tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/malheur-wildlife-refuge-23768/articlesMalheur Wildlife Refuge – La Conversation2019-10-23T12:32:06Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1250322019-10-23T12:32:06Z2019-10-23T12:32:06ZThey’re not all racist nut jobs – and 4 other observations about the patriot militia movement<p>The so-called patriot movement is grabbing headlines once again, as its members pledge to <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/anti-government-group-escort-minneapolis-trump-rally-1464170">protect Trump supporters</a> at the president’s campaign rallies <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2019/10/11/militia-style-group-oath-keepers-will-be-in-dallas-for-trump-rally/">across the country</a>.</p>
<p>For the past three years, we have studied the rise of the patriots while reporting, writing and editing a nonfiction book, “<a href="https://www.benbellabooks.com/shop/up-in-arms/">Up In Arms: How the Bundy Family Hijacked Public Lands, Outfoxed the Federal Government and Ignited America’s Patriot Militia Movement</a>.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297955/original/file-20191021-56234-15vbaym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297955/original/file-20191021-56234-15vbaym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297955/original/file-20191021-56234-15vbaym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297955/original/file-20191021-56234-15vbaym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297955/original/file-20191021-56234-15vbaym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297955/original/file-20191021-56234-15vbaym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297955/original/file-20191021-56234-15vbaym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297955/original/file-20191021-56234-15vbaym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Oath Keepers issued an alert for volunteers to patrol a Trump rally in Minneapolis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20191021163217/https://oathkeepers.org/2019/10/alert-volunteers-needed-to-protect-trump-supporters-at-minneapolis-trump-rally/">Internet Archive</a></span>
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<p>The patriot movement is a fragmented and fractious coalition of groups that distrust the federal government. Members believe the government is impeding their “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/05/21/armed-with-guns-and-constitutions-the-patriot-movement-sees-america-under-threat/">land rights, gun rights, freedom of speech and other liberties</a>.”</p>
<p>As the book took shape and we talked about our reporting with friends and colleagues, most were dismissive of the people at the center of the story: Cliven and Ammon Bundy. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/mormon-religionjustify-extreme-anti-government-ideology-cliven-bundy-case-746698">Bundys are Mormon ranchers</a> who became the movement’s guiding lights after the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/us/bundy-ranch-standoff-case-charges-dismissed.html">2014 standoff at Bundy Ranch</a> and <a href="https://www.opb.org/news/series/burns-oregon-standoff-bundy-militia-news-updates/">2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge</a>. Our friends and colleagues saw the Bundys and their supporters as “racist nut jobs” and nothing more. As <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/05/21/armed-with-guns-and-constitutions-the-patriot-movement-sees-america-under-threat/">reporter Kevin Sullivan wrote in a 2016 story for the Washington Post</a>, law enforcement agrees with this assessment, calling the patriots “dangerous, delusional and sometimes violent.”</p>
<p>While these descriptors certainly fit individual patriots, our take on the movement is less black and white. Here’s what we learned:</p>
<h2>1. The so-called “patriot movement,” also known as the “patriot militia movement,” isn’t really a movement and is not made up entirely of militia members.</h2>
<p>While movements are usually associated with a specific ideology or shared purpose, that’s not quite the case with the patriots. They are motivated by a varied and sometimes conflicting array of issues. Many focus on <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2013/once-again-gun-control-spurs-%E2%80%98patriots%E2%80%99">gun rights</a> and <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/antigovernment">immigration</a>; others get riled up about <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2010/02/25/microchip-implantation-feared-sign-end-times">privacy</a>, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2010/02/18/irs-long-target-antigovernment-extremists">taxes</a> or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/05/21/armed-with-guns-and-constitutions-the-patriot-movement-sees-america-under-threat/?utm_term=.ba90d037c11c">government overreach</a>. They disagree often and are united only by a general resentment of the federal government. </p>
<p>Even the patriots’ chosen name reflects the disjointed nature of their union. Because some anti-government groups were (and continue to be) associated with racist and anti-Semitic causes or violence, <a href="http://www.rop.org/up-in-arms/up-in-arms-section-i/patriot-movement-historically-nationally/patriot-movement-past-present/">leaders adopted the “patriot” name</a> for public relations purposes in the 1990s.</p>
<p>And many who identify as patriots support but do not officially belong to militias, which are organized paramilitary groups that believe they are the last line of defense against an overreaching federal government.</p>
<h2>2. Each group has its own agenda, but they are united by a fear of environmental regulation.</h2>
<p>The Bundys love to remind anyone who will listen that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/upshot/why-the-government-owns-so-much-land-in-the-west.html">almost half of the landmass of the western states is controlled by the federal government</a>. </p>
<p>The patriots have created a <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/antigovernment">corresponding master theory</a> about what they see as an unconstitutional land grab: A small group of global, ultra-wealthy people is purposely implementing environmental regulations and gun laws to make it impossible for rural Americans to earn a living or fight back. Patriots believe those elites want the land, the gold, the oil and the coal for themselves.</p>
<p>In June, Oregon Republican lawmakers fled the State Capitol so there wouldn’t be the quorum needed to vote on a climate change bill that would have forced companies to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-rogue-republicans-killed-oregons-climate-change-bill">adopt technologies to reduce overall pollution</a>. The legislation was extremely unpopular with rural voters and patriot militia groups who said they were guarding multiple senators who had holed up in Idaho. The <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2019/06/oregon-republican-senators-walkout-what-you-need-to-know-today.html">Oregon State Capitol shut down</a> amid fears that militia groups would cause chaos.</p>
<p><a href="https://news3lv.com/archive/timeline-history-of-land-dispute-between-cliven-bundy-and-the-blm">Cliven Bundy himself first clashed</a> with the federal government in the early 1990s, when federal land agencies instituted new environmental regulations that would have made it financially impossible for him to continue ranching. </p>
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<span class="caption">Cliven Bundy, before giving the keynote address to the state convention of the Independent American Party of Nevada, Feb. 23, 2018, in Sparks, Nevada.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Ranching-Standoff-Bundy-Speech/012307a8bd814ab1ab839e123cc042bf/6/0">AP/Scott Sonner</a></span>
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<p>Almost all of the other ranchers in his area sold their operations, but Cliven took another tack: He quit paying grazing fees to the federal government and declared that the feds shouldn’t own land in the first place. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/8/14/18080508/nevada-rancher-cliven-bundy-explained">This set up the clash, two decades later</a>, that made him a leader in the patriot movement.</p>
<h2>3. Some groups are stubbornly bigoted, but others hate to be seen as racist.</h2>
<p>Patriot groups tend to be nearly <a href="https://www.routledge.com/American-Extremism-History-Politics-and-the-Militia-Movement/Mulloy/p/book/9780415483803">all white and mostly male</a>, with at least <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/moorish-sovereign-citizens">one notable exception</a>. We encountered only a handful of people of color during our reporting of “Up In Arms.” We also met many patriots who wished their organizations were more diverse, if only to better counter the perception of widespread racism in their ranks.</p>
<p>This is especially true for the Bundys. Weeks after the 2014 standoff, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/us/politics/rancher-proudly-breaks-the-law-becoming-a-hero-in-the-west.html">Cliven gave an infamous speech to his supporters about “the Negro,”</a> suggesting that African Americans might have been better off under slavery. <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/04/cliven-bundy-how-conservaties-reacted-racism.html">Politicians and media figures</a> who formerly supported Bundy backed away en masse. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=agXns-W60MI">Video of Cliven’s speech</a> shows an old man who, however offensively, appears to be trying to embrace minority communities and bring them into the anti-federal government fold.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.rop.org/up-in-arms/up-in-arms-section-i/patriot-movement-historically-nationally/racism-identity-movement/">Some patriots have renounced racism and anti-Semitism</a>, seeing those as drags on their more-popular pro-gun and anti-federal government messages. That said, we witnessed an uptick in anti-Muslim and anti-Latino online activity among individual patriots, especially after Trump’s election.</p>
<h2>4. Patriots are not all Trump supporters.</h2>
<p>A few months after Trump took office, we witnessed an argument at a patriot gathering over one man unfurling a Trump flag. No matter how much Trump seemed to share the patriots’ loathing of the federal government, he was now that government’s leader, and certain purists couldn’t abide it. </p>
<p>The Bundys have a complex relationship with Trump. In 2014, when he was still a developer and reality TV star, Trump announced his allegiance with what Fox News had <a href="https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20140412_060000_On_the_Record_With_Greta_Van_Susteren">labeled “Team Cliven Bundy.”</a></p>
<p>“I like (Cliven’s) spirit, his spunk,” <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/donald-trump-on-the-lack-of-respect-for-america.amp">Trump said on Sean Hannity’s show</a>, “and I like the people that – you know, they’re so loyal…” </p>
<p>But during the 2016 campaign, <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/12/woke-ammon-bundy-unlikely-resistance-figure.html">Cliven, a devout Mormon, was disturbed by</a> political advertisements that showed Trump speaking crudely about women and seemingly mocking a disabled reporter. On the other hand, Trump supported the Second Amendment and exhibited disdain for the federal government. In November 2016, the <a href="http://bundyranch.blogspot.com/2016/11/get-out-and-vote.html">Bundy Ranch blog</a> posted a somewhat oblique Trump endorsement, a picture of Cliven on horseback hoisting the Stars and Stripes under the superimposed words: “Blow your ‘Trumpence!’ VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!” </p>
<p>But two years later, Cliven’s son, Ammon, surprised many when he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/28/ammon-bundy-breaks-with-trump-anti-migrant-rhetoric-its-all-fear-based/">disavowed Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric</a>.</p>
<h2>Complex makeup</h2>
<p>As the patriot movement returns to the public eye, it is important to understand that its members’ political views – including a profound <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/">distrust of government</a> and <a href="https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4118&context=lcp">environmental regulations</a> – have a long history in the U.S. </p>
