Checkerboarding the Desert
The Mojave National Preserve, by landownership.
My book project, Checkerboarding the Desert, is an ethnography of the landownership checkerboard, the spatial technology that defines California’s East Mojave Desert. The book examines how land as alternately owned, non-contiguous one-mile by one-mile sections becomes both a problem and a solution for contemporary projects of environmental conservation and cultural and historic preservation. The checkerboard--and contestation over it--are at the center of conflicts over contemporary water projects, large-scale conservation acquisitions, and the protection of Native American sacred sites. Drawing on more than two and a half years of fieldwork with the Native American Land Conservancy, the Mojave Desert Land Trust, and others involved in contemporary land management in the desert, the book proceeds in two parts.
The book argues that the American Dream and its concomitant idea of property failed in the California desert, where a large grant of checkerboarded lands to the transcontinental railroad was intended to promote settlement and profit through sale. The checkerboard was conceived as a project of American Empire that was supposed to erase its tracks as it transformed the desert into a landscape of private property and picket fences. But the checkerboard remained unsold; it persisted for more than a century, even as few marks of the checkerboard appeared on the ground. The mismatch between its lived reality and legal persistence enabled the continued presence of Chemehuevis and Mojaves on its lands, and for the later repossession of Mamápukaib by the Native American Land Conservancy.
In the second part, the book follows how the the checkerboard became the enemy of conservationists and land managers in the late twentieth century as it enabled extraction and destruction in a landscape that some considered a wasteland without value. This study takes the checkerboard as a starting point to understand the East Mojave not only as a wasteland where development failed, but rather as a gameboard that sets the conditions of contemporary environmentalism and historical preservation efforts. Through examining contemporary efforts to save the desert from development, extraction, and the desecration of sacred sites, I examine the complex relationships between Native American peoples and settler society. In so doing, this dissertation aims to contribute to scholarship on the intersections of Native American Studies and settler society, the legal and financial aspects of contemporary environmentalism, and the politics of land in the rural United States.
The book draws on research conducted as part of longstanding partnerships with the Native American Land Conservancy (an intertribal land trust) and the Mojave Desert Land Trust. During my research, I also collaborated with local historical societies in the Morongo Basin and Coachella Valley and conducted extensive archival research in Southern California and Arizona. This research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, the University of California Human Rights Center, and the UC Natural Reserve System.
The book argues that the American Dream and its concomitant idea of property failed in the California desert, where a large grant of checkerboarded lands to the transcontinental railroad was intended to promote settlement and profit through sale. The checkerboard was conceived as a project of American Empire that was supposed to erase its tracks as it transformed the desert into a landscape of private property and picket fences. But the checkerboard remained unsold; it persisted for more than a century, even as few marks of the checkerboard appeared on the ground. The mismatch between its lived reality and legal persistence enabled the continued presence of Chemehuevis and Mojaves on its lands, and for the later repossession of Mamápukaib by the Native American Land Conservancy.
In the second part, the book follows how the the checkerboard became the enemy of conservationists and land managers in the late twentieth century as it enabled extraction and destruction in a landscape that some considered a wasteland without value. This study takes the checkerboard as a starting point to understand the East Mojave not only as a wasteland where development failed, but rather as a gameboard that sets the conditions of contemporary environmentalism and historical preservation efforts. Through examining contemporary efforts to save the desert from development, extraction, and the desecration of sacred sites, I examine the complex relationships between Native American peoples and settler society. In so doing, this dissertation aims to contribute to scholarship on the intersections of Native American Studies and settler society, the legal and financial aspects of contemporary environmentalism, and the politics of land in the rural United States.
The book draws on research conducted as part of longstanding partnerships with the Native American Land Conservancy (an intertribal land trust) and the Mojave Desert Land Trust. During my research, I also collaborated with local historical societies in the Morongo Basin and Coachella Valley and conducted extensive archival research in Southern California and Arizona. This research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, the University of California Human Rights Center, and the UC Natural Reserve System.
The Cadiz Project: Zombie Infrastructure and Regulatory Alchemy
My research on the Cadiz water project has spanned public-facing journalism and academic writing, tracing the cultural histories of the Cadiz Water Project in relation to the cultural politics of water and railroad history in the California desert. Intersecting with the book's themes of railroad checkerboarding and legal geography, "Zombie Infrastructure" traces how contemporary zombie projects--like Cadiz--rely on reanimating past legal infrastructures and the corporate power of the railroad in order to create a contemporary project. "Regulatory Alchemy" traces cultural conceptions of water transfer alongside legal geographies of groundwater to articulate a concept at the heart of contemporary environmental impact reporting. My other work on Cadiz can be found in my publications.
Dirt Biking in Southern California
How has recreation shaped the landscape of the California Desert? In this project, I track how dirt biking (and later, off-road vehicle use beyond dirt biking) has shaped the California desert, from soil science to land use planning. This project broadly articulates the necessity of looking at land use beyond agricultural and rangeland production, instead focusing on the forms of recreational consumption that shape the landscape.
In a forthcoming edited volume, I follow the history of the sacrifice zone through the linkages between the agricultural sciences and off-highway vehicle use. An article in preparation examines the intersection of administrative law and the history of dirt biking.
In a forthcoming edited volume, I follow the history of the sacrifice zone through the linkages between the agricultural sciences and off-highway vehicle use. An article in preparation examines the intersection of administrative law and the history of dirt biking.
Other Projects
I am working on a project about the history and legacies of the Small Tract Act in Southern California.
