Bernstein writes: "To Morningstar and the people she stands for, Ammon Bundy
and his brother Ryan are not heroes. They have zero claim to the land and
present 'a direct threat' to the local Native American community. She
herself has often felt directly threatened while walking in isolated parts
of the countryside."
Ammon Bundy, right, shakes hand with a federal agent guarding the gate at
the Burns Municipal Airport in Oregon on Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. (photo:
Keith Ridler/AP)
Malheur Wildlife Refuge Takeover Is No Wounded Knee
By Dennis J. Bernstein, Reader Supported News
24 January 16
For forty years now, Leonard Peltier, leader of the American Indian Movement
(AIM), has been imprisoned as a result of the armed raid by the federal
government on Indian land at the historic Wounded Knee in 1973. Bill Means,
veteran of the Vietnam War and the standoff at Wounded Knee, said, "The Feds
didn't serve us coffee and pizzas. They came heavily armed, ready to do
battle, and opened fire before they asked the first question." Means is a
co-founder, along with Leonard Peltier, of AIM, and is now on the board of
the International Indian Treaty Council.
"The laws are recast and enforced in order to suppress any type of minority
movement," said Means, "to shift all the power of recognition to the white
community. So that when the posse comitatus or bunch of racist ranchers take
over a piece of land, they do it in the name of their country, and they
become immune to the criminal laws of the United States."
Means reflected on how this scenario might have played out quite
differently, if it had been AIM that decided to lead an armed takeover of
the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. "We know exactly what they'd do. We experienced
that back in 1973," Means told me in a January radio interview. "We were
immediately surrounded by over 7 or 8 federal jurisdictions: FBI, U.S.
marshals, U.S. Border Patrol, BIA police. I'm missing a few, but you can
understand the type of response we get as Indian people."
Ammon Bundy, right, shakes hand with a federal agent guarding the gate at
the Burns Municipal Airport in Oregon on Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. (photo:
Keith Ridler/AP)
Far from the history of his ancestors, who walked across the Bering Straits
many thousands of years ago to discover North America, these descendants of
white culture are "violent newcomers," Means said. "These are modern-day
colonizers. I mean, we already went through this era of homesteading which
was, you know, back in the days of 1887 or so. So this is a scary type of
uplift in the posse comitatus-type people. I experienced this, as well, back
in Wisconsin."
"It was 1987 when I moved here to the Twin Cities," said the Native American
leader. "There was a struggle for fishing rights going on. And that's where
we were surrounded, again, by law enforcement and vigilantes who were trying
to stop our people from fishing, which is a tradition that goes back
thousands of years. They actually made a social event out of it, where they
would go every weekend, get drunk, and harass the Indian fishermen and
women. That was just back in the 80s. And, of course, Wounded Knee in the
70s. Now what's going on over there is being condoned and almost celebrated,
and these people are being portrayed as heroes for standing up to the
federal government. But, in fact, when we try to defend our land, and our
fishing rights, hunting rights, what do we get? We get the opposite. We get
the rednecks, we get the racists, we get the crooked politicians, who are
all stepping forward to be a part of this action against Indian people. So
we have a complete, shall we say, contradiction from the response of law
enforcement. When they're white, they are alright. If they're Indian, if
they're Black Lives Matter, then it's a whole other process."
Confederate Flags Over Indian Land
Morningstar is a Native American activist and a member of the International
Indian Treaty Council. She is also a member of the Pit River Tribe in
Southern Oregon. Her tribe shares a boundary with the Paiute, whose land has
been "occupied again by armed white people," this time white ranchers and
cattlemen, she says, claiming "sovereignty" over land that has been
inhabited by these tribes for thousands of years.
"It's really laughable that these armed militia have come in and are
claiming that they're the original caretakers of the land," she said in an
interview on January 20th. "We see it so much within these rural
communities. They've really appropriated the language of sovereignty and
caretaking. I live in a very rural community where there are a number of
cattle ranchers. And they have stated, 'We're the caretakers here. It's our
sovereign right to be here. This is our land.'"
To Morningstar and the people she stands for, Ammon Bundy and his brother
Ryan are not heroes. They have zero claim to the land and present "a direct
threat" to the local Native American community. She herself has often felt
directly threatened while walking in isolated parts of the countryside.
