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.
The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota 