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to the frontier The frontier is still out there, today's author reports,
enduring beyond the Western myth but with a still tough and stark reality. It
starts, she says, with the 9 million people still eking out a living there. TODAY'S BYLINE: Miller is the founder and executive director of
the Frontier Education Center and The National Clearinghouse for Frontier
Communities in Santa Fe. She lives in the Northern New Mexico mountain village of Ojo
Sarco, which she considers the frontier town. NEW FRONTIER During the past year, The Albuquerque Tribune published a series
of articles about the enduring American frontier and the metaphor of a
"Buffalo Commons." This series, which reprinted lectures from the "Visions for
the American West" series at the University of New Mexico, explored a variety
of issues important to the frontier and the communities that exist there. The paper presented the diverse work, among others, of Charles
Little, of the American Land Publishing Project in Placitas; Peter Letherby,
from the Writers on the Range series; and university professors Deborah Popper
(City University of New York) and Frank Popper (Rutgers), who for more than
twenty years have laid out the statistical reality of the de-population of the
plains and the ecological opportunities there. Earlier work by the Poppers inspired another movement, which is
less well known and, some might say, less controversial. It is dedicated to improving the lives of people who live in
frontier communities. It is led by the Frontier Education Center and the National Clearinghouse
for Frontier Communities, based in Santa Fe. And it assumes that people were and still are a part of the
frontier landscape. Carol Miller *** By Carol Miller Buried deep in the American consciousness is the idea of an
American frontier; wild and loved by some, loathed and needing to be tamed by
others. Beginning with the first storytelling versions taught in
elementary school, every student learns the fundamental myths and concepts. Myths blur with facts: Manifest Destiny; movies showing
gunslingers and the occasional American Indian; and, Frederick Jackson Turner. Turner, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, made a
speech in 1893, declaring after the 1890 census, that the frontier was gone -
after which it evaporated from the national consciousness. But guess what? It's still there. Separating myths from facts, we now recognize the rich diversity
of native peoples, languages, and cultures, the wildlife, and natural history
of this continent - before it was conquered and colonized, and before
indigenous people, who had lived in that "frontier" for centuries,
were nearly eliminated. This is the hidden region in the United States, the enduring
American frontier, a term as volatile as the myths that still surround it. The center
seeks to be a voice for the unique character of these places in the hope of
sustaining and preserving them. Using the center's Consensus Definition, this region is 56 percent
of the land area, yet contains fewer than 4 percent of the population of the
U.S. These areas share only a sparse population and an isolation of more than
an hour's travel time from the cities, suburbs and small towns - where the
remaining 96 percent of Americans live. While Turner used only population density to describe frontier,
the center's Consensus Definition takes modern life into account. It uses a
matrix that weights population density with travel time and distance to
services or a market center as more accurate and contemporary frontier. The center was inspired by Rutgers University land use professor
Frank Popper - who spoke about these issues last year at the University of New
Mexico. His academic articles revealed that although a frontier line no longer
exists, huge tracts of the country still are very sparsely populated and are
losing people. His work got noticed and appeared in the popular media. One
article caught the eye of a community health clinic director in Mullen,
Nebraska, the heart of the barely populated Sand Hills region. He and the
people in Mullen knew that they faced unique barriers in struggling to maintain
a health care system for themselves. They sought changes in federal policy.
Mullen's Hooker County today has a total population of only 783, a density of
just a person per square mile. Their efforts lead to what became the Frontier Healthcare Task
Force. By 1986, the federal government, the American Public Health Association
and the National Rural Health Association all had formal policies recognizing
the unique circumstances and needs of isolated or "frontier,"
communities. A decade later, it was obvious that a national frontier voice was
needed and the Frontier Education Center incorporated. Its focus expanded as it
became apparent that, in the smallest, most isolated communities, health care couldn't
be studied apart from other economics. The center uses the holistic Healthy Communities model, which
includes physical, emotional, economic, cultural, spiritual and environmental
health as all necessary to community health. Federal dominance Aside from being small and isolated, frontier communities exist in
areas largely under the control of the United States government, through the
military or other agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park
Service or the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. And, while the Great Plains region is primarily privately owned,
in many ways federal agricultural policy rules there. Which is why, despite diverse geographical homes, most frontier
people share being wary of the "Feds." Not surprisingly then, the
center sees the best policy solutions coming from frontier communities,
filtering upward to state and federal officials. It spreads these ideas and
frontier news through its national clearinghouse, so that communities can learn
from each other. Last year the center began its Innovations series, case studies
that highlight a community's success. The first case study was HMS Inc. in Lordsburg, N.M. HMS began as
a county hospital, closed in 1979 and then became an on-again, off-again
medical practice. When mining began to shut down in Grant and Hidalgo Counties,
HMS brought people together to dig in, support and expand its health care
system. Now HMS has evolved into a large, stable health care system in a
brand-new facility, as well as evolving into the county economic development
agency, folding economic health into its health care mission. The center also has addressed behavioral health problems in frontier communities, recognized that some actually are doing quite a lot for themselves with very few resources. These range from an Alaska program to train community members as behavioral health aides - providing mental health, domestic crisis or substance abuse counseling - to a University of New Mexico innovation of providing computers to isolated mental health patients, enabling them to be in "online support groups" and to communicate by e-mail with care givers. The center also has identified "Structural Barriers,"
like laws or regulations, that discriminate against small communities. It
helped create a new kind of health facility, the Frontier Extended Stay Clinic
(FESC) - smaller than a hospital, bigger than a clinic, with limited inpatient
capability. We revealed in 1998 that frontier clinics were holding patients for
extended stays - usually due to weather or quality of care issues and were
paying a penalty of not being reimbursed for them. Now, only five years later, these problems are being addressed in
a national FESC demonstration at clinics in Alaska. These and other examples illustrate that frontier issues only
begin with demographics, land use or ecological challenges. Above all, we believe that the frontier is a peopled landscape. It
is not the empty, wide, open spaces "outsiders" see on maps, flyovers
or drives to somewhere else. Our challenge is to figure out how to bring the frontier myth face
to face with our frontier reality. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |