LaVoy Finicum Killed In Shootout As Feds Move In On Oregon Militia Leaders

Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum, left, and Ammon Bundy, Militia Leader in Oregon.

By Red Power Media, Staff

Leaders of armed occupation at the Oregon wildlife refuge arrested

One person is dead and 8 people arrested — including militia leaders Ammon and Ryan Bundy — after the FBI and the Oregon State Police moved in on the group along a highway.

The militiamen were driving to a community meeting in John Day – 70 miles from Burns – when they were stopped by police, about 4:25 p.m.

Video: Bundy brothers arrested in traffic stop by FBI, OSP Within minutes, shots were fired, wounding Ryan Bundy and killing militia spokesman LaVoy Finicum.

It is not clear who opened fire first.

Bundy Ranch, on its Facebook page, said in a post Tuesday evening that Arizona resident Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, author of the novel Only by Blood and Suffering, was shot and killed during the encounter.

BREAKING: FBI releases statement. One deceased at Militia standoff. #Oregonstandoff https://t.co/5Rivlo9GZv pic.twitter.com/5EYhDcpAGi

— Tim Pool (@Timcast) January 27, 2016

In a statement, those arrested in the initial event were:

• Ammon Edward Bundy, 40, of Emmett, Idaho
• Ryan C. Bundy, 43, of Bunkerville, Nev.
• Brian Cavalier, 44, of Bunkerville, Nev.
• Shawna Cox, 59, Kanab, Utah
• Ryan Waylen Payne, 32, of Anaconda, Mont.

Also arrested, in Burns, at about 5:50 p.m., was:

• Joseph Donald O’Shaughnessy, age 45, Cottonwood, Ariz.

Officials said all six of those arrested face a federal felony charge of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation, or threats, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 372.

Later Tuesday the FBI announced two other arrests resulting in the confrontation, bringing the total number of those arrested to eight.

The FBI said 50-year-old Peter Santilli of Cincinnati was arrested at 6:30 p.m. in Burns.

And at 8:30 p.m. the FBI’s Phoenix Division made a probable cause arrest of Jon Eric Ritzheimer, 32, who turned himself into the Peoria, Ariz., police department.

From top left, booking photographs of Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, Brian Cavalier, Shawna Cox, From bottom left, Joseph Donald O’Shaughnessy, Ryan Payne, Jon Eric Ritzheimer and Peter Santilli. Credit Multnomah County Sheriff

The wounded Bundy brother was taken to a local hospital. He was subsequently arrested and taken into custody.

The militia leaders angry about federal land use policy took over the buildings at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge more than three weeks ago

Local authorities, Native Americans and other residents had urged Bundy’s group to leave peacefully.

The Burns Paiute Tribe wanted federal officials to stop the armed occupiers from traveling back and forth to the Wildlife Refuge, fearing tribal artifacts will go missing or the group would disturb burial grounds.

• Burns Paiute Tribe Worried About Oregon Wildlife Refuge Artifacts

Today’s alleged arrests come after an Army veteran was arrested for a DUI while he was heading to join the militia, — Joseph Arthur Stetson, 54, was caught on video threatening to kill cops on Monday as he was driving to the Wildlife Refuge.

More militiamen from around the country drove in truck by truck to join the cause on January 20.

Law enforcement also converged on the wildlife refuge after today’s arrests and were expected to remain at the site throughout the night; it was unclear how many people, if any, remained in the buildings.

Live Video: from DefendYourBase inside the Malheur Wildlife Refuge

Bundy Militia Rummage Through Native American Artifacts (VIDEO)

By Red Power Media, Staff

Bundy’s militiamen are rummaging through Native American artifacts

The Burns Paiute tribe has worried for 3 weeks about the safety of more than 4,000 tribal artifacts housed the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.

Now a video uploaded to Facebook on Wednesday, shows Ammon Bundy’s militiamen standing in what appears to be a storage area of a building at the refuge. According to Carbonated.tv, the men, led by Arizona rancher Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, accuse the Bureau of Land Management of mishandling Native American artifacts – while, ironically, rummaging through shelves unauthorized and unsupervised.

• 4,000 Artifacts Stored At Oregon Refuge Held By Armed Group
• Burns Paiute Tribe Worried About Oregon Wildlife Refuge Artifacts

Gawker reports, earlier this week, Burns Paiute tribal chairperson Charlotte Roderique expressed concern over how the militia was handling the tribe’s history. “We are really worried about the status of the artifacts down there,” Roderique told the Indian Country Today Media Network.

“I understand they took a bulldozer and built a line around the refuge headquarters,” Roderique told ICTMN “You can’t go and bulldoze things. I don’t know what these people are doing if they are doing things to just get a rise or to be martyr—all they are doing is making enemies out of the people they professed to support.”

Last week, the tribe delivered a letter to the U.S. Attorney and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service demanding prosecution “if the occupiers disturb, damage, remove, alter, or deface any archaeological resource on the refuge property.”

