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Show 116 Chapter Five. For the Benefit of All Americans. The federally controlled lands are to be used in the best interest of the people, but which people? The ones who want to use it now to make a living? Or those who wish to preserve the lands for themselves and future generations so that they can hunt, fish, hike, or pursue solitude in a world vihich grovis more crovided every year. As Jan Knight went about her work among real sagebrush in the Henry Mountains, the Sagebrush Rebellion gathered momentum and became even more heated. Utah's Senator Orrin Hatch introduced a bill into the United States Senate, a bill vihich he says is designed to transfer title of public lands "to the state capital, and from there to county authorities, and ultimately, to private citizens." It is considered unlikely that the bill will pass Congress. In the first week of September, 1979. a Sagebrush Rebellion "summit conference" took place in Reno, Nevada. Attorneys general, legislators, and county commissioners from ten Western states joined forces to plan a states' battle for federal lands. With Senator Hatch as the keynote speaker, the oratory grew inflamed. "I have come to you today," he said, "to ask you to join me in this second American revolution. If the Western states are ever to assume our rightful place, equal with other states of the Union, we must throw off the shackles in which the federal government now holds the destiny of the West." He said that the government's disdain for property rights and |