"It's not a very welcoming atmosphere," said Morningstar, "as I do wear my
sweatshirt that says 'Got Land?' on the front, and 'I'm thinking Indian' on
the back. And I don't get a very warm response. Confederate flags are very
common, the state of Jefferson flags. But these are tribal lands. We've been
here since time immemorial. And so when the lands were homesteaded, when
they were opened up for cattle ranchers, and for farmers, that wasn't the
beginning of U.S. history. We've existed for many thousands of years and so
it's very much a concern with the Bundy group and their supporters as well."
Morningstar is deeply troubled by the takeover of the Malheur Refuge area,
which she said contains sacred burial grounds of their ancient ancestors,
and extensive personal records about the community and its people. She
bristles at the claim by the Bundy brothers that they are acting on behalf
of everyone in the area, including the Native American tribes. "They are
absolutely not acting on behalf of the local tribes within the area," she
said unequivocally. "The Paiute have 420 members enrolled, half of whom live
on and near the reservation. And so they have essentially taken over the
bird refuge. The main concern right now is that there are over 4,000
artifacts. There are maps within the BLM offices. These are maps that are
not disclosed to the public, and so we're hearing stories now of the militia
members, Bundy's faction, you know, going through personnel files of the
staff members there, many of which include tribal members. They have access
to this classified material, and to the 4,000 artifacts."
Morningstar added that her concern is not only with the potential damage the
armed ranchers might do inside the formal structures of the refuge, but with
what they have already done as a result of their driving large herds of
cattle over sacred Indian land. "When it comes to sacred place protection,
it's definitely an issue, because the cattle are consistently stepping over
sacred sites and burials," she said. "They are contaminating our springs,
our waterways, our creeks. They're inside the rivers and stream ways. We're
having to do a lot of restoration work along the creek ways because we have
cattle that are just pushing the soil and dirt into the water."
The affected tribes have reached out directly to law enforcement and to the
Feds, but unlike Wounded Knee in 1973, said Morningstar, when the government
responded with massive firepower on the same day as the takeover, here the
Feds have been slow to act. "The tribe is working directly with BLM and with
law enforcement on it," she said, "but they are very slow to respond, and
there's irony, of course. When the Wounded Knee takeover took place in 1973,
the very same day there was response. There was paramilitary response from
the U.S. government. We all know that there were tankers that were brought
in. There were air bombings that occurred. And the fact that this takeover
has been going on for over three weeks now, and the Feds are taking this
'let's sit back and wait' approach, is very concerning."
The Danns and the Bundys: The Racist Double Standard at Ruby Valley
In the mid-nineties, there was a similar standoff between Native Americans
and federal authorities over grazing rights in Nevada. But as Bill Means is
quick to point out, in rural Nevada where this played out, the Native
Americans were on solid legal grounds and took the Feds to court. "They
stood behind the rule of law, as Indian people, when they took action," said
Means. "Indian people stood behind the rule of law, and they were violently
attacked."
"What we're talking about in Nevada came under what they call the Western
Shoshone Tribe, and it involved a treaty called the Treaty of Ruby Valley,"
said Means, an expert on broken treaties between the US and Indian nations.
"And the local people said 'Look, we have a right to our land, rather than
to be mined, rather than to be exploited and appropriated by the federal
government through their various federal agencies, like the Bureau of Land
Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and other bureaus. The Danns were
acting legally under a treaty, but they were harassed, beaten, fined, and
arrested for protesting the illegal government policies," he said. "All of a
sudden now [in Oregon] we have sort of the same thing going on, only the
Bundy clan is being made out to be heroes."
Morningstar also raised the issue of the double standard in the case of the
Danns. "Carrie and Mary Dann were fighting for their grazing rights under
the Treaty of Ruby Valley," she explained, "and the Treaty of Ruby Valley
was a peace treaty that provided passage [for grazing], and they asserted
their rights, and very much said that, you know, 'We're here, we've been
here. We're not paying additional fees.' But the U.S. government came in
during the middle of winter and started running [the Danns'] cattle and
horses, by helicopter, and they were corralling them. Many of their
livestock died. And these are not millionaire ranchers, these are two
elderly Shoshone women. And so it's, again, very concerning and just
outright horrendous, in terms of the way that the native people who are the
true caretakers of the land are treated, compared to these millionaire
ranchers who are provided with tax subsidies," said Morningstar.