The tribe is demanding federal action under both the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 and a “protection against bad men” provision in the treaty the tribe signed with the United States in 1868.

Under ARPA, a federal law authorizing law enforcement and penalties in the defense of archeological sites on public land, removing artifacts is a felony offense and offenders can be fined or imprisoned for up to 5 years.

Oregon’s governor has expressed frustration with federal authorities’ handling of the continuing occupation and said it’s time to end it.

Federal, state and local law enforcement officers have been sent to the remote area but so far have avoided doing anything that might provoke a confrontation.

Finicum told Oregon Public Broadcasting on Wednesday they have no plans to leave. “We are very strong, very firm, this facility will not go back to the federal government, ever.”

Burns Paiute Tribe Worried About Oregon Wildlife Refuge Artifacts

A U.S. flag covers a sign at the entrance of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon January 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart

Washington Post‎,  January 16, 2016

‘Who knows what they’re stomping on?’: Tribe worried about Ore. refuge artifacts

The Burns Paiute Tribe is seeking criminal charges against the armed occupiers of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, accusing the men of damaging important cultural resources on the tribe’s native land.

The tribe is urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect those resources, in part by prosecuting “violators of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act” on the remote bird refuge.

“Armed protestors don’t belong here,” Charlotte Roderique, chair of the Burns Paiute Tribal Council, said in a statement Friday. “They continue to desecrate one of our most important sacred sites. They should be held accountable.”

The 184,000-acre refuge, in remote southeastern Oregon, is the historical home to the tribe, which once roamed across southeastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho. More than 4,000 tribal artifacts are housed and cared for on the property, including spears and stone tools, some dating nearly 10,000 years. Videos posted online by the occupiers show them sitting at desks in the refuge offices and using government computers that contain maps and sensitive details about the location of Paiute artifacts.

Jarvis Kennedy, another member of the Tribal Council, fears that the occupiers could be selling off sacred artifacts. “They could be on eBay right now — we don’t know,” Kennedy said. With militia members coming and going freely from the refuge, Kennedy said, “who knows what’s leaving there?”

The refuge contains more than 300 prehistoric sites, such as burial grounds and ancient villages. Tribal members are most concerned for burial sites, especially after photos were released showing roads being forged inside the refuge by occupiers using heavy equipment. Ancestral remains, which were unearthed during floods in the 1980s, are interred around Malheur Lake, inside the refuge.

“They’ve got their horse running around there,” Kennedy said. “Who knows what they’re stomping on?”

The occupation is now entering its third week. It was sparked Jan. 2 when an armed group led by Ammon Bundy, an Idaho rancher and son of Cliven Bundy, seized the refuge to protest the federal prosecution of two local ranchers. The group is demanding the ranchers’ release and laying claim to the ‘refuge, which they argue should be transferred from the federal government to private hands.

The Paiute, however, insist that the land belongs to them. The root-gathering tribe’s first encounters with westward-traveling pioneers on the Oregon Trail turned sour when settlers’ cattle decimated the already-sparse land, which writer Jarold Ramsey described as “bleak, open, inhumanly spacious” in his book “Coyote Was Going There: Indian Literature of the Oregon Country.” The tribes began attacking settlers, prompting the 1860s Snake Indian War — an effort by the government to protect white settlers. Ramsey writes of extermination orders in which soldiers “went through the upper reaches of the Great Basin country hunting Paiutes and other Shoshoneans down like deer, killing for the sake of what in the Viet Nam era became known as ‘body count.’ ”

Despite suppression of the tribes on the Malheur Reservation, in January 1879 some 500 Paiutes were shackled two by two and marched through “knee deep snow” 350 miles north toward the Yakama Reservation — an event the tribe today refers to as its own “Trail of Tears.”

By the time some Paiutes were allowed to return to Burns in the late 1880s, their treaties had been terminated and land had been snatched up by local ranchers. By the mid-1920s, the Egan Land Co. gave the tribe 10 acres outside Burns — the former home of the city dump, prompting rampant illness among tribal members.

Joe Mentor, an attorney for the tribe, said that if the occupiers want the refuge returned to the people, it should go to the Paiutes. “It isn’t there for ranchers or for provocateurs to try to take,” he said. “If it belongs to anybody, it doesn’t belong to the ranchers in the vicinity — it belongs to the tribe it was taken from.”

At a news conference earlier this month, Bundy told reporters that he would like to see the Paiutes “freed from the federal government as well.” On Friday, Bundy told the Associated Press that his group is not interested in the native artifacts and would turn them over to the tribe if asked.

“If the Native Americans want those, then we’d be delighted to give them to them,” he said.

Roderique said the Paiutes don’t need to be freed from the federal government, with which they have built a good relationship. Still, though the tribe disagrees with the Bundy occupation, Kennedy said it has had some advantages.

