The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam

The Colorado River and its dams have inspired great writing, from John McPhee to Ed Abbey. But this book provides a much deeper backstory, one that is nuanced, shadowed, and utterly fascinating. In a fast-drying West, Erika Bsumek asks some very crucial questions.

— Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

The story of Glen Canyon Dam is more commonly told as the end of a river or the beginning of a reservoir. In Erika Bsumek's powerful retelling, the dam is a midpoint in a longer, ongoing narrative of settler colonialism on Indigenous land: a social consequence as well as a physical cause. By elucidating how infrastructure is a process, Bsumek reframes the history of megaprojects in the American West.

— Jared Farmer, University of Pennsylvania, author of On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape

In The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam, Erika Bsumek smartly weaves together the strands of history in the construction of a major physical edifice in the West. In telling the story of Lake Powell, Bsumek clearly illustrates dispossession of Indigenous lands by settlers, the federal government, scholars, engineers and scientists, politicians, and courts. Written by someone who understands and demonstrates core Indigenous values of land, language, and sovereignty, Bsumek carefully and fairly communicates these complicated issues while deftly showing that history is personal.

— P. Jane Hafen, (Taos Pueblo), University of Nevada, Las Vegas, coeditor of Essays on American Indian and Mormon History

[Bsumek] provides a fair, nuanced, and personal backstory of the megastructure.

— Alcalde

This is a useful corrective to the conventional view of infrastructure as massive public works projects . . . Most important, the humanity of her subjects shines through, and her territorial land acknowledgment for Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell is just and relevant.

— H-Net Environment

This is an important book. For historians of the West, it provides not just a model, but a challenge: to identify and explain colonialism and dispossession throughout the region’s past, even in places and times that might seem removed from such processes. This process may be uncomfortable, and it will probably be difficult; but Bsumek’s careful analysis of sources, actors, and perspectives has shown that it can—and should—be done.

— Pacific Historical Review

For newcomers to the history of the famous Glen Canyon Dam controversy, Erika Bsumek’s book is a good starting point; for others who already know a lot on this subject, the book is essential additional reading . . . It indelibly adds to existing writing, however, and should inform and affect all writings about western water yet to come.

— Water Alternatives Book Review

A masterful, powerful story...A necessary portrayal of human lives past, present, and future…Essential.

— CHOICE

The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam thus offers an urgent update to existent scholarship by stressing how the dispossession of Native peoples—and their responses to it—dictated the dam’s future.

— Journal of Arizona History

The Foundations of Glen Canyon [Dam] is a thoughtful, well-argued, and useful book. It is an essential read for anyone interested in how settler colonialism in the American West is intertwined with religious ideologies, scientific knowledge, and state-sponsored expertise. It should find a welcome home in a range of upper division history courses and graduate seminars. The book also suggests some possibilities for future histories that might re-examine the engineered landscape through histories of dispossession.

— Mormon Studies Review

A bridge between canonical texts on western water history and recently written studies of Native American dispossession...[the book stresses] the importance of understanding the history of Native American dispossession, in part as a means of clarifying the choices for the future of the West.

— Agricultural History

The lived texture that Bsumek uncovers within these archives [of the Colorado Plateau's political, economic, and cultural matrix] helps readers understand cultural and spiritual practices as a coherent, shared social infrastructure.

— H-Net SciMedTech