The West v. The West

Who has the right to claim a place? Who has the right to keep others out?

There are two senses of the proper noun.

The West: European culture. Classical mythology, branches of Christianity, Crusades, conquest, capitalism. British wit and French coffee and German efficiency. I once read that a complete “Western education” meant the (re)construction of the Canon in one’s own mind as a cathedral: grand, soaring yet solid, orderly yet mystical, thick-walled as a fortress. The West is an abstract worldview certain of us learn from birth, one that demarcates private properties with clear lines.

Or…

The West: Wild frontiers for pioneers. A land beyond farms and ranches where cowboys once shot up horse-mounted “Indians” and stagecoaches barreled through deserts bearing gold-rushers and prostitutes. A place where white agitators commandeer federal buildings to hoot and holler over grazing rights while Norteños lay claim to land grants signed centuries ago by Spanish monarchs, who of course exercised the Doctrine of Discovery to parcel out territory that was already inhabited. More tribes than I know of — Puebloan peoples, the Hopi, Athabascan Navajos and Apaches and Comanche, the Ute and Mohave and Paiute, and more. The West is a solid expanse of earth certain of us inhabit, one in which…