Whose Forest is It?: Resistance to the Arkansas National Forest A Proposal to Present a Paper at the Ozark Studies Symposium

In 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed a national forest in the Ouachita highlands of western Arkansas. The presentation I am proposing for the Ozark Studies Symposium will analyze the impact of increased federal interest in and authority over the Ouachita Mountain region in western Arkansas during the Progressive Era. In particular the paper will examine the effects of Progressive conservation policy on the residents of the region, especially the conflict between the modernizing tendencies of Progressive conservation policy and how that modernization was accepted, altered, or resisted by the southern “plain folk” of the mountains. The presentation will use Forest Service reports, personal correspondence, and newspaper reports to explore how the residents of the Ouachita highlands either accommodated to the new reality or resisted federal regulation of their world. Areas of conflict included the ability of the residents to homestead land, the Forest Service policy of fire suppression that outlawed the traditional practice of burning sections of the forest in the spring, and the closing of the forest to free range grazing. The reaction of the local population varied. Some segments of the population, especially in the towns welcomed the establishment of the national forest. Conversely, the subsistence farmers in the mountains resented the imposition of state authority and resisted the efforts of the Forest Service to administer the forest according to Forest Service principles. This resistance and the forms it took will be the primary focus of my presentation.

Vance Randolph's Ozarks: A Burkean Reading

Before television supplied images of far-away places to our living rooms, print media and radio provided the information from which we formed our perceptions of places where we had not been. The work of Vance Randolph provided a view of the Ozarks for the rest of America. But what was behind this view? Burke teaches us that writing, as a symbolic act, can reveal to us the motives of the writer. Therefore, using Burke’s ideas of the dramatistic pentad, we can understand Randolph’s view of the Ozarks and what that view reveals about Randolph himself. Burke’s methods can show us how Randolph attempts to structure the audience’s perception of the Ozarks and how Randolph, as rhetor, encompass the situation through rhetoric.

Even though Randolph’s work in the Ozarks generally took place before 1960, it continues to be influential. Specifically, Pissing in the Snow and Ozarks Superstitions and Folklore are often assigned in college classes on folklore, and are often all that people see of Ozarks folkways. Randolph’s particular way of seeing the Ozarks, however, influenced the way he presented the material he collected. To see how Randolph presented the Ozarks in his work, we can look at the introductions of some of his works. None of these introductions are exactly the same, but they all cover the same general territory.

To illustrate some of the ways that Randolph created the image of Ozarkers, I will share selections from his introductions, as well as an illustrative short tale or two. We will also see some of the visual images that accompanied his books. To show the images, I will need a multimedia projector.

Comparative Mountain Research

The mountain communities and environments in Appalachia and the Ozarks share many common features, not the least being the historical migration linkages, resource depletion, isolation, poverty, lack of local empowerment, outside players and actors and marginality from nearby larger and wealthier urban areas. Based on my nearly three decades of living in the footsteps of Appalachia, traveling through much of the region, and conducting research on various environment/human welfare issues, I propose an active research agenda that calls for scholars in both regions to explore salient similarities and differences. The five areas I examine briefly are: cognitive or mental mapping (defining cognitive regions), social isolation (using marriage-mate selection), immobility (categories of non-movers), religious diversity, and impacts of megaengineering projects (including mountain top removal). Comparative research will advance our learning about the fascinating geographies, histories, economies, and cultures of these neglected academic regions.

The Art of the Auctioneer: A Performance Tradition in Ethnographic and Historical Perspective

An overview of Buxton's PhD in Heritage Studies (2007) dissertation “The Art of the Auctioneer: A Performance Tradition in Ethnographic and Historical Perspective,” Buxton will cover the historical overview of auctions with an emphasis on tobacco and livestock auctions in the United States, focusing on the artistic performance and communication of auctioneering, explaining the oral-formulaic performance theory of how auctioneers “talk” fast in present time, and analyzing the tobacco and livestock auctioneers’ chant.

