and there's going to be a lot of seeing Nebraska,
[00:34:01.180]seeing rural Nebraska inside that space.
[00:34:04.080]And I hope that that comes through because that's our real intent to make that come through.
[00:34:13.360]So I want to agree with what you said, I think, intellectually we know, and intellectually
[00:34:19.000]I know, the land is a beautiful place.
[00:34:22.340]The land has never been ours.
[00:34:25.160]The land is something that acts to us, not we to it.
[00:34:31.400]The hard part is feeling that legacy yourself.
[00:34:36.560]So it was a tremendous gift that my father gave that I wasn't prepared for, but that
[00:34:43.480]doesn't mean I still don't have guilt about it, but that's my own thing to do.
[00:34:52.320]I think that's a great question.
[00:34:53.320]So just to be clear, I'm going to save about 10 minutes for audience questions.
[00:34:54.320]So don't worry, my list is not so long that we won't have time for other questions as
[00:34:59.320]well.
[00:35:00.320]I guess I want to start with just a couple of things.
[00:35:05.320]So I think in the telling and the centering of a particular family's particular story,
[00:35:12.320]there's always the risk of what stories are not told in that.
[00:35:16.300]And I think that the history of the Scottish ancestors and the long-term multi-generational
[00:35:22.300]history of the Scottish ancestors is a very important part of the story.
[00:35:27.300]And I think that the history of the Scottish ancestors and the long-term multi-generational
[00:35:32.300]history of the Scottish ancestors is a very important part of the story.
[00:35:37.300]And I think that the history of the Scottish ancestors and the long-term multi-generational
[00:35:42.300]history of the Scottish ancestors is a very important part of the story.
[00:35:47.300]And I think that the history of the Scottish ancestors and the long-term multi-generational
[00:35:52.280]story and how that might have been hustled with as you wrote the play. I loved being a witness to that
[00:36:05.900]partnership when it was happening back you know 2015-16 you know and watching how all of these
[00:36:15.320]different groups of folks who are from Nebraska and you know crossed political lines you know it
[00:36:26.300]wasn't just a political party that was against it was it was you know it leads to you know what Rob
[00:36:33.360]is saying it doesn't matter what fence you know you stand on we all drink the same water and at
[00:36:38.600]some point I believe that the land becomes bigger than you. It becomes bigger than you,
[00:36:45.300]bigger than yourself. Who are you leaving that land for and I think that is for me the most
[00:36:52.080]important thing that you know you could get across in this play is it becomes not just about
[00:37:02.020]your family legacy it becomes part of the larger whole and if you are creating a safety for the
[00:37:09.960]land that nurtures us you're saving it for more than just your immediate
[00:37:15.280]family you are making sure that it's safe for everyone who comes across this land in the future
[00:37:20.620]and I you know I think that you know the indigenous partners that were involved with KXL
[00:37:28.420]anyone who you know came before we were here you know knew that a lot more than we did and I think
[00:37:38.660]that when now I just you know this is just my opinion but you know I think when it was
[00:37:45.260]given to you know my ancestors you know they learned themselves that the land is bigger than
[00:37:53.200]them it's not just carving out your stake and then you know having it like operate functionally
[00:37:59.800]it is it is your protector and it is your opponent sometimes you know trying to just
[00:38:08.240]pull something that nurtures us out of that I don't know if that makes sense but
[00:38:15.240]okay I mean I could talk a little bit about about human domain in particular so one thing
[00:38:25.500]that's that's really interesting about this is so we have one snapshot of one family and
[00:38:31.020]one parcel of land that's being impacted potentially impacted very badly by this
[00:38:37.740]particular activity and that's one sort of frame to sort of focus on but I ask you to
[00:38:45.220]just consider situations where eminent domain seems to be justified so for example I currently
[00:38:51.400]sit on the board of the lower class of NRD and one thing that we're trying to do that's
[00:38:54.980]a natural resources district and one thing that we're trying to do is connect two trails
[00:38:58.520]they run between Lincoln and Omaha the Mopac trail and once those two trails are connected
[00:39:04.020]we'll have 227 miles of contiguous trail that runs from the middle of Iowa all the way down to
[00:39:10.740]to Kansas through through basically three trails so it would be connected
[00:39:15.200]in order to finish this this entire stretch there's one chunk of land that's nine miles long
[00:39:20.800]that we need to we need to locate a trail on and we were we got money from the state in order to
