Oregon Sheriff meets leader of armed group

In Oregon, Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward’s patience is beginning to wear thin.

T armed ranchers who have been occupying Oregon’s federal wildlife refuge since Saturday claim that their rights to the land date back as far as the early 1900s, when ranchers and farmers lived and worked there.

When armed men first took over a US government wildlife refuge in OR this weekend, the leader of the area’s Native American tribal council could relate to their land-right dispute – but disagreed with their gun-toting approach.

An armed takeover of a federally owned wildlife refuge outside town, into its fifth day as the meeting began, was the context and the reason for their gathering.

However, those occupying the wildlife refuge centre say they may use violence if police try to evict them.

Local officials have repeatedly asked the occupiers to go home, saying that even residents who support their views object to the illegal seizure of federal property.

But in a community meeting called by the Harney County sheriff attended by hundreds of residents from the small town, the vast majority raised their hands when asked if they wanted the group to leave and the situation to end peacefully. Their ancestors were roaming the still wild and empty reaches of what is now called the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge perhaps as long as 15,000 years ago, they said.

Led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy – sons of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who became famous for another standoff with the federal government in 2014 – the gunmen took over the unoccupied federal facility Saturday.

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. And so, in 1876, United States president Ulysses S. Grant did just that.

That 2013 protest against federal land ownership drew a reported dozen armed supporters from New Hampshire.

Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Amanda Peacher tells our Newscast unit that Burns Paiute tribal leaders denounced the militants and demanded that they leave.

Ward offered to escort Bundy and his followers out of the refuge, which Bundy scoffed at.

The sheriff, David Wade, met with Bundy on Thursday to offer them passage on the condition that they vacate Oregon.

Ranchers and other longtime residents said they felt their concerns, including land use issues and employment after the decline of the timber industry in OR, haven’t been talked about on a national scale until the armed men took over the federal building.

The standoff is raising eyebrows in Native American communities located near Burns.

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. According to the tribe, the federal government promised to prosecute “any crime or injury perpetrated by any white man upon the Indians'”.

Protesters with Citizens for Constitutional Freedom oppose not only the Hammonds’ sentence, which they say is unjust, but also the government’s control of land.

Bundy showed up with several others before Christmas to protest a legal case against local father and son Dwight and Steven Hammond. A judge later ruled that the terms fell short of minmum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.

“I agree with a good portion of what (the occupiers) have to say”, Sheriff Ward told the crowd on Wednesday.

Said Kennedy at Wednesday’s press conference, “They just need to get the hell out of here”.

“I’m sick and exhausted of the BLM and the federal government”, Houck said.