Judge John R. Woodside: Understanding the Emergence of the Ozarks, 1840-1890

On May 11, 1837, John Rowlett Woodside, age 22, landed at Able’s Landing on the Mississippi River ten miles north of Cairo. “I was without friends, without a dime in money, and without education enough to write a promissory note,” he later wrote In 1886, as he prepared to leave the judgeship of the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit (Douglas, Howell, Oregon, Ozark and Shannon counties), he “felt a pardonable pride in contemplating the rapid progress we now making in population, wealth, public improvements, refinement, education and civilization.”

The complexities of his life – as school teacher, lawyer, Confederate, raiser of fine horses, land speculator and judge – serve to emphasize that stereotypes about the Ozarks often conceal complex realities. “I know it has been a pleasure to defend this region of country and its people against the calumnies originated at the office of the commissioner of the general land office at Washington, at the land office at Ironton, in the office of the district attorney in St. Louis, in the brain of a Government detective, or I in the offices of the big dailies of St. Louis or elsewhere. I felt it a duty to repel their assaults.” This presentation will examine his life and accomplishments against the backdrop of rapid changes that overtook the region after the Civil War.

A Great Historic American Region on the Rough Edges of the Landscape and Economy

In this presentation, Hensley will examine with the audience the debates, difficulties, and permutations involved with defining the Ozarks as parts of the discourse that constitutes knowledge of the region as a region. He will focus on how scholars produce, regulate, and circulate knowledge of the Ozarks as a region through discursive processes concerned with what Michel Foucault terms "domains of objects and rituals of truth."

The Illinois Ozarks: Hidden Gem and Rich Resource

The symbolic image of the landscape has been a part of our heritage since the Hudson River School painters first glorified the American wilderness. There is a sense of spiritual renewal, new opportunity, and endless bounty to be found in their portrayal of nature. Edward Abbey wrote, “you stand for what you stand on!” I stand on and in the Shawnee National Forest. Landscape photographs have a long history of informing conscientious decision making in regard to American land use. We have wild places in the Shawnee National Forest that must be protected and cherished. The area bounded by the terminal moraine and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers is a diverse and eclectic mix of hardwood forest, cypress swamp, high bluffs, and lowland savanna found nowhere else in the United States. Exploring its significance is my passion and my privilege.

I will show my landscape photographs from the Shawnee National Forest in deep Southern Illinois—incorporating what are often referred to as the Illinois Ozarks. The work is contextualized in a presentation that focuses on the biological diversity of the region and threats to the Forest from continued human use and resource exploitation. The photographs have been exhibited extensively, most recently at the Illinois State Museum galleries in Chicago and Springfield and at the Loyola University Museum of Art in Chicago. The images have been purchased by numerous public and private collections. A book of the Shawnee work and accompanying essays is in production.

The River Man and the Ozarker: Cultural Comparisons of Mark Twain's Missouri and HIll People of the Ozarks Uplands

Dr. McKinney will compare the social history of the Mississippi Valley region of northeast Missouri where Mark Twain was raised with that of the south-central Missouri Ozarks.  He will discuss similarities and difference between the regional culture in which Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyeris set and our own regional culture.  His presentation will be offered as part of the West Plains Council on the Arts' participation in the National Endowment for the Arts' The Big Read program as well ans the Ozarks Studies Symposium at Missouri State University-West Plains.

Another Black Gold: Comparing the Cultures Surrounding Lead Mining in Southeast Missouri and Coal Mining in Central Appalachia

Meachem will examine the culture surrounding lead mining in southeast Missouri as compared with central Appalachian coal culture.  He will address similarities and differences between teh two with regard to social and economic history, occupational folklife, contemporary environmental and public-health issues, and their influences upon regional identity.

