Archives of the 14th Headwaters Conference, 2003
Ed and Betsy Marston, publisher and editor of High Country News from 1983 to 2003, and Connie and Doc Hatfield of Oregon Country Natural Beef, at the 14th Headwaters Conference.
Over the past quarter century, the Great National Debate over "Economy vs. Environment" has decentralized; in the face of "analysis paralysis" at the national level, local communities are trying to work out public land use and management problems down on the ground. This in turn has resulted in a resurgence of democratic process – not always pretty economically or environmentally, but often productive in the democratic tradition of muddling through with something that works.
Western's 14th Headwaters Conference worked closely with (and also honored) High Country News – a journal for the Rocky Mountain region that was really the first journalistic medium to really pay attention to this shift – in an exploration of this broadening of the Great Debate, andalso of the importance, in a mass society, of the media in whether or not such things actually "happen" meaningfully in the national awareness. If a tree falls in the forest – or the entire forest is felled – and no media report and analyze it, did it "happen" in any meaningful sense?
In addition to the Marstons and the Hatfields, pictured above, University of Colorado law Professor and Indian rights student Charles Wilkinson, author and Director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West Daniel Kemmis, High Country News new Executive Director Paul Larmer, Hopi Foundation Associate Director Loris Vicente-Taylor, and a host of "graduates of the High Country News School of Journalism" participated in the conference.
Papers either presented at the conference, or background for conference presentations:
- Essay introducing the argument of the conference (George Sibley & Ed Marston)
- Ed Marston's presentation on his evolution as a journalist on western issues
- Background for Dan Kemmis' presentation
- Background for Charles Wilkinson's presentation ("Introduction" to Fire on the Plateau)
- George Sibley's presentation on the historical context for the decentralization of political action