Regions are important and complex textured threads in the tapestry of any nation’s culture. A slippery, silky mixture of nature, culture, and specific historical moments, regions offer one framework for understanding who people are (identity), what happened to whom (history), how they make sense of their local environment (space and place), and what they can look forward to (the future). Regions are tools to organize similarities in one area of a very large and complex national and global surface. Regions are elusive and attractive cultural phenomena because they are never fixed or unchanging.
Regions often do not make sense on their own; indeed, people need other regions placed in relationship to their region of study so that they can compare and contrast and ultimately draw a boundary line between them. For example, understanding the American North and its meaning in American culture is a great deal harder if the American South is not included. This relationship raises the question: where is the Great Plains in relation to other regions, and how do regional dwellers understand that relationship? For some, the Plains is merely an extension of the Middle West or Midwest; for others, the Plains forms the eastern part of the much larger region of the American West. For yet others, the Great Plains is a distinct and important part of the American regional fabric.
In understanding the Great Plains region, three characteristics need to be appreciated: first, the region’s environmental context; second, the ways in which the region’s populations have been in flux since prehistoric settlement; and finally, the ways in which regionalism itself and the Great Plains region have been understood and studied in the twentieth century.