<p>Further, those views are not monolithic. Many of their ideas are from the fringe of political debate. But during the time we spent talking to patriots, we found that, despite public perceptions, few appeared to be mentally ill or outwardly racist. Instead, their grievances and principles stem from a range of motivations, personal circumstances and political philosophies.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The popular perception of right-wing patriot militia members is that they are racist, violent and crazy. The authors of a new book about them say that’s not the whole story.Hollee S. Temple, Teaching Professor of Law, West Virginia UniversityJohn Temple, Professor, Reed College of Media, West Virginia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/678962016-11-08T11:09:28Z2016-11-08T11:09:28ZWhy the court ‘victory’ for Malheur militants was anything but<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144733/original/image-20161106-27904-z2z89q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ammon Bundy speaks to local ranchers in January 2016 urging them – unsuccessfully – to take up armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter A. Walker</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ammon Bundy lost. This might sound strange in light of many recent headlines pronouncing the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/bundys-found-not-guilty-oregon-standoff-trial/">stunning acquittals</a> of Bundy and his six codefendants in a federal court, as well as Bundy’s own <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2016/11/01/c45bdf4e-a04c-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html">triumphal statements</a> following the verdicts. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, by the measure of Bundy’s own stated goals, his occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, was an abject failure. </p>
<p>Bundy was defeated not by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or by federal prosecutors. Instead, he was defeated by the majority of ordinary citizens in Harney County who stood steadfastly against Bundy’s plan. </p>
<p>I spent several weeks there during the occupation last January and witnessed this rejection firsthand. Bundy lost in large part because the community has been working hard for decades to find collaborative solutions that address grievances with federal land management without resorting to the confrontational methods of the militants. </p>
<h2>A crucial meeting</h2>
<p>When Ammon Bundy led the seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, he was anything but shy about his demands. He stood almost daily before throngs of reporters and banks of microphones and television cameras declaring that his objectives were to free <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/eastern-oregon-ranchers-convicted-arson-resentenced-five-years-prison">convicted Harney County ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond</a> and to give the land in the refuge “back” to loggers, ranchers and miners. </p>
<p>More quietly but very clearly, Bundy declared that his goal was to make Harney County into an example of a “<a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sej-oregon-standoff-20160116-story.html">federal-free</a>” county that would serve as a model for other communities already “on the edge.” Essentially, he declared sovereignty from a federal government that he repeatedly insisted had invalidated itself through “overreach” of its constitutional authority. Bundy’s goal was not to win a battle in a federal court or to rally his followers; his goal was to inspire a grassroots revolution that would create a largely federal-free rural America.</p>
<p>Thus, by Bundy’s own definition of success, he failed. The Hammonds are still in prison, and Bundy’s own actions virtually guarantee President Obama will not grant them clemency. Not a single acre of land in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was transferred to local ownership. The federal government remains in authority over as much rural land as it did the day Bundy staged his armed takeover.</p>
<p>The key to Bundy’s failure was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXJwMSjwYQw&feature=youtu.be">staunch resistance</a> from the very people he presumed would gladly become the foot soldiers in his revolution: Harney County ranchers. </p>
<p>On Jan. 18, 2016, Bundy held a crucial meeting with about 30 Harney County ranchers in the tiny rural hamlet of Crane, Oregon, which I attended. Bundy insisted that the federal government had become a “corrupt” and “tyrannical” force, and that it could be driven out by even a small number of local ranchers if only they “took a stand.” His voice rising, Bundy implored the ranchers: “Now is the time, Harney County is the place, and you are the people.” Bundy assured the ranchers that he and his armed supporters would provide “defense,” and that the government would back down.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144736/original/image-20161106-27904-12lzeax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144736/original/image-20161106-27904-12lzeax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144736/original/image-20161106-27904-12lzeax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144736/original/image-20161106-27904-12lzeax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144736/original/image-20161106-27904-12lzeax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144736/original/image-20161106-27904-12lzeax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144736/original/image-20161106-27904-12lzeax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144736/original/image-20161106-27904-12lzeax.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ranchers from Harney County challenged Bundy’s call for rebellion on Jan. 23, 2016, and not one joined him when he asked them to come to a ceremony to tear up their ranching contracts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter A. Walker</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bundy, along with his brother Ryan and LaVoy Finicum, literally begged Harney County ranchers to come to the Malheur refuge on Jan. 23 for a ceremony pledging to tear up their federal grazing contracts. While some of the ranchers in the room expressed agreement about Bundy’s frustrations with federal land management, none was willing to heed Bundy’s call to tear up their federal grazing contracts. </p>
<p>One Harney County rancher told Bundy there must be “other means” to achieve their goals. Another Harney County rancher directly confronted Bundy, stating “I’m not going to fight an uphill battle that’s not going to be won.” On Jan. 23, not a single Harney County rancher took up Bundy’s call. One rancher from New Mexico came and took the pledge, but several months later <a href="http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2016/03/28/forest-service-increases-rogue-ranchers-use-by-70-for-2016/">renewed his U.S. Forest Service grazing contract</a>. </p>
<h2>Poster child for effective work</h2>
<p>Why did no Harney County rancher take up Bundy’s call? Tellingly, at the Crane meeting the rancher who declared his refusal to pursue a “battle that’s not going to be won” proposed instead to form local boards to provide input to federal land management agencies – a collaborative approach that has been widely and successfully used in Harney County. </p>
<p>In fact, Harney County is widely known as a poster child of collaborative methods to address precisely the tensions between local communities and federal agencies that Bundy spoke about. The ranchers were not denying problems exist – they were declaring that they had better, peaceful methods to resolve those problems, and they did not need Bundy to tell them what to do.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144737/original/image-20161106-27947-j63rym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144737/original/image-20161106-27947-j63rym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144737/original/image-20161106-27947-j63rym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144737/original/image-20161106-27947-j63rym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144737/original/image-20161106-27947-j63rym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144737/original/image-20161106-27947-j63rym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144737/original/image-20161106-27947-j63rym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144737/original/image-20161106-27947-j63rym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harney County in eastern Oregon is a poster child for finding solutions to conservation and economic goals by collaborating with federal agencies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.fws.gov/endangered/map/ESA_success_stories/OR/OR_story4/index.html">Brent Lawrence/USFWS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The evidence of their effective and practical methods goes far back. In 2000, Harney County ranchers and the federal government established the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection agreement. In 2005, Harney County ranchers established the widely celebrated <a href="http://highdesertpartnership.org/who-we-are/mission.html">High Desert Partnership</a> to promote collaborative problem-solving. In 2013 Harney County ranchers along with the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge staff created the pioneering <a href="https://www.fws.gov/uploadedFiles/Region_1/NWRS/Zone_2/Malheur/Documents/MalheurNWR_FCCP_table_contents.pdf">Malheur Comprehensive Conservation Plan</a>. In 2015 Harney County ranchers created a <a href="https://www.fws.gov/endangered/map/ESA_success_stories/OR/OR_story4/index.html">plan</a> for managing sage grouse that became a model for many other rural communities. </p>
<p>These projects seek to meet both conservation goals and the economic needs of the community. When Bundy spoke of “overreaching” federal authority and the need for armed rebellion, many Harney County ranchers saw Bundy’s approach as an unnecessary bridge too far. As one Harney County rancher stated, “collaboration is what inoculated us from the Bundy virus.”</p>
<h2>Problems with Bundy’s methods</h2>
<p>To be clear, there was and is <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/10/ammon_bundy_testifies_about_ho.html">considerable sympathy</a> in Harney County for the concerns expressed by Ammon Bundy and his followers. In several county elections after the end of the Malheur occupation that were widely viewed as <a href="http://www.opb.org/news/series/election-2016/harney-county-vote-armed-occupation-opposition/">referendums on the Bundy ideology</a>, the proportion of the local electorate that supported candidates and positions seen as sympathetic to Bundy’s views <a href="http://www.opb.org/news/series/burns-oregon-standoff-bundy-militia-news-updates/oregon-harney-voters-reject-recall-against-judge-steve-grasty/">ranged from about 20 percent to 30 percent</a>.</p>
<p>Even among these sympathizers, however, the number of Harney County citizens who supported Bundy’s methods was much smaller based on what I have observed and been told after spending months in the community. At the time of the occupation even some members of the Harney County Committee of Safety (a parallel-governmental organization established by Bundy and still operating) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoT8A75sVIE">spoke strongly against Bundy’s methods</a>.</p>
<p>The community’s overwhelming rejection of Ammon Bundy’s radical methods in Harney County was the death knell for his revolution – at least for now. Consider if the community had flocked to Bundy’s side as he implored them to do. Federal authorities would have had a law enforcement problem of an unprecedented scale and any violent outcome could well have sparked widespread rebellion across rural America. As U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell later observed, through collaboration <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/03/contrary_to_oregon_standoff_cl.html">disaster was averted</a>.</p>
<p>Bundy lost. For that we have the community and ranchers of Harney County to thank.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67896/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Militants who took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon – and were acquitted of charges – ultimately failed because local ranchers saw a better way to deal with federal agencies.Peter Walker, Professor of Geography, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/681342016-11-03T23:01:09Z2016-11-03T23:01:09ZHistory points to more dangerous Malheur-style standoffs<p>The acquittal of Ammon Bundy and other militia members who occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon last January leaves our public lands and the people who steward them in a vulnerable position. Indeed, it puts a target on their backs.</p>
