BURNS, Ore. — They used to call it Bundyville, a dot of the arid Wild West where in 1916 a Mormon pioneer named Abraham Bundy staked out a homestead in a sea of northern Arizona sagebrush. Settlers caught rainwater in tanks and grazed their livestock across public land that had yet to be brought under government control.
That place is mostly a ghost town today, gradually abandoned after the nation set up a system of grazing permits and regulations to curb voracious overgrazing on public lands. But shards of Bundyville have stuck with the branch of the family that made its way to Nevada, where they set up a cattle ranch and became the face of unyielding, armed protest over how Washington manages Western lands.
And now in many ways, a little piece of Bundyville has re-emerged here in east-central Oregon, in the temper and tone of a Bundy-family led crew of armed, anti-government acolytes who are occupying a federal wildlife reserve, calling for Washington to hand control of federal lands to ranchers and local governments and seeking to unwind a century of policy that has shaped the West. The rural economy has stuttered and stumbled in recent years in places like Burns and surrounding Harney County, and the Bundys say it is because of the government. They want to roll it back.
"It is our goal to get the logger back to logging, to get the rancher back to ranching, to get the miner back to mining, the farmer back to farming — and to jump-start this economy in Harney County," Ammon Bundy, the leader of the occupation group here at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, about a five-hour drive from Portland, said at a news conference Tuesday.
Last year, a yearslong dispute between Bundy's father, Cliven, and federal officials over his illegal grazing on public lands erupted into a tense, armed confrontation. And Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan and his followers now echo the terms and tenets of that conflict: who controls the land in the West.
Ammon Bundy, a bearded, soft-spoken man, is treated with deference by his followers, many of whom have their own causes in addition to his. They include Jon Ritzheimer, who is perhaps better known as an organizer of anti-Islam rallies in Arizona and who regularly sits behind the wheel of a truck blocking the road to the refuge buildings. Ryan Payne, an Army veteran from Montana, volunteered at the Bundy ranch in Nevada during the confrontation there last year and was part of the armed crew that seized the refuge Saturday. He said the occupiers in Burns had been galvanized by the case of two local ranchers who were sentenced to serve additional time in prison after being convicted of burning federal lands near their property.
"The idea is power: Land is power," Payne said in a phone interview. "The federal government unconstitutionally laid claim to land within the United States."
Not everyone here is supporting that.
"It's totally against the law," said Trent Tiller, the owner of a downtown carpet and flooring store and a lifelong resident of Burns.
He said he hoped law enforcement would take action but feared it too. "I'd hate to see a situation where things got outrageous and turned into a shooting match," he said. "I'd line up on the law enforcement side."
The participants surrounding Bundy appear to have in common a reverence for the U.S. Constitution, which many quote from at
ength or brandish in paper form from a pocket to cite. But after that, their paths diverge into a tangle of other causes, beliefs and motivations, with some more focused on personal liberty, others wanting to talk about economic harm to the agricultural heritage or tradition of the West — which they say comes from government overreach in control of natural resources like the grass that grows on public lands.
Almost all men, they have taken jobs scanning the terrain from a watchtower, serving as guards, preparing food and flanking Bundy at his appearances before the cameras.
There is one woman who has been front and center: Shawna Cox, who has answered reporters' calls and read statements before the cameras, also supported the Bundy family during last year's protests in Nevada. She befriended Cliven Bundy and wrote an admiring book about him, "Last Rancher Standing." When the Oregon dispute boiled up, she left her family in southern Utah and joined up again.
"I'm just a mom, a grandma," she said in a telephone interview. "American. I bleed red."
Another participant who has emerged as a kind of spokesman is LaVoy Finicum, a 55-year-old rancher from Arizona, who talks in fond terms about the grass at his arid ranch that is greener than it has been in years from lots of recent rain. "I'm just a simple rancher," he said.
But Finicum — always in earmuffs and a cowboy hat — then expounded at articulate length on obscure sections of the Constitution that he said the federal government had violated here by taking private land into federal control without the approval of the Oregon Legislature.
A willingness to step out to the edge — of confrontation or controversy — is one quality that unites the group.
Ritzheimer, for example, drew attention to himself not long after the murderous attack on the satirical French publication Charlie Hebdo last year, after it published a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad. He organized a "Draw Muhammad" cartoon contest of his own in Phoenix.
"When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty," Ritzheimer said on a recent video about the refuge occupation.
Although the group says it has local backing, many residents here say the protesters are not welcome. Tuesday, the sheriff of Harney County, Dave Ward, called a community meeting for Wednesday "to discuss safety concerns and the disruptions caused by the behavior of those at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge." Ammon Bundy's Twitter account was suspended, without explanation.
While Ammon Bundy and his inner circle have vowed to stay put until they are satisfied, other protesters may have their limits. Michael Stettler, 49, an electrician who lives about two hours away, drove over with his rifle and his dog, Wolffie, and joined with the protest group. But he said that because law enforcement authorities had not intervened so far, he felt safe to make his voice heard; at the first hint of serious intent, he said, he and Wolffie would head home.
"I'm not taking a bullet," Stettler said, standing in the snow Tuesday.
Even some in the extended Bundy family have mixed feelings. Clay Bundy, a cousin of Cliven Bundy, still grazes cattle on the harsh northern Arizona land that once held the settlement commonly called Bundyville (officially it was Mount Trumbull). He said he supported his cousin's yearslong fight over grazing and also wanted to see Western states take control of the swaths of federal land in their borders. But he said Ammon Bundy should end the occupation.
"In my idea, he should pack his bags and come home," Clay Bundy said.