[00:39:28.200]do this but one of the conditions on that grant of funding was that we cannot use eminent domain
[00:39:33.740]to complete that trail under those circumstances the use of the power of the state to take land
[00:39:40.280]even as little as an eighth of an acre for a bike trail was
[00:39:45.180]deemed inappropriate right so we have been working over the last two years to locate that trail in
[00:39:52.440]existing public right away right but at the public hearings associated with that we still had
[00:39:58.680]objectives right people who are going to be on that trail some of which one of which has a family
[00:40:04.020]farm that is on that trail that has been in their family for 130 years of course it originally
[00:40:10.440]wasn't theirs right we've got all of that to think about as well but in any event they've
[00:40:15.160]got that homes and they don't want a bike trail with a bunch of hippies from Lincoln and Omaha
[00:40:19.360]riding past their place and maybe you know walking into their yard and getting water and doing those
[00:40:25.180]sorts of things they don't want that not in my backyard so how do we make these judgments about
[00:40:32.080]when the power of the state ought to be utilized in order to pursue something that is good to
[00:40:39.820]someone right and generally speaking we tend to say that we make those judgments through a political
[00:40:45.140]process the state didn't allow us to do it for this trail under these circumstances because it
[00:40:50.840]wasn't dignified enough or justified enough but the state will allow in some instances an oil
[00:40:57.760]company to locate a pipeline running through the state of Nebraska through a process that
[00:41:05.020]they've created in order to select the site and all of those sorts of things so who decides all
[00:41:10.360]these all of these questions well it's that political process and that is a force
[00:41:15.120]sort of beyond the control of any one particular landowner and it depends on
[00:41:20.700]whether or not you can muster the political will from the folks that are
[00:41:24.000]in charge of this thing to allow it or disallow it and under these circumstances
[00:41:28.560]apparently the decision was made one way and under other circumstances the
[00:41:33.160]decision was made other ways and I'm not not entirely sure that's the greatest
[00:41:37.200]alignment but when we think about it in those terms we have to ask ourselves is
[00:41:41.340]McLeod just a not in my backyard sort of guy that
[00:41:45.100]we should really not worry too much about that this pipeline is actually
[00:41:49.420]very important to the development of energy resources and transportation in
[00:41:54.660]the United States or is this something that really should be vindicated in our
[00:41:59.560]political processes just fails I wanted to and this is probably something that
[00:42:04.840]you guys know more than I do but I have read that you know we have a carbon
[00:42:09.700]pipeline pipeline that's that's gonna be made but there was like some difference
[00:42:15.080]in the negotiations that were used with those farmers and I think that there was
[00:42:21.660]some kind of agreement before I know that they didn't take it with them in a
[00:42:26.360]domain but there was an agreement you know where they were the the farmers on
[00:42:30.620]the land would get some revenue ongoing revenue from the compressed carbon and
[00:42:36.360]you know in that case I do think that like that political process you know
[00:42:42.440]having folks come together and come up with
[00:42:45.060]some kind of agreement that's that's good to everybody does work and it
[00:42:52.800]gave me hope you know where it's not just you know that I don't know if you
[00:42:59.040]guys know anything about that I should have like asked before we got here it
[00:43:04.900]was like something I had written in the paper so the carbon pipelines are very
[00:43:11.100]interesting you know generally what we're doing with those
[00:43:15.040]is capturing the emissions from ethanol plants that are generated during the
[00:43:20.200]fermentation process where we're brewing up the good stuff that we're
[00:43:23.360]gonna mix with the gasoline in order to get us around right there's emissions
[00:43:27.300]associated with that process and so the idea is to capture those emissions shove
[00:43:31.360]them into a pipeline and then transport them to basically three different kinds
[00:43:35.740]of uses that might be available one is an industrial use so the fizzy drinks
[00:43:39.920]that we have for example those are carbonated right so that takes that
[00:43:44.160]product and uses it to make carbonated drinks
[00:43:45.020]utilizes some of that product there's lots of other products in the world that
[00:43:47.960]utilize that in the industrial process the second use is to use it to help
[00:43:52.940]facilitate the further extraction of hydrocarbons in certain geologic