<p>The Bundy family has said as much. “The government should be scared,” Ryan Bundy <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2016/11/01/c45bdf4e-a04c-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html">asserted</a> to the Washington Post less than a week after their acquittal. “They are in the wrong. The land does not belong to the government. The land belongs to the people of Clark County, not to the people of the United States.” When asked whether he and fellow militiamen had the right to take up arms to assert their control of the public land, Bundy declared: “Ask George Washington.” </p>
<p>This brazen and unapologetic rhetoric is a striking contrast to the Oregon jury’s carefully tailored language about their decision to free those men who bore arms against the federal government. As <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/10/juror_4_prosecutors_in_oregon.html">one juror</a> told the Portland Oregonian in response to the post-verdict uproar: “Don’t they know that ‘not guilty’ does not mean innocent?” </p>
<p>Clearly the militants, whose actions echo 20th-century Sagebrush Rebellions to take local control of public lands, know no such thing. For them the verdict offered an affirming message which, in my view, imperils the public servants who protect our lands in the face of a long history of threats and violence. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144468/original/image-20161103-25346-1jy7d1k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144468/original/image-20161103-25346-1jy7d1k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144468/original/image-20161103-25346-1jy7d1k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144468/original/image-20161103-25346-1jy7d1k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144468/original/image-20161103-25346-1jy7d1k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144468/original/image-20161103-25346-1jy7d1k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144468/original/image-20161103-25346-1jy7d1k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144468/original/image-20161103-25346-1jy7d1k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sagebrush Rebellion rally in 1980 on July 4 in Grand County, Utah. The roots of today’s disputes echo violent protests in the 1970s and 1980s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sagebrush_Rebellion_July_4th,_1980_Grand_County_Utah.JPG">TheRealDeJureTour/wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Debate over public lands has been a crucial part of my scholarship, but it also contains a personal dimension: For the past three decades I have been helping to train Forest Service leaders at all levels of the organization. A key part of my contribution to their studies has been the impact of the Sagebrush Rebellion, past and present, on the management and managers of our public lands. This close relationship leaves me deeply concerned for their safety.</p>
<h2>History of violence</h2>
<p>My worry is also framed within the larger political context: The Bundy verdict will play into the hands of those political forces – state legislatures, governors and congressional representatives – who have been <a href="https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/">scheming</a> to force the sale or the giving away of U.S. public lands to the individual states. The Republican Party platform is on record as being in full support of this <a href="https://theconversation.com/dems-and-the-gop-are-miles-apart-on-yet-another-issue-public-lands-65772">dismantling of our system of national forests, parks and refuges</a>.</p>
<p>Ammon Bundy and his followers make the same case. In a post-trial press conference, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/10/28/off-the-charts-unbelievable-will-acquittal-of-oregon-refuge-occupiers-embolden-extremists-militias/">the defendants</a> underscored their posture as patriots, who by dint of arms have defended the Constitution from an overly aggressive federal government. </p>
<p>As for the group’s possession of weapons, that is described in the most benign terms: “For these defendants and these people, having a firearm has nothing to do with a threat or anything else,” Bundy defense attorney Matthew Schindler <a href="http://absoluterights.com/bundy-clan-is-free/">declared</a>. “It’s as much a statement of their rural culture as a cowboy hat or a pair of jeans. I think the jury believed at the end of the day that that’s why the guns were there.” </p>
<p>However folksy his language, it masks the historical reality that such threats to public servants protecting public lands have been commonplace for more than a century. </p>
<p>No sooner had Congress in 1891 granted the executive branch the power to redesignate federal lands as national forests and to establish regulations for their use, than some westerners rose up in opposition. The grazing, mining and lumbering industries chafed at the small fees they were required to pay for the resources they once took at will. As I observe in my analysis of the Malheur occupation in my new book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Not-Golden-State-Sustainability-California/dp/1595347828">“Not So Golden State</a>,” they fought back in the federal court system courts, and lost every test case. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144476/original/image-20161103-25356-v2vf87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144476/original/image-20161103-25356-v2vf87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144476/original/image-20161103-25356-v2vf87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144476/original/image-20161103-25356-v2vf87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144476/original/image-20161103-25356-v2vf87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144476/original/image-20161103-25356-v2vf87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144476/original/image-20161103-25356-v2vf87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144476/original/image-20161103-25356-v2vf87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Threats to employees of federal land agencies goes back to the late 19th century when Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, visited each hotspot, even one in Alaska where locals hung him in effigy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fhsarchives.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/gifford-pinchots-ten-commandments/">US Forest Service</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the ground, they took out their frustrations on the local representatives of the nascent Forest Service. The verbal and bodily threats against its employees were so omnipresent that the agency’s first chief, <a href="https://fhsarchives.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/gifford-pinchots-ten-commandments/">Gifford Pinchot</a>, made it a point to visit every hotspot to demonstrate that he had employees’ backs. And when the good citizens of Cordova, Alaska, hung Pinchot in effigy, he made certain to travel there, too.</p>
<p>Similar attacks continued across the last century. In the 1940s, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and social critic Bernard DeVoto wrote a series of essays in Harper’s that exposed how the “Landgrabbers” of his generation intimidated Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management rangers across the West, bullied the agencies’ Washington offices and used their clout to bend the U.S. House subcommittee on public lands to their will. Their threats to employ the “sterner justice” of mob violence only underscored that their “ultimate hope,” DeVoto <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/1948/07/sacred-cows-and-public-lands/">affirmed</a>, “is to destroy the established conservation policies of the United States.”</p>
<p>President Ronald Reagan fanned these flames when he came to power in 1981, arguing that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” That was music to the ears of those, like earlier generations of the Bundy family, who disdained federal land managers. </p>
<p>Egged on by right-wing talk radio commentators, verbal and physical attacks escalated. Vigilantes bombed Forest Service offices, a ranger discovered an explosive device under his truck and Elko County (Nevada) <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/16/us/court-puts-down-rebellion-over-control-of-federal-land.html">commissioners</a> used bulldozers to crash through Forest Service fencing. The agency responded by urging its staff to wear civilian clothes on the job and drive their personal vehicles to work.</p>
<h2>Fuel to the fire</h2>
<p>There is reason to suspect that this kind of coercion and violence will resume in the wake of the Malheur acquittals, just as it did in the initial aftermath of the Malheur occupation in January. Last winter, according to the nonpartisan conservation and advocacy group the <a href="https://medium.com/@WesternPriorities/armed-militants-pose-ongoing-dangerous-threat-to-government-employees-working-to-protect-americas-dc3858ff2a5b#.kabmzfjrv">Center for Western Priorities</a>, land managers reported a troubling increase in confrontations with Sagebrush-like groups on federal lands. </p>
<p>Bureau of Land Management employees received death threats and even <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2016/11/01/c45bdf4e-a04c-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html">withdrew</a> from the contentious Gold Butte rangelands on which the Bundys graze their cattle, whose archaeological treasures have since then been trashed. The Fish and Wildlife Service reported a number of confrontations with “militia” groups on refuges, which understandably intensified rangers’ fears for their welfare.</p>
<p>Their anxieties have increased post-verdict. “The danger is that we get armed invasions of all kinds of public lands and similar institutions,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/after-oregon-verdict-a-hot-debate-a-victory-for-liberty-or-license-to-intimidate/2016/10/28/3cc1372c-9d37-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html">argues</a> Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “The real danger is bloodshed.” His colleague, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2016/06/15/splc-public-support-perceived-victory-bundy-ranch-2014-emboldened-extremists-standoff">Heidi Beirich</a>, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, drives the point home: “This is a growing movement that is probably going to grow more due to this verdict because they have shown they can use armed interventions and not be punished for them.”</p>
<p>One of the <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/10/juror_4_prosecutors_in_oregon.html">Bundy jurors</a> even anticipated this dire possibility: “It was not lost on us that our verdict(s) might inspire future actions that are regrettable, but that sort of thinking was not permitted when considering the charges before us.”</p>
<p>Fair enough. But whatever regrettable “future actions” occur, it will not be the jurors who will endure them but the dedicated men and women stewarding our public lands, our most treasured terrain. Who will step up and protect them?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68134/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Char Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Acquitted in the Malheur takeover trial, Ryan Bundy urges protests against efforts to conserve public lands. Who will protect federal employees?Char Miller, W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis, Pomona CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/549432016-02-19T16:39:13Z2016-02-19T16:39:13ZMalheur occupation is over, but the war for America’s public lands rages on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112011/original/image-20160218-1233-1bb21vm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Author Peter Walker meets with Robert 'LaVoy' Finicum at the occupied Malheur National Wildlife refuge on January 20.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Occupier Jason Patrick</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: University of Oregon geography professor Peter Walker has just returned from Harney County, Oregon, where armed occupiers took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He spent several weeks attending community meetings and watching the events unfold, which he describes here.</em></p>
<p>On January 2, 2016, some 300 local citizens and outside militia members <a href="http://www.opb.org/news/series/burns-oregon-standoff-bundy-militia-news-updates/">marched in Harney County, Oregon</a>, to protest the resentencing for arson of local father-and-son ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond. </p>
<p>At stake was far more than the fate of the Hammonds. In the works was nothing less than an armed insurrection against virtually all federal ownership of land in the United States – and even against the very existence of the federal government as we know it. Had the almost surreally audacious plan succeeded, communities and economies across the American West, and the entire country, would have been changed profoundly.</p>
