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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Fear of the Federal Government in the Ranchlands of Oregon Two years after the standoff at the Malheur Refuge, many people in the region remain convinced that their way of life is being trampled. I took the eastern route from Idaho, on a day of freezing rain, over the Strawberry Mountains, into the broad John Day River Basin, in Oregon. I was used to empty places. Most of my childhood was spent in this region of eastern Oregon, in remote areas of the sagebrush desert or in the volcanic mountains with their jagged peaks and old-growth forests. My family moved away just before I entered high school, and I never returned; I’ve felt in romantic exile ever since. This part of America that had once belonged to my childhood became the spotlight of national news in the winter of 2016, when the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge — an old childhood haunt — became the scene of a cowboy takeover. The takeover began as a protest in the town of Burns after two ranchers were sentenced to prison for arsons on federal land. The ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond, caught the attention of the Nevada rancher Ammon Bundy, who thought the punishment unfair. Bundy and a crowd of nearly 300 marchers paraded through Burns, and a splinter group eventually took over the Malheur headquarters. For 41 days, they refused to leave, protesting federal ownership of public lands, which they considered unlawful and abusive. I didn’t understand what had happened since I left, why so many people seemed so disillusioned and angry. The ground was snow-covered when I visited John Day last winter and the temperature below freezing. I was there to attend a meeting organized by Jeanette Finicum, the widow of LaVoy Finicum, an Arizona rancher who was shot and killed by government agents a year earlier. LaVoy was a leader of the Malheur occupation. He left the refuge for a speaking engagement in John Day with plans to return, but he was shot three times at an F.B.I. roadblock. For that reason, his widow was calling this event “The Meeting That NEVER Happened.” The town of John Day isn’t much more than a two-lane road through end-of-frontier brick buildings and is barely two square miles in size. A “closed” sign hung from the Ranch and Rodeo Museum, and the only vacancy was at a motel called Dreamers Lodge. Just west of town, off the Journey Through Time Scenic Byway, were the John Day fossil beds, where the remains of saber-toothed tigers and small horses were dug up from 30-million-year-old volcanic ash. To the east, replicas of covered wagons stood on the side of the road. I pulled up next to a minivan in the parking lot of Americas Best Value Inn. Three women stepped out. The driver wore American flag earrings and a Christmas sweater, her hair piled on her head. She was a candy-company representative in Boise and had driven to John Day with a trunk full of Mentos. “What’s going on with the media is absolute crap,” the driver said. We walked down the street, to the Outpost restaurant, and over lunch, she described what was happening in eastern Oregon as a “truth insurrection.” One of her companions, a delicate, elderly lady with long white hair, told me that she attended protests during the federal siege at Ruby Ridge, followed the killings at Waco and took an interest in the Bundys during the occupation. All three believed the government could come to their homes anytime and shoot them. “Someone please needs to get this story right,” the elderly lady said. When I showed her my tape recorder, she gave me a high five. She figured I couldn’t twist her words now. “Sometimes it happens,” she said. “The truth will end up in The New York Times. But your editors will probably mess it up.” I asked what truth she had in mind. “Well, for one thing,” she said, “LaVoy was not ‘killed’; he was ‘murdered.’ ” The meeting was up the road at the Grant County Fairgrounds, in a building called the Trowbridge Pavilion, where every summer local residents gathered to show prizewinning livestock. The parking lot was crowded with pickup trucks mounted with Don’t Tread on Me flags and decorated in stickers that read, “LaVoy” or “Not Guilty.” The crowd was all white, a mix of ranchers, farmers, loggers, miners, firefighters and hard-right Mormons from Idaho, Utah and Arizona. There were as many women as men, lots of families and children. People wore T-shirts that read #libertyrevolution. A few dozen self-proclaimed militia members, mostly representatives from the Oath Keepers and the Oregon Three Percenters, were there, as well as members of the Finicum family and the Bundy family. I recognized occupiers from their mug shots. A few people carried guns to show their support of the Second Amendment. Many had traveled from out of state, and some had driven through the night, on bad roads and through dangerous weather, and spent money on hotels and food they could not really afford, they said. Why? They told me their livelihood was at stake. