Editor’s note: University of Oregon geography professor Peter Walker has just returned from Harney County, Oregon, where armed occupiers took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He spent several weeks attending community meetings and watching the events unfold, which he describes here.
On Jan. 2, 2016, some 300 local citizens and outside militia members marched in Harney County, Oregon, to protest the resentencing for arson of local father-and-son ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond.
At stake was far more than the fate of the Hammonds. In the works was nothing less than an armed insurrection against virtually all federal ownership of land in the United States—and even against the very existence of the federal government as we know it. Had the almost surreally audacious plan succeeded, communities and economies across the American West, and the entire country, would have been changed profoundly.
As a researcher in the politics of public land, I went to Harney County to see what was going on firsthand. Having spent five weeks going back and forth between my home and the community, I’m convinced that the Malheur occupation was part of a much larger, well-funded and politically connected movement to transfer public lands to private owners. I’m also convinced it is not over, and we must expect to see more violent attempts to seize public land in the future.
The Spark
Among the protesters in Harney County that early January day were a small number of anti-federal government activists who had been involved in the April 2014 armed standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada, between rancher Cliven Bundy and the federal government over Bundy’s nonpayment of fees for grazing on federal land.
Bundy and his supporters had in effect declared war on the federal government by pointing guns at Bureau of Land Management (BLM) employees to resist the removal of his cattle from federal land. For almost two years it appeared Bundy had won. (He was arrested on Feb. 10 in Portland, Oregon, while on his way to support the Malheur occupation.)
