Key points:
Lost in this battle between white men is the fact that neither the ranchers nor the federal government has the right to the land around Bunkerville or the Malheur refuge. For centuries, the land of the region was lived on and tended to by the Paiute nations. It may be clichéd to say that they lived in harmony with the land, but they certainly knew better than to try to graze cattle in the hot, dry desert. The Paiute people followed the buffalo and other wild food sources through this terrain. Their land-management practices ensured that food would be abundant and that the landscape was protected. (In fact, the current recommended practice of setting controlled light burns to prevent larger forest fires in high-risk areas was for many decades dismissed by white Americans as “Paiute forestry.”) 42 The land was promised to the Paiute people by the federal government in 1872. But the government had no interest in keeping white colonizers from settling there. The Paiute people took their grievances to the US government, and they were rebuffed. White settlers were incredulous that the Paiutes thought they had any right to the land. An editorial in the Idaho Statesman summed up the popular opinion toward Native claims on land: “The idea that the Indians have any right to the soil is ridiculous.… They have no more right to the soil of the Territories of the United States than wolves or coyotes.” 43 — Mediocre, pg 43
When the Bundys took over the Malheur refuge in 2016 and damaged many priceless Paiute artifacts housed there, nobody besides the Paiute people remaining in the area seemed to care, just as few non-Native people seem to care about the damage currently being done to the land the Paiute have called home for hundreds of years. “I could go to the Bundys where his grandparents are buried,” said Jarvis Kennedy, the Paiute tribal council’s sergeant at arms, when he was asked how the Paiute people felt about seeing video of Bundy’s clan rifling through their sacred artifacts. “How would they feel if I drove over their grave and went through their heirlooms?” 45 — Mediocre, pg 43