Articles
“The leaders of the Burns Paiute tribe have a message for the men and women who have taken over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside Burns, Oregon: “Go home. We don’t want you here.”
The message came from several tribe members whose ancestors fought and died over portions of that land long before the ranchers and farmers had it, long before the federal government even existed.
The tribe is still fighting over land use but now works with the federal government’s Bureau of Land Management to save its archaeological sites.
“We have good relations with the refuge. They protect our cultural rights there,” said tribal council Chairwoman Charlotte Rodrique.
The Bureau of Land Management is the same agency that has riled up Nevada rancher Ammon Bundy and the armed protesters who joined him from out of state. The men took over the wildlife refuge headquarters, saying they would stay until the land was returned to who they consider its owners, the 100 or so ranchers and farmers who worked the land as far back as 1900.”
– CNN, Native tribe blasts Oregon takeover.
“According to representatives of the Native American Burns Paiute Tribe, members of the Northern Paiute are bewildered by claims of ranchers’ land rights being pushed by the Ammon Bundy-led armed militia group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters near Burns.
Speaking in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday at the tribe’s reservation meeting house, Charlotte Rodrique, chairwoman of the Burns Paiute Tribe, criticized the armed militia members; and referring to ongoing dispute between the Northern Paiute tribe and the federal government over land and water resources, Rodrique commented that the armed militia members appeared to have overlooked the fact that “there was never an agreement that we [the Paiute] were giving up this land.”
“We were dragged out of here,” she said.
However, she noted that despite the fact that they had owned the land in the western Oregon mountains long before any European set foot in North America, they have preferred a “less adversarial approach” than the armed militia members on whose behalf the federal government “stole” the land after President Ulysses Grant established the Malheur Indian Reservation for the Northern Paiute in 1872.
“I just think they [the armed militia members] are a bunch of glory hounds. Look at us, look at what we’re doing. I don’t give much credence to their cause,” she said.
– Inquisitor.com, Oregon Native American Paiute to armed Bundy Militia Members – ‘The land was stolen from us not you’.
Download
Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 #52 – On Tribal Land.
Close Ups
Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
Creative Commons License
This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
