Leah Sottile, host of the fantastic Bundyville podcast and contributor to High Country News, writes on the continuing legacy of the Bundyville stand-off.

When the Bundys declared victory, it was hailed as a win for their vision of the American West. It was a victory for the entire far-right antigovernment militia movement and paved the way for ultra-conservative ideas to dominate the Republican Party’s agenda.

She includes some citations to recent important work by Benjamin Park, Sam Jackson, and Jessica Pishko.

One of the things I’m tracking in my new research on the Sagebrush Rebellion is how the rebellion played out in the northern Plains and Canadian prairies. There is, undoubtedly, a continuing legacy of far-right, anti-government ideology underlying its legacy.

But, at least so far in my work, I don’t see this same ideology expressed so forcefully on the plains and prairies. Yet, I still see the importance of ideology, or perhaps identity, in the plains version of the movement. After all, the movement on the plains dealt with considerably less actual public lands—you can combine the entirety of federal lands across the Great Plains and come nowhere close to the percentage of land the federal government manages in Nevada alone—yet the movement still finds purchase. The thread I’m currently following: how much does the ideology and identity of the rebellion define how it acts on the plains? If the plains-style movement is less concerned about federal land, then it must be concerned with something else.