Sheriff meets with OR militia, tells them to leave

With the takeover entering its fourth day Wednesday, authorities had not removed the group…

A member of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters looks on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016, near Burns, Ore. A leader of the Orego… Bundy has been leading an illegal armed occupation of a federal building for nearly a week.

Federal landownership, the primary beef of Constitution-waving protesters occupying a remote OR wildlife refuge, is not a byproduct of a federal bureaucracy run amok but rather a bedrock principle of the founding of our nation.

Bundy and his brother Ryan are leading a band of heavily armed men from various militia groups, who have been holed up since Saturday in a number of buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Many spoke during the two-hour meeting, including those who have visited the standoff site and others who traveled from beyond Oregon’s borders to the wildlife refuge after hearing word of the standoff.

Bundy reiterated that his group will leave when there’s a plan to turn over federal lands to locals. Last fall, the Hammonds were ordered back to federal prison after having already served time for lighting fires on publicly managed land.

Ammon Bundy says he respects Harney County Sheriff David Ward. Ward told the hundreds gathered at the meeting he hoped the community would put up a “united front” to peacefully resolve the conflict. Indian Country Today reports President Ulysses S. Grant established the Malheur Indian Reservation for the Northern Paiute in 1872, with white settlement encroaching on the land until the Bannock War of 1878, which ended with vanquished Paiutes and Bannocks forced from the reservation and scattered throughout the West. Rodrique said the militia’s demand that the government return “their” land was laughable.

“They’re scaring our people”, Kennedy said. “They are just making a statement for us, to wake us up”.

But they still asked the group of protesters to leave. Mixed in the protests are ranchers who charge that the Hammonds are being victimized by having their grazing rights rejected.

“We never gave up our aboriginal rights to the territory, so we as a tribe actually view this as our land, no matter who is living on it”, explained tribal chair Charlotte Rodrique, tribal chair, adding, “Armed protesters don’t belong here”.

Local authorities have made no attempt to reclaim the refuge.

“They’re feeling free enough to come talk”, Bundy said.

On this, most adults in this county are in agreement: The federal government and its Bureau of Land Management have too much power and control, and are killing their ranching traditions, making it impossible for cowboys and their families to raise and sell cattle at a decent profit. By the time the two sides signed the treaty, the Native Americans weren’t in a strong position to negotiate. The tribe also hunts and fishes there.

The occupation and protest is tied to the fate of OR ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and son Steven Hammond.

The elder Hammond served a three-month sentence, while the younger was locked away for a year.