In an act of desperation, and in the face of extreme brutality, the older
brother of the Dann sisters actually set himself ablaze in front of a police
roadblock, as captured in the documentary film "American Outrage." The
website for the film describes Carrie and Mary Dann as two "feisty Western
Shoshone sisters who have endured five terrifying livestock roundups by
armed federal marshals in which more than a thousand of their horses and
cattle were confiscated - for grazing their livestock on the open range
outside their private ranch."
The elder Dann's action, according to Morningstar, was indeed an act of
extreme frustration, stemming from the fear of the loss of his very way of
life. "There was at one point excessive force used by the BLM federal
officers, and so they had ... they were twisting the arms, they were
forcefully grabbing these elders, and it turned into a standoff at one
point, where the elder [Dann] did say, 'This is my livelihood. This is all
that I have.' And he ended up essentially lighting himself on fire at the
time," said Morningstar. "The fire was put out, he was hospitalized, and
then he was charged a fine on top of it, by the BLM, for emergency response
to come out."
Leonard Peltier and the Bundys
"This February it will be 40 years of Leonard Peltier's imprisonment,"
lamented Morningstar. "He has ongoing serious health issues taking place
right now. And we see just the gross mistreatment and dual standard when
Indians stand up for their rights, and then to see the fact now that the
Bundy occupiers are being called activists. They're being called protestors.
They've even used the hashtag occupymalheurofthebirdrefuge. And so they're
considering themselves to be now part of the Occupy movement," she said.
"And they're able to come and go freely. They're seen in town and they're
staying in motels. They are shopping at the local stores and eating at the
local restaurants. They're very much able to come and go as they please. And
yet we know that there's sensitive, classified material within the BLM
office."
The local tribes have expressed their deep concerns to law enforcement, and
repeatedly asked the Feds to take action, Morningstar said, but their
requests have fallen on deaf ears. "The tribe has asked outright to cut off
their power, cut off their electricity, so that they're not allowed to
continue with this indiscretion. But the FBI's stance has very much been
that they've been on standby."
"It's more than a little disturbing," said Bill Means, "this kind of
condoning of the vigilantes. They actually believe that this is divine
intervention, or manifest destiny. They actually believe it is their
God-given right to take Indian land. And that's really what's going on. It's
not about the Feds versus the state, states rights. It's about stealing
Indian land."
________________________________________
Dennis J. Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on
Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as
a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed:
Voices from a Hidden Classroom.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Ammon Bundy, right, shakes hand with a federal agent guarding the gate at
the Burns Municipal Airport in Oregon on Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. (photo:
Keith Ridler/AP)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Malheur Wildlife Refuge Takeover Is No Wounded Knee
By Dennis J. Bernstein, Reader Supported News
24 January 16
or forty years now, Leonard Peltier, leader of the American Indian Movement
(AIM), has been imprisoned as a result of the armed raid by the federal
government on Indian land at the historic Wounded Knee in 1973. Bill Means,
veteran of the Vietnam War and the standoff at Wounded Knee, said, "The Feds
didn't serve us coffee and pizzas. They came heavily armed, ready to do
battle, and opened fire before they asked the first question." Means is a
co-founder, along with Leonard Peltier, of AIM, and is now on the board of
the International Indian Treaty Council.
"The laws are recast and enforced in order to suppress any type of minority
movement," said Means, "to shift all the power of recognition to the white
community. So that when the posse comitatus or bunch of racist ranchers take
over a piece of land, they do it in the name of their country, and they
become immune to the criminal laws of the United States."
Means reflected on how this scenario might have played out quite
differently, if it had been AIM that decided to lead an armed takeover of
the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. "We know exactly what they'd do. We experienced
that back in 1973," Means told me in a January radio interview. "We were
immediately surrounded by over 7 or 8 federal jurisdictions: FBI, U.S.
marshals, U.S. Border Patrol, BIA police. I'm missing a few, but you can
understand the type of response we get as Indian people."
Ammon Bundy, right, shakes hand with a federal agent guarding the gate at
the Burns Municipal Airport in Oregon on Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. (photo:
Keith Ridler/AP)
Far from the history of his ancestors, who walked across the Bering Straits
many thousands of years ago to discover North America, these descendants of
white culture are "violent newcomers," Means said. "These are modern-day
colonizers. I mean, we already went through this era of homesteading which
was, you know, back in the days of 1887 or so. So this is a scary type of
uplift in the posse comitatus-type people. I experienced this, as well, back
in Wisconsin."
