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Sebastian Felix Braun, Bearing the Burden of Booms: Energy, Extraction, Communities and Landscapes on the Plains. Grand Forks, ND: The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, 2026.

Based on fifteen years of fieldwork and archival research, Bearing the Burden of Booms takes a comprehensive and multidisciplinary look at resource extraction and its impacts on landscapes and communities. Taking the Bakken oil boom as its prime example, this book describes the cultural, social, and environmental disruptions, analyzes the political messaging that supports natural resource extraction, puts the Bakken boom in a historical and contemporary comparative context, and examines water usage and pollution. By examining the hydraulic fracturing economics, it asks the question whether the cultural, social, and ecological disruptions are worth it.

Bearing the Burden of Booms combines personal experiences and research to consider the impact of oil booms on residents of the Bakken, both in North Dakota and in the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara communities of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The book also shows how these communities reacted to the boom, and what local and regional residents and governments can do in response to such overwhelming events.

In a time when the American government is again pushing more fossil fuel extraction, this is a critical look at what these practices mean for the people and landscapes they affect.

Sebastian Felix Braun is an anthropologist; he is Director of American Indian Studies and Professor of Political Science at Iowa State University.

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For more on the Bakken and petroculture from the Digital Press, check out these other titles!

The Bakken Goes Boom: Oil and the Changing Geographies of Western North Dakota

Edited by William Caraher and Kyle Conway

In 2008, the Bakken went boom. Thanks to advances in hydraulic fracturing, oil production in western North Dakota exploded. As the price of oil went up, so did the oil rigs. People came from all over the country (and the world) in search of work, and cities and towns struggled to keep up. This book is about the challenges they faced. It is about the human dimensions of the boom, as told by artists, poets, journalists, and scholars. It captures the boom at its peak, before the price of oil fell and the boom went bust.

ISBN-13: 978-0692643686
https://doi.org/10.31356/dpb004

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Sixty Years of Boom and Bust: The Impact of Oil in North Dakota, 1958-2018

Edited by Kyle Conway

In the 1950s, North Dakota experienced its first oil boom in the Williston Basin, on the western side of the state. The region experienced unprecedented social and economic changes, which were carefully documented in a 1958 report by four researchers at the University of North Dakota.

ISBN-13: 978-1734506839
https://doi.org/10.31356/dpb014

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The Beast: Making a Living on a Dying Planet (Expanded Digital Edition)

Written by Nicole Burton and Hugh Goldring. Edited by Patrick McCurdy

Set in Alberta, The Beast sinks its fangs into one of the toughest questions of our time: Would you rather starve next week when the economy crashes, or in 50 years when the ecosystem collapses?

ISBN-13: 987-1-7328410-9-3

Download expanded digital edition pdf  |  Purchase original comic from Ad Astra Comix (Canada) or AK Press (USA)  |  More information