[00:43:57.060]formations so in North Dakota for example you can maybe yield more
[00:44:01.260]hydrocarbons from the earth if you can utilize something to sort of facilitate
[00:44:06.140]their evacuation so you can use that for that and then the third mechanism the
[00:44:10.940]third destination for that stuff is just deep carbon sequestration we're just
[00:44:15.000]going to pump that stuff way down deep and so that it never escapes the whole
[00:44:19.660]idea of capturing that fermentation and then and then holding on to it and not
[00:44:25.920]we're using it for other purposes is to basically decrease the carbon footprint
[00:44:31.380]of the product that we're making which is ethanol or maybe in some instances
[00:44:35.760]aviation fuel right and the reason why that is important is because of law and
[00:44:41.340]policy places like California for example have
[00:44:44.980]certain mandates that they're the data implemented in order to reduce the
[00:44:49.900]carbon footprint and perhaps have an impact on climate volatility or climate
[00:44:55.540]change right all of that of course is policy so that filters all the way down
[00:45:00.460]to sort of implementation which is how are we going to get that fermentation
[00:45:03.940]carbon as part of this Rube Goldberg machine that we've created in order to
[00:45:07.600]make corn worth more dollars and cents for people like the McLeod's how are we
[00:45:12.880]going to make that work how do we get it from
[00:45:14.960]point A to point B well we might have to use them in domain that's not very
[00:45:18.920]politically popular especially post trans Canada and Keystone XL so maybe we
[00:45:23.600]have to come to the table with landowners in a way that is different
[00:45:27.500]and offer them things like revenue sharing because it may turn out that the
[00:45:31.780]hostility toward this interference with this legacy is really just a matter of
[00:45:38.240]stacking the dollar bills high enough but of course having a high stack of bills
[00:45:44.940]is itself something that could also be a legacy right maybe you can facilitate the
[00:45:49.080]purchase of property in other places as well so that's a long-winded answer to
[00:45:53.360]the carbon pipelines but they're a fun story
[00:45:57.340]you know Anthony I like the way that you frame this as an active choice that we're making right which I think is really what a lot of this is about right is the
[00:46:07.360]pipeline controversies get distilled to sort of black and white us versus them
[00:46:11.760]as opposed to this is an ongoing process of collective
[00:46:14.920]decision-making about how we value or don't value things like legacy
[00:46:19.900]attachments where we want to get our energy from how we want to get our
[00:46:23.620]energy from how we compensate folks when their property rights are impacted but
[00:46:27.520]it's all a collective choice right we're making these choices and so the question
[00:46:31.120]that I think is like this is why this kind of conversation seems really
[00:46:33.700]valuable to me is that sometimes those political choices like when you're
[00:46:37.040]saying like they decide like they is us like we decide right we live in a world
[00:46:40.680]where we get to decide but sometimes we don't right so how do we make it so that we
[00:46:44.900]actually know what we're talking about can have these sort of informed
[00:46:48.200]conversations and I'm going to turn it over to audience question but maybe just
[00:46:52.160]kind of one sort of last question for everyone so you all can think of your
[00:46:56.140]questions too although I also want to say we're talking about carbon right we
[00:47:00.000]also have this kind of big aspect for climate change water scarcity the fact
[00:47:05.360]that the land itself is likely dramatically changing and what we do
[00:47:08.840]about our attachments to places when our places are not there the way that we
[00:47:12.340]were attached to them but the other thing that
[00:47:14.880]I think it's not no I'm rambling but I think a lot about place attachment I
[00:47:18.960]think a lot about the ways that the law and particularly property law chooses
[00:47:23.580]which place attachments to generate and protect and secure and chooses not to
[00:47:28.260]protect others so when we think about indigenous place attachments for example
[00:47:32.220]many times those are not recognized as powerful in law in the same way that the
[00:47:36.540]McLeod's legacy attachment as in the play is recognized pretty strongly right
[00:47:41.340]with the exception of them the main exception now the other kind
[00:47:44.860]of challenge of attachments so there's the one side of like we kind of forget
[00:47:49.660]the people for whom their attachments are not validated but there's also a
[00:47:53.740]risk of kind of venerating existing place based attachments that it can
[00:47:58.240]become very backward looking and kind of ossify existing land relationships and a
