The fourth annual Eccles Rural West Conference is in the books, after a day and a half of wide-ranging conversation and debate about the past, present, and future of the rural American West.
2016's conference theme will be “People and Place in the Rural American West.” The interconnected relationship between people and place is a defining characteristic of the rural American West. The way people experience the American West is closely connected to their sense of the West as a physical place: large coastal cities, small mountain towns, agricultural valleys, and vast stretches of uninhabited terrain. And this relationship continues to shape our understanding of the region’s past, present, and future. Through panels addressing rural public opinion, housing and homelessness, health care and access, tribal law and policy, and public lands and natural resources, the conference seeks to revisit this basic question: how has the relationship between people and place continued to define the rural American West and its communities?
Read the Montana Issues Survey published by the Lane Center in preparation for the 2016 Rural West Conference.
Agenda
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Informal Reception and Keynote
Friday, March 18, 2016
Breakfast and Welcome
Bruce E. Cain
Eccles Family Faculty Director, The Bill Lane Center for the American West
Panel 1: Issues in the Rural West
Panel 2: A Western Sense of Place: Definitions, Relationships, and Expressions
Panel 3: Home(less) on the Range: Rural Housing and Homelessness
Panel 4: Perspectives on Tribal Law and Policy in the Rural West
Dinner and Keynote
Steve Bullock
Governor of Montana
David Brady
Stanford University
Introduction