<p>As a researcher in the politics of public land, I went to Harney County to see what was going on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/peter.walker.31542">firsthand</a>. Having spent five weeks going back and forth between my home and the community, I’m convinced that the Malheur occupation was part of a much larger, well-funded and politically connected movement to transfer public lands to private owners. I’m also convinced it is not over, and we must expect to see more violent attempts to seize public land in the future.</p>
<h2>The spark</h2>
<p>Among the protesters in Harney County that early January day were a small number of anti-federal government activists who had been involved in the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/16/us/cliven-bundy-bail-hearing-oregon/">April 2014 armed standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada</a>, between rancher Cliven Bundy and the federal government over Bundy’s nonpayment of fees for grazing on federal land. </p>
<p>Bundy and his supporters had in effect declared war on the federal government by pointing guns at Bureau of Land Management (BLM) employees to resist the removal of his cattle from federal land. For almost two years it appeared Bundy had won (he was <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/02/nevada_rancher_cliven_bundy_de.html">arrested</a> on February 10 in Portland, Oregon, while on his way to support the Malheur occupation). </p>
<p>Taking inspiration from that perceived success, a small splinter group among the protesters hoped to launch a larger-scale rebellion. The group would later <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqL9NGRTGss">state openly</a> that they intended to make Harney County the first “constitutional” county in America – by which they meant a county where the federal government owns almost no land and has almost no direct authority. Simply put, the goal was to overthrow the federal government of the United States as we know it, through force of arms. </p>
<p>What happened next was reported extensively by journalists and social media to a national and international audience riveted by what at times seemed a bizarre spectacle. Roughly a dozen heavily armed men left the protest in the city of Burns (the seat of Harney County) and seized the then-closed headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. </p>
<h2>The case for rebellion</h2>
<p>The Malheur Refuge is an expanse of 187,757 acres designated in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect an astonishing variety of birds, including sandhill cranes, sage grouse, snow geese, tundra swans, ducks, grebes, ibises, egrets and pelicans – to name a few. The refuge provides opportunities for bird watching, hunting and grazing for local ranchers’ cattle, and is a key source of tourist revenue for the local economy. It is a critically important place for millions of migratory birds to rest and feed on their journey along the Pacific Flyway.</p>
<p>With the arrival of armed men from Nevada, Arizona, Montana and Idaho (none of the leaders were local, or even from Oregon), the Malheur Refuge was given a profoundly different role. It became center stage for the latest act in the long-running <a href="https://kuecprd.ku.edu/%7Eupress/cgi-bin/978-0-7006-1895-8.html">Sagebrush Rebellion</a> — a sometimes violent <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-twisted-roots-of-u-s-land-policy-in-the-west-52740">political movement with roots in the 1970s and 1980s</a> that aims to transfer federal land to private ownership. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112014/original/image-20160218-1236-e5s5si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112014/original/image-20160218-1236-e5s5si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112014/original/image-20160218-1236-e5s5si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112014/original/image-20160218-1236-e5s5si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112014/original/image-20160218-1236-e5s5si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112014/original/image-20160218-1236-e5s5si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112014/original/image-20160218-1236-e5s5si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112014/original/image-20160218-1236-e5s5si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Occupiers Ammon and Ryan Bundy ask Harney County Ranchers whether they will ‘live free or be a slave?’ just before imploring Harney County ranchers to break their BLM grazing leases. Taken in Crane, Oregon, on January 18.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The core leaders of the group were veterans of the 2014 armed standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada, led by Cliven Bundy, including his sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy, Arizona rancher Robert “LaVoy” Finicum and Montana militant Ryan Payne. While the occupiers at first spoke of a desire to see the sentences of Dwight and Steven Hammond overturned, in time they declared a much broader <a href="http://www.pacificpatriotsnetwork.com/downloads/Proposed%20Resoulition%20of%20Peacful%20Occupation%20-%20Malheur%20National%20Wildlife%20Refuge.pdf">agenda</a> – one consistent with the goals of national right wing groups that seek the handover of federal land to private ownership. These groups also seek the “<a href="http://krisannehall.com/nullification-the-duty-and-right-of-the-states-pt-1/">nullification</a>” of federal authority broadly and the establishment of so-called “constitutional” sheriffs who <a href="http://www.politicalresearch.org/2013/11/22/profiles-on-the-right-constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association/#sthash.gsHC3qo4.dpbs">claim authority to keep federal authorities out of their counties</a>. </p>
<p>While the press often reported on the groups’ stated goals of freeing the Hammonds and handing over land in the Malheur Refuge to private owners, the occupiers’ goals were in fact far more ambitious. </p>
<p>At a community meeting that I attended near the town of Crane, Oregon, on January 18, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, LaVoy Finicum and Ryan Payne presented their grand vision in no uncertain terms. In the audience were roughly 30 local ranchers. The Bundy group gave a lengthy presentation of their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution in which they claimed the federal government has essentially no authority beyond the powers specifically enumerated in the verbatim text of the Constitution, and that the federal government cannot own land outside Washington, D.C. except with the consent of the states. </p>
<p>Based on this interpretation, the Bundys, Finicum and Payne told local ranchers that they had no obligation to pay fees for grazing on federal land because, in their view, federal ownership of land is unconstitutional. The group implored the Harney County ranchers in the meeting to tear up their grazing leases.</p>
<p>Their goal, ultimately, was to wrest virtually all power from the federal government through armed action in the name of “We The People.” Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum said that he and Cliven Bundy were the only ranchers to have faced off against the federal government by refusing to pay grazing fees and that they had succeeded by using their Second Amendment right to bear arms – arms that they had literally pointed directly at federal employees. </p>
<p>Harney County ranchers at the meeting complained that the occupiers were asking too much – for example, if ranchers tear up their grazing leases, then the value of their former grazing rights is subtracted from their net worth and they cannot borrow against it. And none welcomed an armed standoff with federal authorities. </p>
<p>Finicum responded that his group was there to defend the ranchers from federal authorities by force of arms. Finicum insisted that if only half a dozen ranchers in the room stood together, with armed protection by the Bundy militants, they could defeat the United States government and start a national movement that would spread like wildfire. Revealing his frustration at the reluctance of the assembled ranchers to join the revolution, Finicum practically begged, saying, “If not now, when? If not here, where? If not us, who?”</p>
<h2>Tearing up grazing leases</h2>
<p>Not a single rancher from Harney County or the state of Oregon was persuaded. On Saturday, January 23, the occupiers <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/ostandoff/2016/01/post_1.html">held a ceremony</a> at the Malheur Refuge that symbolically represented the fruits of their revolutionary labors: in front of TV cameras and newspaper and radio reporters, a single rancher, from 1,300 miles away in New Mexico, stood beside Ryan Bundy and <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ec4fbc27f67a429982b500c539fe9c20/armed-group-plans-event-renounce-federal-land-policy">pledged to break his BLM lease</a>. </p>
<p>The New Mexico rancher, Adrian Sewell, had a violent criminal past that included <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/01/post_1.html">assault with an ax</a>. Another eight ranchers made similar commitments – all in Utah, where the movement to privatize public land is <a href="http://www.capitalpress.com/Nation_World/Nation/20160211/federal-land-ownership-battle-heads-for-court">particularly strong</a>. The Bundy group claimed, without presenting any evidence, that other ranchers would soon make the pledge to tear up their grazing leases, igniting a national movement. Three days later, the Bundys and Payne were arrested and <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/01/bundys_in_custody_one_militant.html">Finicum was killed, according to reports, after resisting arrest by state police</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112012/original/image-20160218-1243-r4cm05.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112012/original/image-20160218-1243-r4cm05.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112012/original/image-20160218-1243-r4cm05.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112012/original/image-20160218-1243-r4cm05.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112012/original/image-20160218-1243-r4cm05.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112012/original/image-20160218-1243-r4cm05.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112012/original/image-20160218-1243-r4cm05.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112012/original/image-20160218-1243-r4cm05.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harney County rancher Scott Franklin, left, tells Ammon and Ryan Bundy that they are asking for too much and disputes their political theory that the federal government has no constitutional governing authority in western states. Taken in Crane, Oregon, on January 18.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Walker</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Harney County’s ranchers were not the only ones to reject the Bundy group’s radical anti-federal agenda. </p>
<p>It is important to understand that for virtually all Harney County residents, the rally in Burns on January 2 was about the sentencing of the Hammonds – not about opposing federal ownership of land and certainly not about turning over the Malheur Refuge to private ownership. </p>
<p>Dwight and Steven Hammond were not universally well-liked in the community, and there was little dispute that they had committed crimes. But Harney County is a very close-knit community that takes care of its own. For the community, the rally was about supporting neighbors in need and redressing what they considered to be the Hammonds’ inappropriate sentences; it was not about any <a href="http://koin.com/2016/01/02/anti-govt-protesters-expected-in-burns-saturday/">broader political agenda</a>. </p>
<p>Later, at a community meeting on January 19, when the Bundy group arrived unexpectedly (causing much tension), some community members looked Bundy straight in the eye and accused him of taking advantage of the community’s distress about the Hammonds’ sentences to push a different agenda. Quietly and <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/01/bundy_militia_leader_plotted_o.html">behind the scenes</a>, even militia leaders <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/armed-takeover-oregon_us_568abc3ce4b0b958f65c4fa8">advised</a> the Bundys against using the community’s anger over the Hammonds’ sentences to create an armed standoff similar to the one led by Cliven Bundy in Nevada two years earlier.</p>
<h2>Community opposition</h2>
