People of the Great Plains

Library Journal

Vermont Yankee Miller (Vermont People, Silver Print, 1995) made four trips to the Great Plains, spending seven months and taking 400 rolls of film and 400 pages of typewritten notes there. The result is a lavish and loving tribute to the people who reside in that vast stretch of the Old West running from Montana and North Dakota south into New Mexico and Texas. They emerge as tough, resilient, and suspicious of government, environmentalists, and tourists. Most amazing, perhaps, to the outsider is the juxtaposition of Miller's black-and-white photographs, in large part reflecting a land where civilization has fought a losing war of attrition with the elements, to the contentment shared by a people "rooted to the environment, not as free as the antelope but not as fenced in as cattle." Highly recommended.-Jim G. Burns, Ottumwa P.L. Ia.