In 1980, HCN writer Joan Nice reported on a convention of “sagebrush rebels,” a group of legislators, industry representatives and local citizens united by the desire to wrest control of millions of acres of Western public lands from the federal government. The event was “part celebration, part show,” Nice wrote, capturing the rapid elevation of what had been a fringe regional movement to the national stage. Ronald Reagan, a self-proclaimed sagebrush rebel, had been elected president weeks earlier, and the movement was optimistic about its legislative prospects.
“They want to lock up 700,000 acres for 600 birds,” one Idaho resident at the convention complained regarding federal land managers. Ultimately, the Reagan administration did not usher in the kind of sweeping changes to land ownership that many of the rebels wanted, and the movement’s resentments continued to simmer throughout the following decades, occasionally boiling over. By 2016, when Ammon Bundy led an occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, the struggle over public lands had become entangled in a broader right-wing movement animated by a belligerent anti-government ideology, which eventually found its champion in Donald Trump. This July, when Trump gutted protections for more than 2.9 million acres of land in the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, he echoed Nice’s unnamed Idahoan, describing the land as locked up, off-limits, closed. “You can’t go hunting, you can’t go fishing, you can’t do anything, you can virtually not even walk on it,” Trump claimed, inaccurately.
Nice’s dispatch is one of three features we’re republishing this month from the HCN archives. These stories illuminate the roots of our current political moment, offering essential context for the movements and people shaping the West today. In “Beauty and the Beast,” originally published in 1997, Paul Larmer reports from the communities that border Grand Staircase-Escalante, which had been designated by President Bill Clinton the previous year. Many locals initially fought the monument, which crushed a proposal to mine 62 billion tons of coal, but Larmer found that even some opponents quickly recognized that it “solidifies two facts of life: Southern Utah’s mining, logging and ranching are in decline; and the region is already a public-lands playground for the world.” Larmer described a place teetering uneasily on the edge between a fading, extraction-based economy and the tourism industry, with its own seasonal boom-and-bust cycles. “Would the anger and resentment fade?” he asked.
It didn’t. Though jobs grew by 51% and per capita incomes by 41% between 2001 and 2022 in the neighboring counties, the monument has remained a political lightning rod, channeling anxieties about the future of rural communities and how land in the West is best used and valued. These anxieties often become refracted as questions of community identity: Who are we? What do we stand for?
These anxieties often become refracted as questions of community identity: Who are we? What do we stand for?
Identity and its relationship to political ideology is central to Graham Lee Brewer’s 2019 profile, “Markwayne Mullin is for Trump — and Indian Country.” Brewer captured Mullin, then an Oklahoma representative with his star on the rise, before he ascended to the Senate and then the top post at the Department of Homeland Security. (Mullin was nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate in March.) Though he is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Mullin “does not fit stereotypical notions of what it means to be Indigenous, either in how he looks or how he operates as a lawmaker,” Brewer writes. Brewer’s profile describes a politician full of seeming contradictions: ultra-conservative but known for bipartisan dealmaking; white-passing but an advocate for tribal sovereignty — and now serving an administration that has rolled back measures intended to bolster that sovereignty. One example is Trump’s move to drastically shrink Bears Ears, which had been co-managed by a tribal land commission that Trump’s proclamation eliminated. Since taking over at DHS, Mullin has invoked his Native identity to defend his department from accusations of racism; meanwhile, DHS is attempting to build a new segment of the U.S.-Mexico border wall along the southern boundary of the Tohono O’odham Reservation in Arizona, despite the tribe’s objections. “Is Markwayne Mullin good or bad for Indian Country?” Brewer asked. While some Natives hope Mullin will use his position in the Cabinet to advocate for their interests, it’s not clear that he’s willing or able to challenge a president whose policies have largely been hostile.
Many of the tensions that animate these archival stories are in play this election season. During the Sagebrush Rebellion, the “rebels” presented themselves as the true voice of the West, and the media perpetuated that myth — despite the fact that, as Nice reported, their policy proposals were generally unpopular. Today, white men in cowboy hats are still often portrayed as more “authentic” representatives of the West’s inhabitants, a depiction that flattens the region’s complexity. That complexity is visible in a number of high-stakes races this fall, when the region could play a key role in determining control of both chambers of Congress. Alaska’s Senate race, for instance, pits Mary Peltola, a moderate Democrat and Alaska Native who grew up fishing near the Bering Sea, against Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan, who grew up in Cleveland and went to Harvard.
Origin stories help us understand the present moment, but they don’t predict
the future. Instead, they remind us that the future is never inevitable; it’s being determined right now.
Rebels revel in new power, polish
After the election, sagebrush rebels’ goal of turning public lands over to the states looks more tangible than ever before.
Beauty and the Beast
The president’s new monument forces southern Utah to face its tourism future.
Markwayne Mullin is for Trump – and Indian Country
The Cherokee congressman, who is hard-right and white-passing, may not seem like an Indigenous lawmaker, but he’s no anomaly.
We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
This article appeared in the October 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Origin Stories.”
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
