The militiamen stationed at a federal wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon are now rummaging through artifacts and documents of the Paiute tribe, sparking outrage among local Native Americans whose ancestors originally occupied the land.
LaVoy Finicum, one of the leaders of the armed protesters occupying the Malheur national wildlife refuge, posted a video of himself inside a government building looking through cardboard boxes of papers and other items associated with the local tribe – and inviting Paiute leaders to meet with the militia and reclaim their belongings.
“We want to make sure these things are returned to their rightful owner,” said Finicum, who recently helped destroy a US Fish and Wildlife Service fence and remove cameras that he claimed the government was using for surveillance.
The rightwing militia, led by Ammon Bundy, took over the headquarters of the wildlife sanctuary on 2 January to protest the government’s land-use regulations in rural Harney County. They have demanded that local ranchers have control of public lands – not the federal government.
But days after the occupation began, leaders of the federally recognized Paiute Indian tribe in Burns, the town closest to the refuge, decried the armed occupation, pointing out that the out-of-state militiamen were trying to claim sacred lands that are part of the tribe’s ancestral territory.
The new video, posted on Wednesday night, has only further enraged tribal leaders who recently called on law enforcement officials to protect native cultural resources at the refuge and to criminally prosecute the militiamen.
“I feel disrespected that they’re even out there,” said Jarvis Kennedy, the tribal council’s sergeant-at-arms. Kennedy said he was too upset to watch all of Finicum’s video. “It’s like me going through their drawers at their house.”
Tribe leaders and federal officials say the refuge stores confidential documents and thousands of historic artifacts, such as baskets, spears, tools and beads. The refuge is also home to Paiute burial grounds, making the militia’s recent decision to pave a road through the refuge particularly alarming.
“I could go to the Bundys where his grandparents are buried,” Kennedy said. “How would they feel if I drove over their grave and went through their heirlooms?”
In his video, Finicum said that he was showing how the wildlife refuge has done a poor job maintaining the artifacts and keeping storage rooms clean. “This needs to be taken care of, and so we’re reaching out to the Paiute people in the sincerest manner as we can,” he said on camera. “Let’s make sure that we take care of the heritage of the Native American people.”
Added militia member Blaine Cooper: “The rightful owners need to come back and claim their belongings.”
But Kennedy said the tribe has a good relationship with refuge officials and noted that the Paiute people refuse to communicate with militia leaders or visit the occupation.
“I’m not going to give them the satisfaction of meeting with them,” Charlotte Rodrique, chairwoman of the Burns Paiute tribe, told the Guardian last week.
Kennedy noted that the militiamen have had no trouble leaving and returning to the refugeand feared one of them might damage or steal their artifacts and documents. “All the stuff they are doing out there, it’s like a crime scene,” he said. “Once this is done, we’ll see what’s missing.”
Why wouldn’t the Paiutes want to reclaim and care for their own documents and artifacts themselves??? I smell some dirty money under the table.
I watched the video and the words rifling and rummaging in the article are extremely misleading. This was an attempt to do the right thing and show the sorry state of the storage of the artifacts. The “the armed protesters occupying the Malheur national wildlife refuge” are extending an offer to return the artifacts and open dialog on the disposition of “federal land” that the natives claim as tribal land.
Good, there should be more of this. We tend to sway to the liberal side because of the fake “cause” for the indigenous people. Liberals have never returned a damned thing. And, most times when land is taken, as from the Sioux, it is often a liberal and their big money buddies doing the stealing. Maybe these action will start waking up the tribes that are left to who their allies are.
Exactly! This is how the MSM distorts events to suit their agenda of tagging dissenters as dangerous persons meriting arrest, prosecution and incarceration or worse. Moreover, we know that tribal members are rightfully bitter over the long standing abuse handed out by the federal government. AND…over the abuse handed out by CORRUPT tribal officials to their own tribal members while being paid under the table by corporations to serve their interests.
IMO, many of the Paiute Tribal officials now making loud noises about the protestors at the refuge are in league with corrupt Harney County officials and their fedgov associates or they are ignorant of important facts and are being manipulated by agents of the MSM.
Go back and look at the issues that drove the 1973 Wounded Knee revolt on the Pine Ridge Reservation…The heart of that incident was TRIBAL Corruption in association with abuse from fedgov BIA officers.
http://libcom.org/history/1973-siege-at-wounded-knee
http://hensonusfederman.weebly.com/wounded-knee-incident.html
I’m a bit disturbed that the Paiutes think that the same government who committed genocide and stole the land from them in the first place are the best stewards of their lands. Even if the Bundy bunch are ignorant of how to properly care for the belongings, they are doing so in good faith. Not opening up communication with the bundys is a sure fire way to ensure they make mistakes and lose what is theirs back to the feds. Idiots.
Hopefully one day we can work with our red brothers and sisters.
Remember they are a nation within a nation.
Then maybe we can finally break this curse of the sins of our fathers.
At sometime they’re going to have to be involved.
Those of us not raised on the reservations already know what is going on. It is those that are segregated from the American lifestyle that are stuck in the mindset that they are limited to taking what they are given, blindly trust those who come baring gifts and perpetuate the poverty mentality. It used to puss me off when I would hear white people say that Indians just take their welfare checks and go to the bar. Wwhen I got older, I saw that for a large portion of us, it was true. We have to wake up and get our heads out of our asses. This land was lost a long time ago, we aren’t going to “take it back”. But we can open our eyes, realize who our countrymen are, and live in mutual respect of each other. It is not the people who are “fighting for our cause” that are our allies. They are only pointing out that we are different and therefore lesser . This is a tactic used by controlling people to ply their victims into a position of reliance upon their attacker.
This bitch wouldn’t be bragging with 00 buck in her arse. Try it with me and see what happens.