Ozark Dirt Into Bone: A Photo-Text Interpretive Documentary

Investigations into the idea of “place” are ongoing at the crossroads of a number of disciplines including: cultural studies, geography, regional studies and certain documentary practices. Cultural critic Lucy Lippard, describes this concept of “place” as “the historical narrative as it is written in the landscape or place by the people who live or lived there… the intersections of nature, culture, history and ideology that form the ground on which we stand” (The Lure of the Local). In the field of photographic practice, there is an ongoing redefinition of the nature of the photograph as document, fueled by the deconstruction of objectivity and the emergence of a multi-centered notion of American identity. My current body of photographic and prose vignettes about rural Ozark inhabitants, land and culture is located at this intersection.

These visual and word portraits of place, people and small events span time from the U.S. Civil war to the present, connected through references to intergenerational influence including the ways in which a specific geography impacts a people and culture. While the photographs are all relatively recent, the prose narratives cross time and draw associations between various events and generations. The text is influenced by historic veins of regional and family lore and often also incorporates a subtle cultural analysis.

I resist typical nostalgic interpretations of the region by refusing to arrest a particular moment in time as more authentic than another. The content is drawn from my family connections to the region, but is meant to be somewhat representative rather than singularly autobiographical.

Witchin' Warts and Buryin' Onion Blades: An Ozarks Approach to Folk Medicine

Sisco will examine the influence of Native American pharmacology on folk medicine in the Ozarks.  She will demonstrate that many folk remedies still in use here derive from Native American practices involving plants of both native and European origins.  Sisco notes that although many white Ozarkers acknowledge Native Americans as the sources of medicinal traditions, fewer acknowledge that the transmission of many of these traditions can be attributed to intermarriage between white settlers and Native Americans.

An Ozark Natural Resource Partnership

n May 2004, resource managers and scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the National Park Service met in Fayetteville, Arkansas to discuss Ozark resource issues of importance to the Department of the Interior. Participants identified key resource issues and recognized the need to work with additional Ozark stakeholders. Within the Ozarks, tremendous opportunity exists for working together at geographic locations; sharing research designs, products and results; and developing methods to measure management action effectiveness.

In May 2008, the USGS, the USFWS and the Missouri Chapter of the Nature Conservancy co-hosted “Ozark Summit 2008: Ozark Streams” in West Plains, Missouri. Ninety-six participants representing numerous field units of six Federal agencies, four State agencies and eleven Nongovernmental organizations met to discuss issues of mutual concern. Four breakout groups identified important next steps to inter-agency collaboration on issues relating to Ozark streams; another breakout group outlined steps to overcoming institutional barriers to collaboration. Establishment of a web-based application for data sharing and communication among collaborators was a high priority for all of the groups. In addition, each group voiced the need for improving communication and feedback between resource scientists/managers and the general public.

The Ozark Partnership that has resulted from these meetings aims to effectively and efficiently apply limited financial resources by working cooperatively among State, Federal and Nongovernmental organizations that conduct natural resource research and management in the Ozarks. A web-based communication tool will help cooperators sustain the biologically rich, nationally-significant resources of the Ozark Plateau, on which many local communities and economies depend. This presentation will summarize results the Ozark Summit, describe the development of the web-based communication tool, and seek input on effective means of involving Ozark communities.

Ozarks Rock Masonry Architecture

In Williams' presentation, she will discuss how the abundant Ozarks rocks are a metaphor for the Ozarks people who worked hard and used what they had. She will focus on the use of rocks to construct practical and creative stuctures. Schools, churches, homes, barns, and business, including sercie stations and tourist cabins were constructed from Ozarks polychrome rock, typically gathered from the construction site, a neighbor's field, or a nearby creek bed. They were constructed from the 1900's-1950's, and their heyday was the 1930's and 1940's. Williams will use selected slides from a seven-year project covering the southern Missouri counties of Douglas, Howell, Oregon, Ozark, Shannon, Texas, and Wright plus a few buildings in Arkansas to demonstrate the practical and creative ways in which natural materials were used.