Introduces complexity of western ranching through the fictional Dutton Yellowstone Ranch, exploring the historical evolution of law and policy of western agricultural operations.

Readers are presented with achievable reforms of laws and policies discussed in earlier chapters.

Explores issues of checkerboarding and federal, state, and Tribal jurisdiction patterns on migratory pronghorn antelope through the story of a famous case – Taylor V. Lawrence – about a famous fence.

Kanye West’s plans to build a Yeezy utopia in Wyoming run headlong into an endangered species, the Greater Sage-Grouse, whose protection must trump other development activities.

An in-depth and personal view of removal and homesteading in Colorado, through the experience of the Ute Tribes and Ferry Carpenter, ranch owner, and the first director of the Federal Grazing Service.

Explains Doctrine of Discovery as foundation for land divestiture that allowed non-Indigenous ranchers to acquire title to vast areas of Tribal land in 1800s and 1900s.

Explores relationship of law to communal agriculture in three contexts; Indigenous communal grazing; Spanish and Mexican land grants; and Colorado state law of property rights.

This chapter presents themes that appear in earlier chapters and makes the case for legal reform to create an agricultural framework that represents the “real” west, rather than John Dutton’s west.

Introduces readers to the history and legacy of Black homesteading through the story of the Dearfield Colony, established in Colorado prior to the Dust Bowl Era.

The Sagebrush Rebellion provides a backdrop to the story of a notorious ranch in Nevada, where Wayne Hage fought a thirty-year battle over grazing on public lands with the BLM and Forest Service.

Describes complexity of ranching for Tribal members on reservations, due to historical removal of Tribes, allotment of their lands, and resulting jurisdictional barriers.

One family’s history of grazing in the Malheur Wildlife Refuge results in a month-long armed occupation and standoff, which ends in the fatal shooting of one rancher organizer.

The clash of values in indigenous cultural preservation efforts on public lands is readily apparent in the case of the Blackfeet Confederacy and their ceded sacred territory in the Rocky Mountain Front of north central Montana. There, the Rocky Mountains rise from the Great Plains like a snow-covered apparition impossibly hovering above the undulating prairie below. The beauty of these nearly 30,000 square miles of the so-called Crown of the Continent is hard to describe in words, with heavily forested valleys containing wild-flowing rivers, framed by bare alpine peaks on either side. Biologists and ecologists value the Crown because it is home to some of the last great populations of large carnivores, native fish, and untrammeled wilderness, including unbroken natural wildlife corridors spanning hundreds of miles. These corridors are made up of several areas of protected public lands in the United States and Canada, including Glacier National Park; Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park; and the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat, and Great Bear Wilderness areas in addition to several national forests. The area has also been home to the Blackfeet and other indigenous peoples since time immemorial.