American Zion - Betsy Gaines Quammen Interview

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“A map of the American West is a Rorschach test; people see what they want to see as reflections of who they are.” Betsy Gaines Quammen

Betsy’s conservation work in Mongolia with Buddhist monks on fisheries and in Bhutan for snow leopards centered on finding common ground between religion’s ancient roots and the modern precepts of conservation.  After continuing such work with Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders in the U.S., she was drawn to the idea of exploring these possibilities with a uniquely American, relatively recent religion, Mormonism.  Writing her PhD dissertation on the early, successful collaboration of the federal government and LDS leaders to create Zion National Park in 1919 led her to explore the Mormon principles emerging in current public land battles.  She discovered a heady, distinctly American brew that sits of the intersection of religion and prophesy in Mormonism and cowboy mythology.  This culminates in the emerging militia movement and the Bundy’s belief that the U.S. Constitution is sacred text, that their public lands crusade is divinely inspired and those who oppose them are not just wrong but evil.     

Betsy Gaines Quammen is interviewed by Zion Canyon Mesa board member Kirsten Allen. Kirsten is Co-Founder, Publisher and Executive Director of Torrey House Press, where American Zion was published this March.

"This book is like a skeleton key, unlocking so many complicated, and largely unquestioned, myths of the West."  —ANNE HELEN PETERSEN, BuzzFeed News