[00:48:04.180]way that precludes us from adapting or being future looking or being inclusive
[00:48:09.460]of if the McLeod's always have the land how do new people get land right how do we let new immigrants in
[00:48:14.840]new farmers new ranchers so I think the character of Matt right as a being an
[00:48:18.980]immigrant for us family from Mexico being the attorney kind of fighting here
[00:48:22.700]is also like a very interesting question and then there's of course this big
[00:48:26.420]thing in the play about natural seasons and natural cycles and so in that kind
[00:48:30.920]of spirit of looking forward looking towards these cycles is this a pattern
[00:48:35.480]that repeats itself or what do you hope happens after the play or after
[00:48:39.980]the pipeline here we'll let each of you answer and then we'll let the audience
[00:48:44.820]ask questions too what comes next I I kind of love one of my favorite things
[00:48:54.180]is and has always been about place is I love plays that I see with friends my
[00:49:02.160]husband and then you spend your time just talking in the car and you go out
[00:49:08.100]somewhere you might have a little argument you might no I don't agree but
[00:49:11.400]did you see what they did but that to me that's the best kind of fear
[00:49:14.800]the ones that you know like what were you saying like it's a place that make
[00:49:18.700]you take your medicine think this yeah um but uh so you know with that in mind
[00:49:25.360]I I didn't have anything specific in my mind other than that the two children
[00:49:33.640]have their own paths that have you know that are going to be taken and and that
[00:49:40.220]whatever has has created a kind of a stop
[00:49:44.780]you know that he used a great word ossification that hasn't you know and
[00:49:50.300]and so the cycle continues but I don't have any like things I think the beauty
[00:50:02.660]of all of this is that what is next is what we're doing because these are these
[00:50:07.100]are not simple questions these are really complicated and thank you for
[00:50:12.340]sharing a lot of the complexity to go
[00:50:14.760]in that because I think that's the reason why we do theater and the reason
[00:50:19.140]why we put human beings on the stage where we can see real empathy and feel
[00:50:25.740]that real empathy so regardless of the way the play ends I think we're doing it
[00:50:33.620]describe the rural future I mean it'll suck if you don't know Anthony he's just like pervasive
[00:50:44.740]it's not really deep inside but this is what he shares with the world there's only one thing we
[00:50:51.300]all have in common and it's not a happy thought so there's that no there's I mean it's kind of
[00:50:58.280]like Harkins back to what I was talking about earlier is that they're going to be continuing
[00:51:02.260]challenges what awaits each one of these characters in like the fictional lives that
[00:51:06.880]they're leading more loss right more difficulty you know when they get to California that's not
[00:51:11.900]going to go well right well nothing goes well
[00:51:14.720]right nothing goes the way that you think it will but the point is it's like they get off the island and they thrive right
[00:51:21.400]they're because of these difficult experiences that they've
[00:51:26.640]gone through they've learned something right so if you're not winning you're learning right
[00:51:30.660]you're always moving forward and that's the thing that I think characterizes the rural places and
[00:51:36.380]urban places it characterizes all of us right we're all here we've all continued we've all
[00:51:40.240]persisted through through challenges even when those challenges seemed insurmountable
[00:51:44.700]and so that's that's what I sort of saw in some of this player those challenges you know
[00:51:50.940]you know Rob's Rob comes in with having lost his wife and that keeps rearing its head in
[00:51:56.340]this continuation you know post this this this this attempt at taking one's life right that's
[00:52:02.940]going to be something that continues to influence how this entire community of people is thinking
[00:52:08.520]about the choices that they have to make going forward and all that you know I guess
[00:52:14.680]the best possible thing that comes from that is learning something that's valuable and helps you
[00:52:20.680]sort of build that legacy which is the resilience of everyone in the community I just wanted to get
[00:52:32.200]your take on this - I was thinking about it when you were talking about that um because you're
[00:52:36.520]raised on farm you know and no matter what happens like the more the Sun's gonna come on you have to
[00:52:44.660]help you have to like I mean there's there's work you got to do so it none of that ever stops and
[00:52:50.060]it's just endless and that's I think that's another piece that like we all have in our
[00:52:55.640]characters it's it's it's something that you know you think and when you watch a movie like
