Colonial power was expressed in the dominance of people and dominance over ecology, a war that the colonists were determined to win. The native resistance was cast as 'savage' because the non-Christian natives wished to keep the land wild, rather than appropriately allow the more 'civilized' Europeans to dominate. Destroying native control and folk practices, taming the forest and artificially imposing Christianity, European crops, European notions of private property and ownership, and European systems of government were all deemed to be critical parts of the civilization process.

One problem with this type of civilization was that long after the native people had been removed, the land continued to silently protest. The Dust Bowl, the blowing-away of the soil in the Great Plains during the 1930s, was not a freakish act of nature. Rather, it was the result of unsustainable farming practices. "Would-be farmers…had reason to think they could prosper by...
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