<p>After the Bundys seized the Malheur Refuge, it quickly became clear why the Bundys might have been wise to heed the militia leaders’ advice against an armed occupation. </p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of Harney County citizens were clearly opposed to the occupation and angry that their peaceful rally for the Hammonds had been hijacked to launch a violent campaign in pursuit of a broader agenda. </p>
<p>Even community members generally sympathetic to the Bundys’ goals were incensed that outsiders from afar were now telling them how to run their county and what to do with local land. No one failed to note the hypocrisy that outsiders claiming to cherish local control were now telling the community what to do. One resident whom I spoke with estimated that 97 percent of the community opposed the Bundys’ methods and goals.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112007/original/image-20160218-21502-kla3ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112007/original/image-20160218-21502-kla3ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112007/original/image-20160218-21502-kla3ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112007/original/image-20160218-21502-kla3ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112007/original/image-20160218-21502-kla3ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112007/original/image-20160218-21502-kla3ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112007/original/image-20160218-21502-kla3ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112007/original/image-20160218-21502-kla3ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A billboard in Harney County during the Malheur Occupation reflected most locals’ unhappiness with the occupiers from outside the county.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Walker</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The community’s opposition became very clear at community meetings, where Harney County residents almost unanimously voted to request that the occupiers leave. At one community meeting, when almost the entire leadership of the Bundy group arrived unexpectedly, citizens of Harney County stood on their feet, pointed fingers at the Bundys and chanted “Go home! Go home! Go home!” </p>
<p>When asked about the opposition by the community, the occupiers claimed that the “majority” of local people supported them but provided no evidence to support the claim. All <a href="http://www.opb.org/news/series/burns-oregon-standoff-bundy-militia-news-updates/harney-county-residents-speak-out-on-occupation/">objective observers agreed</a>: from the beginning, the community strongly rejected the occupation. Over time, the mood escalated from indignation to intense anger that an outside group claiming to speak for the county was ignoring repeated requests to leave. The community posted a large billboard on the main highway that read, “We are Harney County. We have our own voice.”</p>
<h2>Start of something?</h2>
<p>In the end, the unwillingness of the community to rally to the Bundys’ side was probably the group’s undoing. Had the community come to the aid of the occupiers at the Malheur Refuge in large numbers, as the Bundys seemed to have been counting on, it would have been much more difficult for law enforcement to bring about a mostly peaceful end. </p>
<p>Many believe the conflagration and mass causalities that resulted a generation earlier when law enforcement moved against a <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/federal-agents-raid-the-branch-davidian-compound-in-waco-texas">religious sect in Waco, Texas</a>, had made federal authorities extremely wary of using potentially lethal force. Had the Bundys succeeded in bringing large numbers of local people into the occupation of the Malheur Refuge, they might well have blocked law enforcement and set off a national wave of similar occupations.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112029/original/image-20160218-1236-1qh8u4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112029/original/image-20160218-1236-1qh8u4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112029/original/image-20160218-1236-1qh8u4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112029/original/image-20160218-1236-1qh8u4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112029/original/image-20160218-1236-1qh8u4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112029/original/image-20160218-1236-1qh8u4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112029/original/image-20160218-1236-1qh8u4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112029/original/image-20160218-1236-1qh8u4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At a memorial for killed occupier LaVoy Finicum, there were many guns openly displayed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Walker</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead, on February 11, after 41 days of armed occupation, all the occupiers had fled or were arrested, and one was killed in a confrontation with police. Not a day was shaved off the Hammonds’ sentences, and not an acre of federal land was privatized. The sheriff of Harney County is still the kind recognized by established law, not a so-called “constitutional” sheriff. And the Harney County judge and commissioners – whom the Bundys demanded be removed – are still in charge. By the measure of its own stated goals, the Bundy occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was a dismal failure.</p>
<p>There are no guarantees, however, that similar attacks on the federal government will not happen in the future. In fact there is every reason to believe they will. </p>
<p>The national movement to transfer federal land to private ownership (including groups with direct ties to the Bundy family) remains as active as ever, and appears to have access to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/02/11/3748602/koch-brothers-funding-bundy-agenda/">enormous resources</a> from wealthy conservative supporters with interests in oil, gas and coal development. Militia groups are active, angry and eager for a win.</p>
<p>Those who value public lands – for economic, environmental, recreational and aesthetic values – owe a debt of gratitude to Harney County. A violent branch of the Sagebrush Rebellion came to town in Harney County, and the community told it to go away. </p>
<p>This would-be revolution proved that geography matters: the people of Harney County are not the people of Bunkerville, Nevada – and on the whole they are not interested in overthrowing the federal government. In fact, Harney County is a recognized national leader in <a href="http://www.fws.gov/endangered/map/ESA_success_stories/OR/OR_story4/index.html">collaborative efforts</a> between local land users, conservationists and federal natural resource agencies designed precisely to avoid unnecessary hardships to local communities that can set off conflicts.</p>
<p>But other communities in the American West may be more welcoming to radical action, and those who want to see public land handed over to private interests are certain to seek them out. The war for western lands goes on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A geography professor reports from the front lines of the Malheur occupation. Despite strong local opposition to occupiers, he foresees more conflicts to come.Peter Walker, Professor of Geography, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/542222016-02-08T19:21:17Z2016-02-08T19:21:17ZThe Federal response in Malheur and far right extremism<p>After a weeks-long standoff with federal and Oregon state police, 16 members of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation have been arrested, one wounded and another <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/26/us/oregon-wildlife-refuge-siege-arrests/">killed</a>. The occupation’s leaders, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, are among those in custody.</p>
<p>Although some of the foot soldiers remain on federal land, the occupation’s end is inevitable. But the end of the siege will do nothing to reduce the increasing threat from America’s radical right wing.</p>
<p>The official response to both this current takeover and last summer’s standoff at the <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/05/462022130/as-oregon-situation-unfolds-heres-a-quick-update-on-cliven-bundy">Bundy ranch in Nevada</a> has been subdued. Given that in both cases the radicals were heavily armed and threatening to kill anyone who tried to arrest them, the fact that only one militant has lost his life is startling. </p>
<p>I have spent 14 years studying <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/03/18/awakening-the-demons/">terrorism and extremism in conflict</a>. The militants in Malheur aren’t, in my view, currently terrorists, but groups like theirs have performed acts of domestic terrorism in the past. I believe the country’s leadership needs to work quickly to stop that from happening again. </p>
<h2>‘Act or do nothing’ is a false choice</h2>
<p>Restraint is certainly preferable to the violence of the federal actions at <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/incident-at-ruby-ridge">the compound of Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho</a> and <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/04/20/178063471/two-decades-later-some-branch-davidians-still-believe">the Branch Davidian cult’s compound in Waco, Texas</a> in 1992 and 1993, respectively. Each of those cases began as investigations into the sale or possession of illegal firearms and escalated into sieges involving multiple agencies. </p>
<p>In Waco, the siege ended with a full-scale assault on the compound, four federal agents killed and 16 wounded. Eighty-two members of the Branch Davidians were killed, <a href="http://www.texasobserver.org/the-standoff-in-waco/">including 17 children</a>. </p>
<p>Ruby Ridge ended with a U.S. marshall killed along with two members of the Weaver household, and two more wounded. One of the dead was Weaver’s 14-year-old son, and one of the wounded was his pregnant wife. </p>
<p>Two years later, Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/oklahoma-city-bombing">killling 168 and injuring more than 600 others</a>, in retaliation for Waco and Ruby Ridge. </p>
<p>The comparative restraint demonstrated recently at the Bundy ranch and Malheur suggests the government has taken a clear lesson to heart: there are more militants out there, and they are watching. </p>
<h2>Double standard</h2>
<p>Unfortunately there is also legitimate protest that had these armed occupiers been anything but white, we’d <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/01/04/theyd_be_killed_if_they_were_black_the_racial_double_standard_at_the_heart_of_the_new_bundy_family_standoff/">likely have seen far less restraint</a>. </p>
<p>In 1985, Philadelphia police responded to the occupation of a house by the black power group MOVE by <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/05/13/406505210/philadelphia-marks-30th-anniversary-of-move-bombing">dropping a firebomb</a> that ultimately killed 11 people and left another 250 homeless. In 1973, the occupation of Wounded Knee by the American Indian Movement resulted in <a href="http://jurist.org/forum/2013/05/kevin-govern-posse-comitatus.php">federal troops called up on American soil</a> and ended with <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/occupy-wounded-knee-a-71-day-siege-and-a-forgotten-civil-rights-movement/263998/">two dead and 15 wounded</a>. More recently, we saw a <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/14/ferguson-and-the-shocking-nature-of-us-police-militarization">militarized police reaction</a> to a series of racial protests following the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. </p>
<p>Even noting the double standard, the degree of restraint shown in Malheur is still admirable. The current U.S. <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/topic/countering-violent-extremism">domestic strategy for countering violent extremism</a> correctly recognizes that while violent or armed responses are occasionally needed, they are usually more effective at driving further violence than at ending it. Threat reduction should focus on preventing the cause of radicalization rather than attempting to crush the symptom. That means focusing on inclusive governance, ending social marginalization and focusing on community policing instead of violent reaction.</p>
<p>In the current political climate, however, restraint also has a dangerous edge. It gives the impression of leaving the field to emboldened extremists, who are now <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-ranchers-nevada-idUSBREA3B03Q20140413">claiming victory</a>. That’s a dangerous precedent, especially as such groups are showing a shift toward direct action that the U.S. hasn’t seen for a long time. </p>
