#OregonUnderAttack #NativesBeLike pic.twitter.com/GuvPsDkjDu
— Megan Red Shirt-Shaw (@mredshirtshaw) January 5, 2016
Seriously:
As reported by the Washington Post:
… “The protesters have no claim to this land. It belongs to the native people who continue to live here,” Burns Paiute tribal chair Charlotte Rodrique said at a press conference Wednesday.
The occupation of the refuge, now in its fourth day, has been part demand for local control over public land and part protest over how the federal government manages the Western landscape. Bundy, an Idaho rancher and the son of Cliven Bundy, and his followers stake claim on vast stretches of federal land in the West and have vowed to occupy the refuge until a complete investigation into historical land deeds and ownership rights yields a transfer of land control to local interests. Bundy supporter and refuge occupier LaVoy Finicum, who lives near Bundy’s father in Arizona, said that a paper trail would reveal an illegal transfer of sale from private ownership to the government and that an investigation into historical Western real estate sales would unwind federal control of the lands.
But Sara J. Hawley, a member of the local Paiute tribe, said the land has never belonged to anybody but the Paiute.
“The Burns Paiute Tribe has not ceded any of its rights in the tribe’s ancestral territory,” added Rodrique, pointing to a treaty — never ratified in Washington — that means many Westerners are technically squatting on Paiute land.
“They wanted us to give up our land,” Rodrique said. “We never did it.”
In 1868, the Burns Paiute Tribe entered into a treaty with the federal government that among other things, guaranteed the protection and safety of the Paiute people and their cultural resources. Six tribe band leaders signed the treaty but the U.S. Senate never ratified it. Without ratification, the agreement was voided and a legal transfer of land never occurred, Rodrique said.
“We never gave up our aboriginal rights,” she said. “We did have a treaty but it wasn’t ratified, so therefore it was a contract that was never completed. And so we as a tribe view that this is still our land.”…
“They say they don’t want to bother the community, but you know what? Our kids are sitting at home right now when they should be at school. They’re jeopardizing, they’re scaring our people around here,” [Burns Paiute tribal councilman Jarvis] Kennedy said…
The NYTimes says the non-Paiute locals mostly aren’t much enamored of Bundy and his VanillaISIS cult, either:
BURNS, Ore. — Hundreds of residents crammed into a building at the Harney County Fairgrounds here on Wednesday night, far surpassing the capacity of the rows of brown metal folding chairs set up on a concrete floor, to talk in often deeply emotional terms about their community — and just who should be in charge of its destiny…
“You don’t get to come here and tell us how we get to live our lives,” said Sheriff Dave Ward of Harney County, who led the meeting, and the crowd erupted into applause and cheers. “I’m here to ask those folks to go home and let us go back to our lives in Harney County,” he added, again to huge applause…