"It was 1987 when I moved here to the Twin Cities," said the Native American
leader. "There was a struggle for fishing rights going on. And that's where
we were surrounded, again, by law enforcement and vigilantes who were trying
to stop our people from fishing, which is a tradition that goes back
thousands of years. They actually made a social event out of it, where they
would go every weekend, get drunk, and harass the Indian fishermen and
women. That was just back in the 80s. And, of course, Wounded Knee in the
70s. Now what's going on over there is being condoned and almost celebrated,
and these people are being portrayed as heroes for standing up to the
federal government. But, in fact, when we try to defend our land, and our
fishing rights, hunting rights, what do we get? We get the opposite. We get
the rednecks, we get the racists, we get the crooked politicians, who are
all stepping forward to be a part of this action against Indian people. So
we have a complete, shall we say, contradiction from the response of law
enforcement. When they're white, they are alright. If they're Indian, if
they're Black Lives Matter, then it's a whole other process."
Confederate Flags Over Indian Land
Morningstar is a Native American activist and a member of the International
Indian Treaty Council. She is also a member of the Pit River Tribe in
Southern Oregon. Her tribe shares a boundary with the Paiute, whose land has
been "occupied again by armed white people," this time white ranchers and
cattlemen, she says, claiming "sovereignty" over land that has been
inhabited by these tribes for thousands of years.
"It's really laughable that these armed militia have come in and are
claiming that they're the original caretakers of the land," she said in an
interview on January 20th. "We see it so much within these rural
communities. They've really appropriated the language of sovereignty and
caretaking. I live in a very rural community where there are a number of
cattle ranchers. And they have stated, 'We're the caretakers here. It's our
sovereign right to be here. This is our land.'"
To Morningstar and the people she stands for, Ammon Bundy and his brother
Ryan are not heroes. They have zero claim to the land and present "a direct
threat" to the local Native American community. She herself has often felt
directly threatened while walking in isolated parts of the countryside.
"It's not a very welcoming atmosphere," said Morningstar, "as I do wear my
sweatshirt that says 'Got Land?' on the front, and 'I'm thinking Indian' on
the back. And I don't get a very warm response. Confederate flags are very
common, the state of Jefferson flags. But these are tribal lands. We've been
here since time immemorial. And so when the lands were homesteaded, when
they were opened up for cattle ranchers, and for farmers, that wasn't the
beginning of U.S. history. We've existed for many thousands of years and so
it's very much a concern with the Bundy group and their supporters as well."
Morningstar is deeply troubled by the takeover of the Malheur Refuge area,
which she said contains sacred burial grounds of their ancient ancestors,
and extensive personal records about the community and its people. She
bristles at the claim by the Bundy brothers that they are acting on behalf
of everyone in the area, including the Native American tribes. "They are
absolutely not acting on behalf of the local tribes within the area," she
said unequivocally. "The Paiute have 420 members enrolled, half of whom live
on and near the reservation. And so they have essentially taken over the
bird refuge. The main concern right now is that there are over 4,000
artifacts. There are maps within the BLM offices. These are maps that are
not disclosed to the public, and so we're hearing stories now of the militia
members, Bundy's faction, you know, going through personnel files of the
staff members there, many of which include tribal members. They have access
to this classified material, and to the 4,000 artifacts."
Morningstar added that her concern is not only with the potential damage the
armed ranchers might do inside the formal structures of the refuge, but with
what they have already done as a result of their driving large herds of
cattle over sacred Indian land. "When it comes to sacred place protection,
it's definitely an issue, because the cattle are consistently stepping over
sacred sites and burials," she said. "They are contaminating our springs,
our waterways, our creeks. They're inside the rivers and stream ways. We're
having to do a lot of restoration work along the creek ways because we have
cattle that are just pushing the soil and dirt into the water."
The affected tribes have reached out directly to law enforcement and to the
Feds, but unlike Wounded Knee in 1973, said Morningstar, when the government
responded with massive firepower on the same day as the takeover, here the
Feds have been slow to act. "The tribe is working directly with BLM and with
law enforcement on it," she said, "but they are very slow to respond, and
there's irony, of course. When the Wounded Knee takeover took place in 1973,
the very same day there was response. There was paramilitary response from
the U.S. government. We all know that there were tankers that were brought
in. There were air bombings that occurred. And the fact that this takeover
has been going on for over three weeks now, and the Feds are taking this
'let's sit back and wait' approach, is very concerning."
