14: Standing in a Raging River: How Post‑Truth Carves Idaho’s Sociocultural Landscape

Idaho is a land of abundant natural beauty, especially majestic mountains and raging rivers. It is a land of wide-open spaces. Even today, nearly 67% of Idaho’s territory is public land. Most of the state’s population is confined to the southwest quadrant of the state, in the Treasure Valley Historically, Idahoans have had the luxury of rugged individualism because there were so few people in the state. Of course, what today is the state of Idaho was carved from appropriated ancestral lands of five federally recognized tribes: The Shoshone-Bannock, the Shoshone-Paiute, the Coeur D’Alene, the Kootenai, and the Nez Perce (District of Idaho | Tribal Lands, 2017), who did not enjoy the luxuries of being “left alone” from outside encroachment.