With the takeover entering its fourth day Wednesday, authorities had not removed the group of roughly 20 people from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon’s high desert country. And Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said that while “every one of us has a constitutional right to protest against the government”, they “don’t have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence on others”.
Advertisement
Tribal chairwoman Charlotte Rodrique stood before 100 people – including numerous 420-member tribe – at a press conference on Wednesday, saying that the Bundys and their gang were encroaching on land considered sacred to the Paiute people.
“If these people had any argument with the president, it was with President (Theodore) Roosevelt, who 108 years ago established the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as a response to protect national resource, especially the slaughter of wild birds for feathers to adorn women’s hats”, Blumenauer said on the House floor.
“We will take that offer”, Bundy said on Friday.
Randy Eardley, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman, said Bundy’s call for control of the land to be transferred makes no sense.
Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum, holding rifle, speaks to reporters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore.
Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward meets with Ammon Bundy at a remote location outside the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016, near Burns, Ore.
Meanwhile the local sheriff has organized a town meeting Wednesday afternoon to discuss the standoff with the local community.
Those two ranchers, -Dwight Hammond, 73, and Steven Hammond, 46, -reported to prison Monday, Reuters reported. But the county sheriff has told the group to go home, and many locals don’t want them around, fearing they may bring trouble.
When asked by a reporter about the tribe’s claims during another Wednesday press conference, occupation leader Ammon Bundy said, “I would like to see them be freed from the federal government as well”.
Ryan Bundy of the so-called Bundy Militia tells OPB that he and the other men occupying federal buildings in Harney County, Oregon, will leave peacefully if the people of the community want them to. The group also opposes prison sentences for two area ranchers convicted of arson.
Bundy said his group poses a threat to no one.
“I’m sick and exhausted of the BLM and the federal government”, Houck said. However, federal prosecutors appealed their sentences and requested that they receive the minimum of five years.
The occupiers have vowed to remain in the building until federally owned land is returned “back to the people”, reports NBC News.
Advertisement
“I can only say to him, we will take that offer, but not yet”, said Bundy, the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who in 2014 was at the center of a tense standoff with federal officials over grazing rights.