<p>Right-wing extremists are on the rise domestically, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/01/07/not-punishing-the-bundys-for-the-nevada-standoff-led-to-the-occupation-in-oregon/">becoming more active and far bolder</a> than they used to be. </p>
<h2>The diversity effect</h2>
<p>Between President Obama’s election in 2008 and 2012, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that the number of right-wing extremist groups operating in the U.S. increased by over <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2013/year-hate-and-extremism">800</a> percent. While we’ve seen a slight decrease over the past year, the U.S. now faces a perfect storm of conditions for resurgent growth. </p>
<p>As the tone of the presidential election has proven, the prevailing American emotion is <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a40693/american-rage-nbc-survey/">anger</a>. Mistrust of government is at <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/beyond-distrust-how-americans-view-their-government/">record high levels</a>, along with several beliefs that make the problem worse. </p>
<p>First is the belief among extremists that the government is not simply untrustworthy but <a href="http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/11/23/report-more-than-1-in-4-americans-believe-government-is-the-enemy/">actually an enemy</a>. </p>
<p>Second is the belief that anyone who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/30/why-dont-americans-trust-the-government-because-the-other-party-is-in-power/">supports the other side</a> is the enemy as well. </p>
<p>In addition, the perception by the Christian right wing is that they are fundamentally <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=war+on+christianity&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8">threatened with extinction</a> by changing American demographics. </p>
<p>And the double standard in federal response to extremism on the left and right is driving an increase in tension on the nonwhite side as well. </p>
<h2>It could get worse</h2>
<p>All of this amounts to fertile ground for growing extremists. The presidential election is only adding fuel to the fire. </p>
<p>A Hillary Clinton victory would be seen by right-wing radicals as entrenching the same <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/09/politics/ted-cruz-hillary-clinton-spanking/">liberal sentiments</a> that extremist organizations like the Oath Keepers – involved at both the Bundy ranch and Malheur – <a href="https://www.oathkeepers.org/about/">already hold up as the enemy</a>. Bernie Sanders calling himself a socialist makes him seem even more alien. </p>
<p>On the Republican side, GOP candidates and officeholders alike have <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/andy-holt-oregon-bundy-support">failed to condemn</a> the occupiers. At least one – Representative Andy Holt of Tennessee – has made explicit <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/andy-holt-oregon-bundy-support">statements of support</a>. Not only does this legitimize the right wing, but it also sends an ominous message to non-Christian and nonwhite America.</p>
<p>The GOP as a whole has become more radical from top to bottom – to the point where an article written in bipartisan collaboration between Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein (the former with the liberal Brookings Institution, the latter with the conservative American Enterprise Institute) labeled the entire party an “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_story.html">insurgent outlier</a>” in American politics. </p>
<p>The party faces a growing divide between its white, Christian base and a population that bears it less resemblance by the year. They have sought to bridge that divide by inviting more and more of their own fringe to the table, to the point where extremist “sovereign citizens” and “patriot militias” now find themselves close to the party’s mainstream. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/12/usimmigration-republicans">Nativist xenophobia</a> coming from the GOP presidential candidates lends an air of legitimacy to language that should have been universally denounced as political extremism long ago. </p>
<p>All of this means that the U.S. government finds itself in a catch-22: becoming more assertive, having previously backed down, is likely to fuel aggression from right-wing radicals. On the other hand, if the government doesn’t become more aggressive, the trend toward direct action will continue. </p>
<p>Victory means navigating the narrow ground between violence and capitulation. It means avoiding the double standard and applying consistent restraint to everyone, regardless of color or religion. The perfect storm can still be averted, but course corrections need to be set in motion as soon as possible. </p>
<p>There is little more dangerous than an extremist who feels betrayed, as Timothy McVeigh taught us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54222/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Alpher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Race may have played a role in the muted federal response to the standoff at Malheur Wildlife Refuge, but it goes deeper than that.David Alpher, Adjunct Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/527392016-01-21T10:48:38Z2016-01-21T10:48:38ZThe Bundys think they are preserving democracy by occupying Oregon’s Malheur refuge, but they are undermining it<p>What’s motivating the armed protesters who occupied Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last week?</p>
<p>A local sheriff explained it <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-militia-oregon-20160103-story.html">this way:</a> they came</p>
<blockquote>
<p>claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers. In reality, [they] had alternative motives to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ammon Bundy, a leader of the protesters, named their group “Citizens for Constitutional Freedom.” He <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ammon-bundy-ranchers-rights-protesters-occupy-malheur-national-wildlife-refuge-n489311">described</a> their cause this way: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The United States Justice Department has no jurisdiction or authority within the state of Oregon, county of Harney over this type of ranch management. These lands are not under U.S. treaties or commerce … and Congress does not have unlimited power.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bundy and his supporters – with guns in tow – want to challenge what they see as government overreach. They believe their method of protest is firmly American and patriotic, reminiscent of armed protests against government tyranny in the Revolutionary War. Some protesters have even donned Colonial garb to underline this point. But as someone who has studied the philosophical foundations of the Second Amendment, I would argue that their actions are detrimental to our democracy.</p>
<h2>The right to shoot tyrants</h2>
<p>The protesters have been eager to play up the air of civilian rebellion. Bundy <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/03/us/oregon-wildlife-refuge-protest/">spoke</a> of liberating the land for people to use “without fear as free men and women.”</p>
<p>Ammon’s brother Ryan <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/meet-ammon-ryan-bundy-activists-leading-oregon-standoff-n489766">called</a> the government’s restrictions on ranchers using federal land “an example of terrorism.” </p>
<p>Their firearms are what makes this an occupation and lent it that air of civilian rebellion. The Bundys and their followers are exercising the main purpose of the Second Amendment, according to <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/08/176350364/fears-of-government-tyranny-push-some-to-reject-gun-control">many</a> in the gun rights movement.</p>
<p>Soon after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, when the forces of gun control were mobilizing, Washington Times commentator Andrew Napolitano <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/10/the-right-to-shoot-tyrants-not-deer/">wrote</a>, “the historical reality of the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms is not that it protects the right to shoot deer. It protects the right to shoot tyrants, and … to shoot at them effectively.”</p>
<p>This notion lends a certain nobility to the gun rights movement. The movement sees itself as standing up for democracy. Widespread civilian gun ownership ensures the integrity of our democracy. It ensures that the people remain sovereign, as our founders intended. The “right to shoot tyrants,” as Napolitano put it, warns our leaders away from the temptation of governing too oppressively.</p>
<h2>Part of our DNA</h2>
<p>The modern gun rights movement cites English philosopher John Locke as an intellectual inspiration – a fortuitous link, since our Founding Fathers also drew on Locke in composing our founding documents. Guns are deeply inscribed in our nation’s DNA. </p>
<p>Gun rights advocates believe Locke is in their corner because he accords citizens a inviolable right of self-defense, which also extends to one’s property. </p>
<p>I have <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/locke-and-load-the-fatal-error-of-the-stand-your-ground-philosophy/?_r=0">argued</a> elsewhere, however, that the modern gun rights movement is too expansive in its conception of self-defense, even applying it to controversial Stand Your Ground laws. </p>
<p>Locke is clear that once government is convened by means of a social contract, individuals largely transfer their right of self-defense to the state. This is to avoid self-defense bleeding into vigilantism, and then war. Such a transfer is the very mark of civil society. </p>
<p>But gun rights advocates admire Locke because he sanctions the citizens’ right to dissolve government – and to use their guns to do it. Locke <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr11.htm">expresses a concern</a> that disarming subjects may enable the ruler to “make prey on them when he pleases.” The Oregon protesters would likely say they are doing Locke’s will – they are taking a stand, guns in hand, and will not be pushed around by the government any longer.</p>
<p>Locke <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr19.htm">sees</a> two primary cases where such a rebellion is justified: </p>
<ol>
<li>when a lawmaker alters the laws without consultation or consent of the people and “sets up his own Arbitrary will in place of laws,” and </li>
<li>when he aims to destroy or lay claim to their property or persons. </li>
</ol>
<h2>A tremendous risk</h2>
<p>The Oregon protesters would likely see their protest as fitting Locke’s criteria.</p>
<p>Ammon Bundy says the government is not abiding by the laws that the people have approved. His allies also believe the government, in mandating a slew of onerous regulations over federal land management, is denying them their livelihood, threatening their persons and well-being. </p>
<p>Of course, people may say that a lot of complaints against the government meet Locke’s conditions. They might – and do – call any number of government actions “tyranny.” Locke would not be surprised. He anticipated that critics would say his “hypothesis lays the ferment for frequent rebellion.”</p>
<p>But Locke was not worried. He <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr19.htm">explained</a> that people will not be quick to rebel over every little complaint, but only for “a long train of abuses.” Why? Because rebellion is no trivial matter; it carries tremendous risks, including the demise of the state and civil society, and a possible return to the anarchy of a state of nature. </p>
<p>Locke <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr19.htm">maintained</a> the right to rebellion is itself “the best fence against rebellion.” Simply knowing that the people retain this right, our elected officials will resist bad behavior. </p>
<p>More importantly, Locke said, the people must be careful in how they wield the right to rebel. It is treacherous and foolish for citizens to invoke the threat of rebellion often, or casually, or for minor and isolated complaints. Locke <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr19.htm">warned</a> those in power have the “temptation of force … and the flattery of those around them.” </p>
<p>Threats of rebellion may cause our leaders to worry about their self-preservation and provoke a violent response.</p>
<h2>Tempting a tiger</h2>
<p>These are somber words for gun rights advocates eager to justify the Second Amendment on the basis of supposed government tyranny, especially considering the “temptation of force” in the hands of the U.S. government.</p>