[00:53:01.040]something happens everything just shuts down and you can't you can't and it's sort of taking a
[00:53:07.400]little bit longer view of that so when I go back home and it's still home right oh it's still home
[00:53:11.480]Lincoln's not home I don't know why I've lived here 25 years
[00:53:14.640]it's not home home is Elwood and home is more specifically the house that I grew up in right
[00:53:21.140]so I go to that home right and within five miles of that home there's a number of
[00:53:26.740]remnants of the generations that preceded me and the family and so I'm a runner and I go
[00:53:34.040]around long distance and so there's a there's a marathon route that I can take from Elwood
[00:53:38.400]where my parents currently live down through some canyons to the homestead that my
[00:53:44.620]grandmother on my dad's side her parents occupied in the early 1900s and it's a pinder
[00:53:52.580]farm and whatnot long since it's passed from that family but the original farmhouse is still there
[00:53:58.300]as well as some foundations of those other places and it was a ranch down in the hills beside Elwood
[00:54:03.260]but it's it's now just sort of a rundown farmhouse that's owned by an outfitter that rents it out to
[00:54:09.340]people on the weekends during deer season to come out and hunt in those canyons so
[00:54:14.600]from there I can run up the canyon down to the to the house that my parents occupied that I grew up
[00:54:19.720]in right and the dairy farm that we had is now gone the hog pens that we had are now gone the
[00:54:27.440]harvest store that we had and those there you know the silos of poverty we call them those blue sticks
[00:54:33.120]out in the wilderness that sort of show the 1980s farm crisis that's gone and even the foundation
[00:54:39.440]of that has been buried since so that farm looks much different than it did then and then I run down
[00:54:44.580]another two miles to my brother's house which is a massive new home that he's built along with
[00:54:50.620]these big grain bins and a huge shop but it's across the room from my grandfather's place which
[00:54:55.900]has a barn that was built in the 1940s and corrals that used to have cattle but have no cattle in
[00:55:03.280]them now because all they do is raise corn soybeans I had a little bit of sorghum but not
[00:55:08.400]a little bit 15,000 acres worth of that sort of stuff in that area and then I run up the hill
[00:55:14.560]a little bit further to my sister's house and it's a nice new house that is out just sort of in the
[00:55:19.300]middle of the canyon sort of like I don't know kind of a rain shed sort of place that doesn't
[00:55:24.760]really have any agricultural use associated with it other than a pasture that is rented to somebody
[00:55:29.860]else who runs cattle right so the rural landscape the landscape just that is the farm that I grew
[00:55:37.480]up has changed remarkably but the people are still there trying to do stuff with it moving forward so
[00:55:44.540]the micro basis it continues day after day but the life on the macro basis continues year after
[00:55:50.420]year and that's that's an interesting piece now we can all Google have Anthony's right
[00:55:56.960]should I bring my mic around yeah I don't need one being from Nebraska I have
[00:56:14.520]an entity with this but I lived in New York for a long time and when I would
[00:56:19.140]try to explain the pipeline to people the hardest thing for them to understand
[00:56:24.720]was legacy and eminent domain and this was because people would say things like
[00:56:30.800]what's the difference between that what are these just cranky farmers or are
[00:56:37.440]they going to lose their farms or they is this going to ruin their land what is
[00:56:42.480]the difference between a pipeline and putting
[00:56:44.500]like a road through or something and I was too ignorant to answer those
[00:56:48.940]questions so that's my question is is what are they losing exactly I'll go
[00:56:55.660]first and then yeah sure I think for me and I would like to lean on your legal
[00:57:05.200]expertise as well for me the difference is that a road is something everyone can
[00:57:13.800]use
[00:57:14.480]and it's something that you know people pay taxes to build it's something that
[00:57:23.300]you know or a dam you know anything that the the public use is is a part of it the
[00:57:32.960]pipeline in particular the KXL was there there was some tax relief I think they got on the
[00:57:44.460]that but it was funded by a private company and so they would come on your land and the
[00:57:51.620]plan was to dig you know the pipeline but they would be getting all of the profits from
[00:57:58.020]moving that none of that you know and again this is one side of it but to me that was
[00:58:06.400]the main one and it goes back to and this is where things get really weird but I went
[00:58:12.680]to college in New London, Connecticut.