The Danns and the Bundys: The Racist Double Standard at Ruby Valley
In the mid-nineties, there was a similar standoff between Native Americans
and federal authorities over grazing rights in Nevada. But as Bill Means is
quick to point out, in rural Nevada where this played out, the Native
Americans were on solid legal grounds and took the Feds to court. "They
stood behind the rule of law, as Indian people, when they took action," said
Means. "Indian people stood behind the rule of law, and they were violently
attacked."
"What we're talking about in Nevada came under what they call the Western
Shoshone Tribe, and it involved a treaty called the Treaty of Ruby Valley,"
said Means, an expert on broken treaties between the US and Indian nations.
"And the local people said 'Look, we have a right to our land, rather than
to be mined, rather than to be exploited and appropriated by the federal
government through their various federal agencies, like the Bureau of Land
Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and other bureaus. The Danns were
acting legally under a treaty, but they were harassed, beaten, fined, and
arrested for protesting the illegal government policies," he said. "All of a
sudden now [in Oregon] we have sort of the same thing going on, only the
Bundy clan is being made out to be heroes."
Morningstar also raised the issue of the double standard in the case of the
Danns. "Carrie and Mary Dann were fighting for their grazing rights under
the Treaty of Ruby Valley," she explained, "and the Treaty of Ruby Valley
was a peace treaty that provided passage [for grazing], and they asserted
their rights, and very much said that, you know, 'We're here, we've been
here. We're not paying additional fees.' But the U.S. government came in
during the middle of winter and started running [the Danns'] cattle and
horses, by helicopter, and they were corralling them. Many of their
livestock died. And these are not millionaire ranchers, these are two
elderly Shoshone women. And so it's, again, very concerning and just
outright horrendous, in terms of the way that the native people who are the
true caretakers of the land are treated, compared to these millionaire
ranchers who are provided with tax subsidies," said Morningstar.
In an act of desperation, and in the face of extreme brutality, the older
brother of the Dann sisters actually set himself ablaze in front of a police
roadblock, as captured in the documentary film "American Outrage." The
website for the film describes Carrie and Mary Dann as two "feisty Western
Shoshone sisters who have endured five terrifying livestock roundups by
armed federal marshals in which more than a thousand of their horses and
cattle were confiscated - for grazing their livestock on the open range
outside their private ranch."
The elder Dann's action, according to Morningstar, was indeed an act of
extreme frustration, stemming from the fear of the loss of his very way of
life. "There was at one point excessive force used by the BLM federal
officers, and so they had ... they were twisting the arms, they were
forcefully grabbing these elders, and it turned into a standoff at one
point, where the elder [Dann] did say, 'This is my livelihood. This is all
that I have.' And he ended up essentially lighting himself on fire at the
time," said Morningstar. "The fire was put out, he was hospitalized, and
then he was charged a fine on top of it, by the BLM, for emergency response
to come out."
Leonard Peltier and the Bundys
"This February it will be 40 years of Leonard Peltier's imprisonment,"
lamented Morningstar. "He has ongoing serious health issues taking place
right now. And we see just the gross mistreatment and dual standard when
Indians stand up for their rights, and then to see the fact now that the
Bundy occupiers are being called activists. They're being called protestors.
They've even used the hashtag occupymalheurofthebirdrefuge. And so they're
considering themselves to be now part of the Occupy movement," she said.
"And they're able to come and go freely. They're seen in town and they're
staying in motels. They are shopping at the local stores and eating at the
local restaurants. They're very much able to come and go as they please. And
yet we know that there's sensitive, classified material within the BLM
office."
The local tribes have expressed their deep concerns to law enforcement, and
repeatedly asked the Feds to take action, Morningstar said, but their
requests have fallen on deaf ears. "The tribe has asked outright to cut off
their power, cut off their electricity, so that they're not allowed to
continue with this indiscretion. But the FBI's stance has very much been
that they've been on standby."
"It's more than a little disturbing," said Bill Means, "this kind of
condoning of the vigilantes. They actually believe that this is divine
intervention, or manifest destiny. They actually believe it is their
God-given right to take Indian land. And that's really what's going on. It's
not about the Feds versus the state, states rights. It's about stealing
Indian land."
Dennis J. Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on
Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as
a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed:
Voices from a Hidden Classroom.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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