At the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge: There's More Than a Little Irony Here

The takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon by the armed ranchers, led by Ammon Bundy, has elicited comment and analysis from just about everyone, be they metropolitan reporters for the New York Times, members of the Wildlife Federation, writers for the radical journal CounterPunch, PETA activists, and the congressional representative from that corner of Oregon. Even with that much commentary it’s hard to say that anyone has “nailed” it, but the few who have focused on the historical context of the conflict seem to have come the closest to explicating a complicated situation.

The metropolitan New York Times reporter Alan Feuer published his article in the January 10 issue of the paper titled “The Ideological Roots of the Oregon Standoff.” He traced these roots to what is called the Wise Use movement (see also the lengthy CouterPunch, article “Rancher Rebels: The Rise of the Wise Use Movement”), that surfaced in the 1980s and which I described in La Jicarita News as a politically reactionary movement that advocates a balance between environmental protection and economic need but has essentially been a smokescreen for corporate attacks on environmental laws. Ranchers like the Bundys figure into the movement in their push for the privatization of lands currently owned by the federal government, precluding environmental regulation and opening the door to extractive resource development. 

The Wise Use movement was very successful in infiltrating small, western communities that were already frustrated with federal government bureaucracies like the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, agencies they saw as a threat to their livelihoods. In reality, during those same years, both agencies were essentially in the pocket of the extractive industries; timber dollars funded most of the Forest Service’s “multiple use” management. But the Wise Use movement was able to capitalize on the economic frustrations of local communities to create a very strong anti-government sentiment that opened the door to the more radical militia movement that the Bundys represent.

The ideology of the Wise Use movement has been resurrected by the American Lands Council, a Utah-based organization that promotes the agenda of transferring federally owned lands to the states. Ken Ivory, a Republican state representative from Utah and president of the American Lands Council, travels around the county “educating” states about their “jurisdictional rights to manage, protect, and care for the lands within our borders,” as described on the Council’s website. He’s backed by a board of directors of other white Republican men from Utah, as well as Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group backed by Koch brother money. 

Unfortunately, several counties in New Mexico, Otero and Sierra, have been persuaded by the Council’s offer of a “seat at the table” with a $1,000 contribution. The Wise Use movement has long been extant in rural areas like Otero and Sierra counties, but was also a player—albeit with a weird twist— in the 1990s conflicts in northern New Mexico between the land grant communities, the U.S. Forest Service, and urban environmentalists. These forest communities, like other rural western communities, had long fought over Forest Service management of public lands that burdened them with bureaucracy and impacted their economic viability. Unlike other rural communities, however, these communities are inhabited by the heirs and extended families of Native and Hispano land grants deeded by the Spanish and Mexican governments, whose common lands had been stolen by colonial and corporate interests and eventually placed in the hands of the federal government. It was quite a shock, then, when the environmentalists showed up with agendas to shut down access to these public lands and labeled the community and environmental justice activists who fought back Wise Use. La Jicarita News was called such innumerable times. The founders of the Quivira Coalition, which sought to establish dialogue between the environmental and ranching community, were also called Wise Use. As were members of the Santa Fe Group of the Sierra Club who refused to endorse the “Zero Cut” (no logging on public lands) initiative.

While the ranchers and farmers in the Malhuer area have some legitimate grievances, they are mostly the descendants of white settlers who benefitted from the removal of the Indigenous people (Paiutes) who originally inhabited the area as well as from governmental largesse in the form of homesteads and settler protection. Some of them continue to benefit from federal largesse in the form of low grazing fees and farm subsidies. I don’t know how many folks readily acknowledge this, but many of them do not support the militia tactics that the Bundy cohort is perpetrating.

It remains to be seen if the community wants to disengage—and can figure out how to do so— from a seemingly forced alliance with the militia. The militia, on the other hand, seems to want to claim an alliance with everyone. In one of the most bizarre statements yet to come out of the occupation, one of the group’s leaders had this to say when asked about Paiute claims that they are destroying Native sites: “We’re here for the natives,” he said. “The federal government has been their biggest oppressor.”

What an illustrious group we so-called Wise Users make: Natives, Hispano land grant heirs, environmental justice advocates, rural communities, and right wing white militia nuts. Who would have thunk?