[00:58:14.440]And there was a 2005 Supreme Court case called Kelo versus New London and that was the very
[00:58:23.020]first like ruling that said you know that the developers for Pfizer could go into this
[00:58:33.480]waterfront property where there were all of these old legacy houses you know that people
[00:58:39.140]had lived in their entire lives and raise it so they could put in a mall or something
[00:58:44.420]and you know a couple of other things that would benefit Pfizer and that case won five
[00:58:51.280]to four in agreement with that so that to me is the difference between eminent domain
[00:58:59.520]for a road versus eminent domain for private profit and I'll let the smart people talk
[00:59:05.600]now yeah I mean the law is all about it's just kindergarten right which one of these
[00:59:14.400]is not the same right we all learned that at Sesame Street that's what that's what the
[00:59:18.960]law is so we make the arguments the way in which a pipeline could be thought of is similar
[00:59:23.640]to a road is that the product that it's carrying and even the profitability of that company
[00:59:28.900]has an impact on the public fisc we can generate revenue from that that allows us to provide
[00:59:34.560]education to our children allows us to build more roads all of those sorts of things so
[00:59:39.120]there's an indirect sort of benefit to the public it's not a public use but it is for
[00:59:44.380]its benefit and so once you make that step and if you tolerate that step and say that
[00:59:49.880]that's not a distinguishing characteristic that is relevant then we can get to the point
[00:59:54.680]where it's a public use kilo versus new london for example is a situation where the court
[00:59:58.800]concluded that this sort of redevelopment was in the public's interest that we had a
[01:00:03.940]process to do that and as long as the folks that are making those choices had a plan for
[01:00:08.720]how this would benefit the public then it is a public use that's within the scope of
[01:00:14.360]the government to take it and put it to some of their use even though it's being conveyed
[01:00:17.920]to private hands but distinguishing characteristics we were giving the oil company the ability
[01:00:25.380]to select and to basically engage in the center press that's not something we typically do
[01:00:30.780]with roads there was a private company involved with kilo but there was a governmental actor
[01:00:36.600]that took the land and then conveyed it to kilo which is different from what we have
[01:00:40.480]here which is a we call a delegation of the authority of the government to
[01:00:44.340]the private actor to do things directly so how is it similar it's similar in some ways
[01:00:49.740]how's it different it's different in some ways too so what's the right answer i don't
[01:00:56.200]know it really boils down to who gets to decide and that in theory is us right uh in practice
[01:01:02.480]i don't know and that was hila right that was the idea like we'll have a plan because
[01:01:08.820]the plan will be checked by the political process and the political process chooses
[01:01:14.320]the public good and of course the pipeline had environmental concerns that were particular
[01:01:18.040]to the pipeline about the risk of leaks and things like that there's mike well i think
[01:01:22.900]i can get up and go for it you're gonna hear me yep very loud i was involved in the pipeline
[01:01:29.180]fight from 2010 until it was finally denied in 2021 on every level on advocacy and legislation
[01:01:39.080]i helped write the legislation that required to go through the public service commission
[01:01:44.300]and involved in the litigation in front of the public service commission and so all these
[01:01:51.020]things ring true one of the things i and i did see the one was in omaha but i don't remember
[01:01:59.320]it that well um one of the main themes of fighting the pipeline was the idea that that
[01:02:07.720]we have some sort of a sacred trust to take care of the land and there's some resources
[01:02:14.280]particularly our water that um that i heard someone once say that the overall aquifer
[01:02:21.440]is in our dna and i really feel like that really connected with people as much as anything
[01:02:27.800]the idea that we're that are we need to protect those resources and that these kinds of projects
[01:02:34.660]do not respect resources so so um i also know about the trail thing too but that's another
[01:02:44.260]interesting thing about it i guess would be that that it's interesting that we have
[01:02:49.180]people who are welcoming projects that are dangerous and opposing projects that are benign
[01:02:56.620]like can you imagine anything that's more benign than a trail i mean uh i can't live
