A member of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters looks on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016, near Burns, Ore. “It belongs to the native people who live here”, Burns Paiute Tribal leader Charlotte Rodrique said.
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(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer). Harney County Sheriff David Ward listens to concerns during a community meeting at the Harney County fairgrounds on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016, in Burns, Ore.
As reported on CNN, the leaders of the Burns Paiute tribe have sent a message to the ranchers and sympathizers who have taken over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside Burns, Oregon: “Go home”.
It’s emboldened Ammon Bundy to lead the current occupation, said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Despite Bundy’s plea last weekend for new recruits to join him with guns, there’s no indication whether the group has grown significantly in size.
“We can work through it like adults, peacefully, with a united front”, Ward said. And it owns a lot: Federal agencies control 52.9 percent of OR land, including three-fourths of Harney County.
Rodrique said she “had to laugh” at that statement, because she knew Bundy wasn’t talking about giving the land back to the tribe.
“Rather than abating conflict, the federal hands-off approach has backfired and enables the Bundy clan to franchise a ‘Militia McDonald’s, ‘” Ruch said. “I don’t think these people knew what they were getting into when they went down there”. “I don’t need an escort”.
One of those organizations, the Pacific Patriots Network, issued a “call to action” for its members to establish a safety perimeter around the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in remote southeastern OR as leaders of the protest again said they had no immediate plans to leave.
Armed anti-government protesters took over the headquarters building at the federal wildlife preserve Saturday, accusing federal officials of unfairly punishing ranchers who refused to sell their property. Bundy is 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.
“It was instigated by outsiders whose tactics we Oregonians don’t agree with”.
Rodrique says that the protesters are desecrating sacred land and endangering the community.
The armed group’s standoff with the US government over ranchers’ land rights has bewildered the tribe’s leaders.
Several people spoke in support of Bundy and his followers at Wednesday’s meeting.
Bundy and more than a dozen supporters took over the building on the refuge near Burns, saying the group wouldn’t leave until the Hammonds are freed from federal prison and federal lands in the area are returned to locals.
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“The BLM wants that land bad and they’ll probably end up getting it”, said Tim Slate, a butcher who said he had gone out to slaughter the Hammonds’ cattle many times over the years, using an acronym for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