<p>Indeed, we have seen the government succumb to this temptation when police forces, whom the Department of Homeland Security has showered with military-grade equipment, deployed equipment to dispel protests in heavy-handed fashion, as in <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/14/ferguson-and-the-shocking-nature-of-us-police-militarization">Ferguson</a>, Missouri and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/nyregion/police-clear-zuccotti-park-with-show-of-force-bright-lights-and-loudspeakers.html?_r=0">Zuccotti Park</a> in Manhattan.</p>
<p>Recurring threats of rebellion tell the government that a portion of the electorate is seriously contemplating violence – and it must be prepared to respond in turn. After all, Timothy McVeigh acted on his antigovernment sentiments. Our government cannot afford to take the threats of insurrectionists and antigovernment folk lightly. </p>
<p>The gun rights advocates may make their predictions come true. They fret about tyrannical government, but by waving their guns threateningly, by frequently citing the right to rebel, they invite the government to respond with force. The government has been restrained thus far in dealing with Malheur, but as Locke argues, insurrection encourages the government to be oppressive and act outside the law. </p>
<p>Martin Luther King Jr. understood democracy far better when, from the Birmingham jail, he <a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">wrote</a>, “one who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly,” for in so doing, he expresses “the highest regard for law.” </p>
<p>The genius of unarmed protest is that it compels our leaders to behave and respond lawfully. King proved how effective nonviolent protest can be. The Oregon protesters would do well to ponder his example.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52739/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Firmin DeBrabander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The notion of civil rebellion – like the one at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge – is at the heart of the Second Amendment. But so is the idea that such rebellions should not be undertaken lightly.Firmin DeBrabander, Professor of Philosophy, Maryland Institute College of ArtLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/527402016-01-08T16:03:55Z2016-01-08T16:03:55ZThe twisted roots of U.S. land policy in the West<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107613/original/image-20160108-13994-1zsnpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was often referred to as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining in the 19th century.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/blmoregon/6685359611/in/album-72157628841757125/">U.S. Bureau of Land Management</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The seizure of a Malheur National Wildlife Refuge building in southeastern Oregon by armed and self-styled “constitutionalists” was disturbing. To many it is viewed as a dangerous escalation in a long, admittedly heated and passionate but rarely violent, discussion of federal or public land management in the western United States. </p>
<p>It has also brought to the fore many questions from those not familiar with western land issues, the history of federal land or public land management policies. The event has some asking who the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is and why they manage so much land. </p>
<p>The history of U.S. federal land policy helps explain why so much of the West is public land – that is, land managed by the federal government and its various bureaus. History also shows why conflicts over land rights are flaring up now and why they’re difficult to resolve. </p>
<h2>The utility of land</h2>
<p>U.S. land policy predates the country itself, as both the British and the colonists regulated the cutting of forests to preserve a supply of timber for building naval vessels. After the Revolutionary War, the new country quickly sought both to acquire more land (in what is called the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Federal-Lands-Revisited-Press/dp/0801830982">Acquisition phase</a>) and to ensure private sector ownership (the Disposal phase). </p>
<p>Acquisition was accomplished by war or purchase; disposal was done to raise cash and promote new settlement. The <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/06/us/native-tribe-blasts-oregon-takeover">native inhabitants of these lands were removed</a>, usually by force.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107595/original/image-20160107-14020-wmpfnq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107595/original/image-20160107-14020-wmpfnq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107595/original/image-20160107-14020-wmpfnq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107595/original/image-20160107-14020-wmpfnq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107595/original/image-20160107-14020-wmpfnq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107595/original/image-20160107-14020-wmpfnq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107595/original/image-20160107-14020-wmpfnq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107595/original/image-20160107-14020-wmpfnq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Federal and Indian land.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://nationalmap.gov/small_scale/printable/images/pdf/fedlands/fedlands3.pdf">U.S. Department of Interior</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1860s a new policy focused on federal land in the West developed – Retention – that is best understood through the creation of Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the U.S. and world. <a href="http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/runte1/">Other parks</a> would follow, though in an ad hoc and piecemeal fashion. The National Park Service was created in 1916 to manage and conserve these parks and provide “enjoyment for future generations.” </p>
<p>By the 1880s, there were growing concerns over deforestation. This led Congress to give the President the power to create <a href="http://www.amazon.com/U-S-Forest-Service-Centennial-History/dp/0295984023/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=">forest reserves</a>. Later renamed national forests, they were placed under the administration of the US Forest Service (USFS), which was created in 1905. Congress later took away that power but did create eastern national forests though land purchases <a href="http://www.fs.fed.us/land/staff/weeks-act.html">under the Weeks Act</a>. </p>
<p>The charismatic <a href="http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/People/Pinchot/Pinchot.aspx">Gifford Pinchot</a>, first Chief of USFS, helped make the bureau a professional land management agency. Pinchot and others made it clear that the forests were to be managed for the production of resources to be used by citizens. Thus the Retention policy evolved into an era of federal land management. A <a href="http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/People/Pinchot/Pinchot.aspx">utilitarian philosophy</a> took hold: forests would be managed for the “greatest good for the greatest number” in the long run. </p>
<p>President Theodore Roosevelt used his power to create <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Wilderness-Warrior-Theodore-Roosevelt/dp/0060565314">early national wildlife refuges</a>, including Malheur, which were separate from national forests; other presidents would follow his lead, as would Congress. Early reserves and those established later would be managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, created in 1940 after many earlier configurations. These lands were set aside specifically for preservation of land for wildlife and habitat.</p>
<h2>Creation of the BLM</h2>
<p>The Bureau of Land Management was created in 1946 out of the merger of the General Land Office and the Grazing Service, which was created to manage grazing. Its origins were in the 1930s, when the Taylor Grazing Act was passed to bring stability to western grazing and to help reduce overgrazing. One key phrase of that <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/taylor-grazing-act-public-law-73-482-73rd-congress-2nd-session-59-stat-1269/oclc/20714417">act</a> stated: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>That in order to promote the highest use of the public lands pending its final disposal, the Secretary of the Interior is authorized, in his discretion, by order to establish grazing districts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Before the Taylor Grazing Act was created, federal officials, including Secretary of Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur and President Hoover, offered to transfer the pre-BLM public lands (the public domain lands) to the states to manage, minus the sub-surface mineral estate. The states declined citing the poor condition of the surface estate. </p>
<p>But the word “disposal” led some to conclude that eventually these lands would be transferred to the states to manage or perhaps sold. </p>
<p>BLM was closely watched through the 1960s and supervised in a sense by western congressmen, leading contemporary scholars such as Phillip O. Foss to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Grass-Administration-Grazing-Public/dp/0837121361">refer</a> to this as a “private government,” or that the agency as “captured” by the interests it was supposed to regulate. To put this differently, the agency basically conformed to the desires of the congressmen and their rancher and mining constituencies.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107614/original/image-20160108-14027-s9gkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107614/original/image-20160108-14027-s9gkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107614/original/image-20160108-14027-s9gkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107614/original/image-20160108-14027-s9gkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107614/original/image-20160108-14027-s9gkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107614/original/image-20160108-14027-s9gkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107614/original/image-20160108-14027-s9gkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107614/original/image-20160108-14027-s9gkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the Forest Service in 1905. In the 1890s, he wrote, western forests were considered ‘inexhaustible.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gifford_Pinchot_3c03915u.jpg">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The BLM was often referred to as the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining,” as those were the primary uses and users of these lands. Often BLM employees came, and still come, from smaller western towns and ranch backgrounds and were primarily trained at <a href="http://ext.wsu.edu/documents/landgrant.pdf">western land grant universities</a>, reinforcing the tradition of placing a priority on using federal lands for their natural resources.</p>
<p>BLM lands are only in the West and BLM manages the most federal land, because this was the land not placed into the national forests and not set aside as national parks and monuments. Some in the West still believed that the BLM lands would be “disposed” of in some manner – that is, transferred from federal to state ownership or perhaps sold. </p>
<p>All of this changed with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1977 (FLPMA). This act superseded the Taylor Grazing Act and made it national policy that the BLM lands would be retained in federal ownership, thus making this an example of Retention policy. </p>
<p>This retention, and new environmental laws and public interest in the BLM lands for recreation, wildlife, wilderness and so on, helped set off the <a href="https://kuecprd.ku.edu/%7Eupress/cgi-bin/978-0-7006-1895-8.html">Sagebrush Rebellion</a> of the<a href="https://kuecprd.ku.edu/%7Eupress/cgi-bin/series/development-of-western-resources/978-0-7006-0613-9.html"> late 1970s</a>. There had been previous protests dating back to <a href="https://theconversation.com/malheur-occupation-in-oregon-whose-land-is-it-really-52741">creation of the forest reserves</a>, but this rebellion is well remembered. The election of Ronald Reagan helped defuse the movement, as his Secretary James Watt pushed for the restoration of natural resource use and the weakening of environmental regulations.</p>
<h2>Conflicting views</h2>
<p>The BLM manages much of its land for the use of resources, as does the USFS. But these bureaus are considered multiple-use in that preservation is part of their activities. The National Park Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service have preservation as their sole mission. </p>
