Finicum said the power was still on at buildings at the refuge.
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During the incident, armed activists gathered at the ranch of Cliven Bundy, who had longstanding disputes with the USA government over grazing rights.
The occupation began Saturday first as a protest in Burns, Ore., in support of father and son ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond who were sent to prison for setting fires on federal land.
Ammon Bundy, the group leader and son of Cliven Bundy, was not present at the press conference.
The Hammonds were convicted of arson three years ago for fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006, one of which was set to cover up deer poaching, according to prosecutors.
Meanwhile, the group’s ringleader Ammon Bundy gave no indication when they would end the standoff. He added that he viewed the five-year sentence imposed on the Hammonds as excessive.
The men served no more than a year until an appeals court judge ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.
They want to see portions of federal land turned over to Harney County and its people.
Tribal leaders said their way of dealing with land disputes is long, slow lobbying by talking and writing to government officials at all levels: county, state and federal.
Burns High School Freshman Patricia Looney called the decision to close school “stupid”.
For the moment, the federal government was doing nothing to remove them, but the FBI said it was monitoring the situation.
Bob Sallinger, conservation director of the Audubon Society of Portland, said in a statement this week that occupation of the refuge “holds hostage public lands and public resources to serve the very narrow political agenda of the occupiers”.
It sits in a wide snow-covered valley rimmed by distant mountains and contains lakes and marshland.
“I’m sitting here trying to write an acceptance letter for when they return all this land to us”, Rodrique said.
Several members have blocked the road up to the federal building.
The tactics of the Bundys and the group were condemned by Democrats and Republicans alike. “If we do not make a hard stand, then we will be in a position where we won’t be able to as a people”. “The people have it right now”.
Either way, the 2016 presidential candidates aren’t eager to get involved.
In 2015, conservative state legislators introduced a flurry of bills and other legislative items that aimed to do exactly what Bundy, Finicum, and their ilk are demanding: put the federal government’s OR land holdings into state control. The group, which included a couple of women and some boys and girls Monday, did not release a copy of its demands.
Bundy has invoked other historical figures like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and compared his group’s mission to the American Revolution.
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“There was never an agreement that we were giving up this land”. While these policies did not specifically aim to encourage Europeans and European Americans to move west and lay claim to land, many other things – citizenship requirements for homesteaders, certain state laws (known as black codes) and federal immigration policy that barred most immigration from non-white countries – all but made these policies an exclusive means by which white Americans and white immigrants could claim land. Supporters wanted more land for cattle grazing, mining and timber harvesting. Cruz denounced the federal government for “using the jackboot of authoritarianism”.