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage LaVoy Finicum: ‘I Would Rather Die Than Be Caged’ JAN. 27, 2016 Charges Against Bundys in Ranch Standoff Case Are Dismissed JAN. 8, 2018 Recent Comments laguna greg 7 hours ago One thing people forget is the sheer cost of land management. There's a reason these lands are still in federal hands.The economics of the... John Brown 1 day ago I wonder if Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington ought to beallowed to become one State - they have less and less in common withWestern... Steve 1 day ago This article over-complicates the "sagebrush rebellion" motivations I encounter daily as a long-time resident of very rural southern Utah.... See All Comments ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story A long line formed to get in the door, and I started a conversation with Robin Olson and her 18-year-old daughter, Emily. Robin had long hair and bangs that brushed against the frame of her glasses. The Olsons lived in Powell Butte, a town of less than 2,000 people in central Oregon, not far from where I grew up. “This is the West,” she told me. “This is the real West. If only everyone could see it.” “Why are you here?” I asked. “To support the ranchers and farmers who feel like the people they are feeding are trying to destroy them. The people in the cities and suburbs just don’t get it.” Emily was a member of the Central Oregon Patriots (COP), a conservative grass-roots organization that rose out of the Tea Party. Its members intended to push back against environmental regulations that they believed hindered economic growth. They wanted the local community to make the decisions, not the federal government. “We are not a militia,” Emily said, “but everyone calls us a militia. I’m probably the only person under 60 in the group, and I’ve been called a terrorist. Can you believe it?” The building was about the size of a gymnasium, and inside an American flag that looked big enough to be a parachute hung behind a small stage equipped with a podium and a projector screen. In exhibit booths, people bought copies of books on patriot ideology, including an end-times novel by LaVoy Finicum and a biography of the rancher Cliven Bundy, Ammon’s father, by Shawna Cox, another Malheur occupier. “The rural people don’t have power to stand up against this mighty army that’s coming up against them,” Cox told me. The Finicum family sat on one side of the stage and the Bundys on the other. Three members of the Bundy family — Cliven, Ammon and his brother Ryan — were at the Nevada Southern Detention Facility in Pahrump. After the Malheur occupation, 26 of the occupiers were charged with federal conspiracy. The Bundy brothers and five others were acquitted in October 2016, but the Bundys and their father were in detention for their role in a 2014 standoff with the Bureau of Land Management at the Bundy ranch. Each faced more than a dozen charges for stopping a federally mandated impoundment of Cliven’s cattle as payment for fines and fees, including conspiracy, assaulting and threatening federal officers and obstruction of justice. Ammon’s mother, Carol, was in attendance at the meeting, as was his wife, Lisa, who had told me she didn’t know that Ammon intended to occupy the refuge until she saw a livestream on YouTube. In the video, her husband stood on the back of a truck bed and told a crowd about his plans. Lisa got Ammon on the phone. “He was like, ‘Just trust me, honey, I wouldn’t have done anything that God didn’t tell me to do.’ ” About 650 people showed up at the meeting that afternoon, and tens of thousands of viewers watched on Facebook Live. The building was dimly lit, and cold air blew through door. The evening’s M.C. was Trent Loos, a sixth-generation farmer from central Nebraska, best known among patriots for hosting “Loos Tales Podcasts” and “Rural Route Radio,” shows about rural America. Loos wore a red neckerchief and a leather vest over a button-down shirt tucked into jeans that fit snugly over riding boots. He spoke in the quick, clipped manner of an auctioneer. These patriots were right-wing populists who felt they were losing power. Many in the crowd expressed excitement about President Donald Trump and advocated for the transfer of federal lands to local control. They blamed environmentalists for the decline of rural culture and talked about the Endangered Species Act as a government conspiracy meant to drive ranchers off the land. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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