<p>Many residents in small rural western towns believe traditional uses and users of BLM lands have been diminished and over-regulated. They would like to see more of a balance between use of natural resources and protection of these lands. As noted above, Native Americans <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/06/462179325/native-american-tribe-says-oregon-armed-occupiers-are-desecrating-sacred-land">take issue</a> with the notion that ranchers and others were here “first.” </p>
<p>There has been an off-again on-again movement to transfer much of the federal lands apart from the national parks and so-called <a href="http://www.wilderness.net/nwps/legisact">wilderness</a> (a land designation made by Congress) to states to manage. </p>
<p>But the cost of managing lands, including the huge ones caused by wildfire, and uncertainties over how the land could be used, continue to render this <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/home/2575779-155/snake-oil-salesman-rep-ken-ivory">politically unpalatable</a> to many.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52740/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Freemuth receives funding from USGS and the Bureau of Land Management. He is affiliated with the Cecil Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State University</span></em></p>What explains the anger behind the Malheur occupation in Oregon, and why does the BLM own so much land in the West?John Freemuth, Professor of Public Policy and Senior Fellow Cecil Andrus Center for Public Policy, Boise State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/527412016-01-06T11:07:16Z2016-01-06T11:07:16ZMalheur occupation in Oregon: whose land is it really?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107322/original/image-20160105-28994-1tqdyzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is part of a complicated history of land in the western US.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwshq/6972321933/in/photolist-bLTQhz-9isXhS-9ipRhM-bC7Yp8-bLTQpP-9zdB3P-9ipR9a-9isXrU-9isXBj-bcdJVa-9MZ9g8-asaTw6-asaTCV-9N2VKm-ah5aGu-9MZ9az-asdwXf-9Z4Tfi-eWJ9TX-eWVxfG-b4pkUa">US Fish and Wildlife Service</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.fws.gov/refuge/Malheur/about.html">Malheur National Wildlife Refuge</a>, a 187,757-acre haven for greater sandhill cranes and other native birds in eastern Oregon, is usually a pretty peaceful place. But its calm was shattered on Saturday, January 2 when Ammon Bundy and a group of armed men broke into and occupied a number of federal buildings on the refuge, vowing to fight should the government try to arrest them. </p>
<p>Their insurrectionary goal appears to be, simply put, to destroy the national system of public lands – our forests, parks and refuges – that was developed in the late 19th century to conserve these special landscapes and the critical natural resources they contain for all Americans. </p>
<p>“The best possible outcome,” <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2016/01/drama_in_burns_ends_with_quiet.html">trumpeted Bundy</a>, son of Cliven Bundy, who began an armed standoff with law enforcement in Nevada in April 2014 over his continued failure to pay US$1 million in fees for grazing on public lands, is that “ranchers that have been kicked out of the area…will come back and reclaim their land, and the wildlife refuge will be shut down forever and the federal government will relinquish such control.” </p>
<p>Theirs was not a rebellion, Bundy declared. “What we’re doing is in accordance with the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land.”</p>
<p>He could not be more wrong. To understand why requires a basic understanding of the region’s complex and troubling history and the legal authority under which the federal land management agencies operate. </p>
<h2>Making of ‘public’ lands</h2>
<p>The first people to live off this land, after all, were the Paiute. For millennia, and thus long before settler-colonists arrived in the region, the Paiute hunted, fished and gathered in this fertile, albeit arid, terrain. Their remarkable ecological adaptability, observes historian Nancy Langston in <a href="https://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/LANWHE.html">Where the Land and Water Meet</a> (2003), the definitive study of the Malheur Basin, helped the colonists rationalize their post-Civil War eviction: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whites looked at the Paiutes and believed they saw a people who had no fixed habitation, no material culture, no cultivation, no livestock, no homes, and no real claim to humanness.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Battered into submission, crowded into a reservation and prohibited from acting on their treaty rights to hunt and fish off-reservation, in 1878, the Paiute fought back. Their <a href="http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Le-Pa/Paiutes.html">brief uprising was crushed</a> and the consequences were grim: their local reservation was shut down, and its lands returned to the public domain. Under armed guard, the Paiute were marched through the snow 350 miles to the Yakama Reservation in southeastern Washington state. Having inhabited the Malheur for 13 centuries, they knew full well the meaning of the French word applied to their homeland – misfortune, adversity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107319/original/image-20160105-28997-mo4eht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107319/original/image-20160105-28997-mo4eht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107319/original/image-20160105-28997-mo4eht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107319/original/image-20160105-28997-mo4eht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107319/original/image-20160105-28997-mo4eht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107319/original/image-20160105-28997-mo4eht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107319/original/image-20160105-28997-mo4eht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107319/original/image-20160105-28997-mo4eht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Before being taken by settlers and the US government, Northern Paiutes inhabited the land in the part of Oregon now being occupied.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.fws.gov/refuge/malheur/about/native_american.html">USFWS/Ken Morris</a></span>
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<p>The land suffered, too. As Langston points out, it is no coincidence that dispossessing the Paiute allowed large livestock operations to take over, resulting in the rapid deterioration of grazing lands in the upper reaches of the Silvies and Blitzen rivers that flow into Malheur Lake. </p>
<p>Further diminishing the lake’s capacity to sustain migratory and local bird populations were the irrigation and drainage projects that the Bureau of Reclamation, founded in 1902 to manage water to boost economic development in the arid West, built upstream. </p>
<p>Add to this environmental degradation the reckless hunt for bird plumage: late-19th-century fashionistas coveted the white heron’s graceful feathers to adorn their hats. With gold rush-like avarice, local hunters blazed away, and within a few years the Malheur heron population was decimated.</p>
<p>It was their extirpation – not the brutal mistreatment of the Paiutes – that caught the attention of the Oregon Audubon Society. The society’s activists pleaded with former rancher and conservationist-in-chief, President Theodore Roosevelt, to protect those lands still in federal ownership. On August 18 1908, he complied, signing an executive order establishing the 81,786-acre Malheur Lake Refuge, which also encompassed nearby Haney and Mud Lakes, “as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds.”</p>
<p>Since then, the refuge has expanded by 100,000 acres. In 1935, the Swift Meatpacking Corporation sold 65,000 acres to the federal government, funding for which came from <a href="http://www.fws.gov/birds/get-involved/duck-stamp/history-of-the-federal-duck-stamp.php">Duck Stamp</a> sales and New Deal monies; over the years, <a href="http://www.fws.gov/refuge/malheur/about/settling.html">willing sellers</a> added the remaining acres to the refuge’s expanse. Ammon Bundy’s protestations to the contrary, no ranchers were ever evicted from the refuge. </p>
<h2>Roots of federal authority</h2>
<p>Bundy’s militant bluster about restoring the Constitution by tossing the federal government off the Malheur and other public lands because this land belongs to settler descendants is just as disingenuous. </p>
<p>Indeed, in 1911 in a pair of landmark decisions – <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/220/523/">Light v US</a> and <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/220/506/">US v Grimaud</a> – the Supreme Court asserted that the public lands were, in fact, public; that federal ownership of them was indisputable; and that Congress through a series of legislative acts had granted the Executive Branch, and by extension the federal land management agencies, administrative authority to manage these acres in accordance with the relevant rules and regulations. </p>
<p>Both cases emerged out of the <a href="http://www.foresthistory.org/Publications/Books/Origins_National_Forests/sec13.htm">first Sagebrush Rebellion</a> of the early 20th century. Western livestock, mineral and timber interests had exploded in anger at the redesignation of portions of the public domain into the national forests and the regulations that the newly created US Forest Service enacted on grazing, mining and logging. What changed was that ranchers, miners and loggers were required to pay a small fee to access the relevant resources that once they simply harvested for free.</p>
<p>As these special interests and their political minions lashed out, harassing rangers and threatening to rebel against the nation-state, they sought test cases to undercut the federal agency’s regulatory authority; the Forest Service also had its day in court in hopes of establishing precedent for its managerial actions. They found them when Colorado cattleman Fred Light and California shepherd Pierre Grimaud were caught illegally grazing their herds on national forest land. The Colorado legislature even paid all Light’s legal expenses in hopes of proving its point that states, not the federal government, had sovereignty over the public lands within their borders. In May 1911, a highly conservative Supreme Court disagreed, ruling unanimously in the Forest Service’s favor. </p>
<p>This precedent should have put an end to such challenges, but subsequent generations of would-be Sagebrushers have adopted the same hostile anti-federal rhetoric and oft-violent tactics. </p>
<p>There were outbreaks in the 1920s, ’40’s and ’50’s. During the Reagan and Bush administrations, fueled by vitriolic talk-show disdain for Washington, Nevada county commissioners crashed bulldozers through Forest Service fences to claim “ownership.” Elsewhere, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/25/us/terror-oklahoma-western-violence-federal-uniforms-become-target-wave-threats.html?pagewanted=all">ranger offices</a> were firebombed and agency equipment vandalized. </p>
<p>More recently, in 2010 the Utah legislature <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/03/nation/la-na-utah-domain3-2010mar03">asserted</a> that it would use eminent domain to take over national monuments, grasslands and forests, believing, as did the Colorado legislature a century ago, that its sovereignty superseded the federal government’s. Four years later, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/10/us/nevada-rancher-rangers-cattle-showdown/?hpt=zite_zite3_featured">declared</a> federal sovereignty null and void, refused to pay his grassland-leasing fees, and took up arms to face down the feds. His son’s occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is but the latest in a <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/oregon-occupation-at-wildlife-refuge">long line</a> of such confrontations.</p>
<p>Yet none of these persistent attacks has succeeded in dismantling the federal land management agencies or the Supreme Court precedents that sanction their actions, a critical lesson from this contested past that Ammon Bundy and his coconspirators willfully ignore.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52741/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Char Miller has received funding from the USDA Forest Service in support of his forthcoming book, America's Great National Forests. </span></em></p>Like much federal land in the US West, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge has a long history tied to Native Americans’ plight and conflicts between settlers and the federal government.Char Miller, Professor of Environmental Analysis, Pomona CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.