Authorities had not yet moved to oust the group of roughly 20 people. A leader of the Orego…
Advertisement
Ammon Bundy, the group leader and son of Cliven Bundy, was not present at the press conference.
Sheriff David Ward called for the meeting at Narrows-Princeton Road and Lava Bed Road.
“I understand that the occupiers of the federal land have said that they will leave if the local community doesn’t want them, and from what I’m seeing in the news, the local community doesn’t want them”, Clinton said in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun.
The man behind the armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge comes from a Mormon family that has been challenging government authority for at least two decades.
However, those occupying the wildlife refuge centre say they may use violence if police try to evict them.
Out at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, the fog cleared to reveal a stunning view of the snowy OR high desert, and Ammon Bundy, the leader here, suggested the occupation will go on as long as the two local ranchers now serving federal time for arson are in prison.
The sheriff of the OR county where armed anti-government activists have occupied federal land asked the protesters to go home Thursday at their first meeting since the confrontation began.
Burns public schools have been closed since the standoff out of concern for student safety if gunfire should erupt in or near the small town. According to Rodrique, the tribe never surrendered their land to the Bureau of Land Management – the same federal department the armed men are organizing against – but that they continue to work with them peacefully.
Finicum, a 55-year-old Arizona rancher, focused instead on a more personal matter: He said two of his children, 8-year-old girls, are coming to visit and he is concerned that they arrive safely. In the wake of the fighting, in 1879, the U.S. Army rounded up 500 members of the Northern Paiute tribe and forcibly relocated them to the Yakima Reserve in Washington State.
This month “is the 137th anniversary of when 500 Paiutes were loaded onto wagons and walked, under heavy armed guard, from their-from the lands where the Bundys are right now holding it and to the Yakama Reservation in Washington state, some 300 miles, knee-deep in snow”, Keeler said. The Burns Paiute tribe says the land in question belongs to them and the armed ranchers should stand down.
Bundy is demanding that the refuge be handed over to locals. Several of the Harney County residents who spoke Wednesday night said they had been out there, mainly to see for themselves what was happening. “The best possible outcome is that the ranchers that have been kicked out of the area …will come back and reclaim their land”, Bundy told the Rolling Stone on January 3, adding, “the wildlife refuge will be shut down forever and the federal government will relinquish such control”.
The Burns Paiute tribe has guaranteed access to the refuge for activities that are important to their culture, including gathering a plant used for making traditional baskets and seeds that are used for making bread.
Bundy emphasized at one news conference that the occupiers are all part of a community, and that they are holed up in Burns not because they want to but because they say they have to.
Dwight, 73, originally received a sentence of three months in prison while Steve spent one year and a day in prison. A judge later ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.
“You’re not invited to come here and bother with our citizens”, Sheriff Ward said.
Advertisement
“There’s a lot of things I disagree with in this world”, he said.
