Review: The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau, by Erika Marie Bsumek

In this inspiring and challenging book, Erika Marie Bsumek shows that much more than rock, cement, and steel buttress Glen Canyon Dam. Bsumek argues that Glen Canyon—and most of the physical infrastructure of the West—rests on a complex and intertwined foundation of “social infrastructures” that dispossessed Native peoples, ignored Native knowledge, and excluded Native voices from decision making. Bsumek’s analysis provides not only a compelling new understanding of the history of Glen Canyon Dam and the American West, but also a hopeful path toward a more equitable future for the region.