Nevadans worry as never before that they are doomed to remain a colony of wealthy, populous neighboring California. But a strange new drama is unfolding in the state as a love of the harsh, moody land unites long-time foes. PNS editor Franz Schurmann, a professor emeritus of history and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, is working on a book on social capital.

AUSTIN, NEVADA -- Is it crazy to think of colonialism becoming a problem right here in the U.S.A.? Not if you look at what's happening in Nevada (poor with 1.4 million people) right next door to California (rich with 29.8 million people).

Colonialism means two things: a level of dependency such that if the master decides to cut you off, you're finished; and lack of self-respect, such that you have no sense of your own identity. Nevadans are grappling with both syndromes.

As more and more casinos go up in California the day may not be far off -- especially if the recession continues -- that across-the-board gambling will be legalized in the Golden State. If that happens Nevada's "gaming" dependent economy will be ravaged. More and more Nevadans are now thinking about such a calamity.

Even if the gaming revenues keep coming in, Nevadans harbor another deep fear -- losing their identity and self-respect. Ever since Nevada became a territory in 1861 Nevadans have refused to accept the stigma of being California's "sin" state. Now they see themselves doting on leisure-seeking Californians in the same way Hindus were once depicted fawning over British pukkha sahibs.

Nevadans have always found their models in their own ranchers, herdsmen and Indian -- people who graze their animals far and wide seeking scarce mountain meadows, characters immortalized in Robert Laxalt's novels.

Ironically, the most imminent threat to these rugged individualists comes not from gambling and whoring interests but from environmentalists. With 87 percent of the state's thinly populated land owned by the federal government, environmentalists believe they stand a good chance of being able to turn these public lands into preservationist wilderness. Success would score a triumph for the movement similar to what it achieved in Alaska.

For that to happen cattle and sheep have to vanish from public grazing lands, and water allocations for the state's tiny agricultural sector have to be slashed. An environmental victory could mean in short that by the year 2000 no more cattle and sheep will roam the mountains of Nevada's Great Basin interior.

Even without the environmentalist pressure, ranching and herding could face extinction. The work is hard, the returns meager. A typical ranching family here, after paying immense bills, nets only $12,000 per year to support six children. Together with the steady erosion of grazing rights by the Bureau of Land Management, such economic pressures are prompting more and more young people to flee from the land, reluctant to pursue their parents' arduous path.

Today the entire herding, farming and mining sector of the state accounts for just over two percent of the workforce. Well over half of all Nevadans, meanwhile, make their living in the "gaming" or government sectors. The entire staff of the university system owe their paychecks to gambling revenues.

For many Nevadans accepting the status quo as their fate means abandoning their soul. Resistance runs strong and there is one new factor that could work to the resisters' advantage. Both ranchers and a small but growing number of environmentalists are beginning to realize that they need each other.

Behind the recognition of mutual interdependence is a startling discovery: the grassy meadows from which grazing animals have been banished are turning into hard-soil, thistle-infested desert. While ranchers acknowledge that in the past they were guilty of overgrazing, more and more environmentalists are acknowledging that undergrazing turns the soil hard and prevents aeration which trampling animals bring about. The proposal now on the table is for the two erstwhile enemies to work together for managed grazing that will serve public as well as ranchers' and herders' interests.

The offer is part of a larger drama unfolding in Nevada: a mutual love of the harsh and moody Nevada land is beginning to bind other long-time foes together -- not just ranchers, herders, American Indians but newer arrivals, many of them immigrants, working in casino or government jobs, in mining, in universities and corporations, or simply as loners. A sense is arising that only two categories of people matter -- those who live, work and identify with Nevada and those who are transient.

In classical colonies the natives finally united to wrest their destiny from the hands of power-holding transients. In Nevada the movement for liberation is aided and abetted by a long-term historic trend of devolution of power away from the federal center. Even as state dependency on the federal government erodes, colonial-type dependencies such as that between Nevada and California are also weakening.

More and more Nevadans are coming to believe self-reliance -- both economic and spiritual -- is the only way pathway to a viable future for themselves and their children.