[01:03:03.020]in my next one and you know but a pipeline pipeline can lead pipeline can be very destructive
[01:03:10.440]so anyway i'm just and there's there's a lot we've talked about carbon pipeline so there's
[01:03:14.240]a lot of things to do with it but i don't think we have the time anyway i just wanted
[01:03:17.440]to share those thoughts and see what people's responses yep uh the oh thank you the um my
[01:03:25.120]plate does the the family in this does have their farm over the aquifer and and so there
[01:03:30.800]there's conversations about that so one of the interesting things about and thank you
[01:03:39.040]again for for all of your work on the pipeline but one of the interesting things about the
[01:03:44.220]marine natural resources argument back with keystone xl was the the way in which people
[01:03:49.440]sort of thought of the the aquifer right it's this sort of underground lake that if it springs
[01:03:54.040]a leak that we're going to contaminate the entire thing right whereas you know it's talked
[01:03:58.240]to any hydrogeologist it doesn't work that way right there would be a problem with
[01:04:03.880]it it would be very fairly localized depending on the location now if we're in dance county
[01:04:08.120]you could see something that's very highly connected to an alluvial or a stream with
[01:04:14.200]an alluvial aquifer and that could spread pretty rapidly but we can clean things up
[01:04:19.520]pretty well and with the technology that they have now for detecting leaks and things along
[01:04:24.140]those lines that the impact could be fairly local so a lot of the resistance to keystone
[01:04:30.720]was we got to protect the aquifer uh at all costs and then with the idea being that this
[01:04:35.560]posed an existential danger to like this vast quantity of water that we have sort of underground
[01:04:40.720]and it's that's just not true um and in fact we
[01:04:44.180]have lots of vertical pipes that go through that thing and bring oil up from beneath and
[01:04:48.580]we have lots of other pipelines all throughout the state and you know i've looked at the
[01:04:52.080]list of impaired waters in nebraska and i'm not entirely sure we value water that much
[01:04:56.920]really at the end of the day anyway so all of that enters the mix and then we wind up
[01:05:01.940]with more complexity and judgment and difficulty in making these decisions but they didn't
[01:05:07.080]disagree with any of them yeah and then and then you know we take it a little bit further
[01:05:11.680]and this was all about conveying
[01:05:14.160]what do they call it in the notes tar sands right but or they call it they call it tar
[01:05:19.480]sands yeah but if you go to canada they're gonna they're going to correct you and say
[01:05:23.920]that's oil sands not tar sands yeah which is an incredibly sort of destructive process
[01:05:29.600]that squeezes oil from saturated soils and moves it nobody thought it could possibly
[01:05:34.600]be economically feasible 40 years ago and now all of the you know and then it became
[01:05:39.820]economically feasible and now it's not really economically feasible again so lots of people
[01:05:44.140]of complexity associated with real transcanada.
[01:05:46.460]- Yeah, changes, changes, changes, right?
[01:05:49.020]Well, I know that we're at time.
[01:05:51.220]Timothy, did you wanna say anything about tickets
[01:05:53.020]to the play? - Yeah.
[01:05:53.860]- And then thank you so much.
[01:05:56.380]Last words.
[01:05:57.220]- So you'll find the postcards scattered on the chairs.
[01:06:00.580]Please take one of those.
[01:06:01.520]And if you're already going to the play,
[01:06:02.780]please give it to your friends.
[01:06:04.640]There are still tickets available.
[01:06:07.020]It's kind of a special incentive, I guess,
[01:06:10.640]for coming to this lecture.
[01:06:12.140]We do have a discount.
[01:06:13.940]If you use the discount code OLSON, O-L-S-O-N,
[01:06:18.940]that will get you a discount on tickets
[01:06:23.560]for the show during the opening weekend.
[01:06:26.200]So--
[01:06:27.040]- Which is?
[01:06:27.860]- Which is, yeah, we open on the 20th.
[01:06:30.400]And so it will be the 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd,
[01:06:34.440]and then the following week as well,
[01:06:36.920]all the way to March 30th.
[01:06:39.260]So we would love for you to hit the second part
[01:06:42.960]of our conversation.
[01:06:43.740]So have a conversation, see it play,
[01:06:46.260]and then continue that conversation.
[01:06:49.300]We'd love to see everybody there.
[01:06:51.560]Thank you so much.
[01:06:52.480]Thank you.
[01:06:54.180]Thank you.

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'Eminent Domain' panel

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