“The good thing about it [is] now the whole world knows about the Burns Paiute Tribe,” Kennedy said. “Nobody knew us or that we existed a week and a half ago.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/01/16/who-knows-what-theyre-stomping-on/

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4,000 Artifacts Stored At Oregon Refuge Held By Armed Group

A sign of the National Wildlife Refuge System is seen at an entry of the wildlife refuge southeast of Burns, Ore., Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016. (Les Zaitz / The Oregonian)

The Associated Press

Thousands of archaeological artifacts — and maps detailing where more can be found – are kept inside the national wildlife refuge buildings currently being held by an armed group of protesters angry over federal land policy.

Ryan Bundy, one of the leaders of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon, says they have no real interest in the antiquities. Still, their access to the artifacts and maps has some worried that looters could take advantage of the situation.

“There’s a huge market for artifacts, especially artifacts that have provenance, where you can identify where they came from,” said Carla Burnside, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s refuge archeologist.

More than 300 recorded prehistoric sites are scattered across the refuge, including burial grounds, ancient villages and petroglyphs. Some of the artifacts – including spears, stone tools, woven baskets and beads – date back 9,800 years.

WHY AREN’T THE RELICS AT A MUSEUM?

About 7,000 artifacts and samples from the refuge are kept at a museum in Eugene, Oregon. But 4,000 more are kept at the refuge for research.

Only Burnside has a key to the room containing the artifacts and the maps. She’s since seen pictures of the occupiers in her office, adjacent to the room where the artifacts are stored. The group has been looking through government files at the site, but it is unclear if they’ve gone through the room with the artifacts. Bundy told The Associated Press that he’s seen the artifacts and lots of maps, but he didn’t know what the maps illustrated.

The artifacts and maps are legally protected by the 1979 Archeological Resources Protection Act and other federal laws.

WHAT IS THE ARMED GROUP DOING WITH THE ARTIFACTS?

Bundy said they’re not interested in the artifacts and would turn them over to the Burns Paiute Tribe, if asked.

“If the Native Americans want those, then we’d be delighted to give them to them,” he said.

He said he didn’t think it was likely that anyone would use the maps to loot the site.

“We haven’t really been thinking along those lines,” Bundy said.

Removing artifacts from federal property without a permit is illegal.

WHAT ABOUT THE PREHISTORIC SITES?

Scientists are also worried about unintentional damage that could be done to the prehistoric sites by cattle, vehicles and heavy equipment.

The group at the ranch has driven road graders and other large construction equipment around the refuge headquarters buildings, but Bundy said they haven’t used the machinery to move any earth. He wouldn’t rule out that possibility, however.

In 2014, Ryan Bundy and supporters of the Bundy family rode ATVs on federal land closed to motorized vehicles in Utah as part of a protest. Their route took them along an illegal trail that crossed through Native American archeological sites.

HAVE THE SITES BEEN LOOTED BEFORE?

While well-known petroglyphs or other prehistoric sites are occasionally publicized for public viewing, federal land managers often go to great lengths to keep such locations secret when they can’t be safely protected from vandals and looters.

Looting has long been a problem at the refuge, with the first documented instance recorded in 1979, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s comprehensive conservation plan.

“It’s a huge problem in Oregon, especially in the southeast portion of the state,” said Dennis Griffin, the state’s archaeologist. “More often than not, when they are caught, it’s connected to drug running or seeking quick money on eBay.”

An online search of “great basin artifacts for sale” yields arrowheads, stone pestles and other items, many priced at hundreds of dollars each.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Burnside said the artifacts are part of the ancestry of the Burns Paiute Tribe and are priceless to science.

“There’s so much you can gain from looking at one artifact: Where the stone came from, how far they traveled, how it was used, the skill of the person who made it,” she said.

The tribe works extensively with federal officials on the archeology projects. Tribe officials didn’t return multiple phone messages requesting comment.

“Their history is being hijacked by these people,” Grayson said.

HOW DOES BUNDY WANT THE ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES HANDLED?

Bundy said people interested in archeology are welcome to explore the refuge, but that cattle ranchers and loggers should have priority when it comes to land use.

“Before white man came, so to speak, there was nothing to keep cattle from tromping on those things,” Bundy said.

Though some countries had domesticated cattle 10,000 years ago, the animals came to the United States with European settlers.

“We also recognize that the Native Americans had the claim to the land, but they lost that claim,” Bundy said. “There are things to learn from cultures of the past, but the current culture is the most important.”

Source: http://ctv.news/QIwdSBi

Burns Paiute Tribe Says Militia Must Leave Native Land (VIDEO)

Burns Paiute Tribal Chairperson Charlotte Rodrique talks to reporters about the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., on Wednesday.
Manuel Valdes/AP

By Red Power Media, Staff

Tribal council’s Sergeant-at-Arms says Bundy’s Militia not wanted 

The leader of an Native American tribe whose ancestral land is being occupied by a small, group of self-styled militiamen, opposed to federal land policy said the occupiers aren’t welcome and must leave.

The Burns Paiute tribe was the latest group to speak out against the armed men, who have taken several buildings at a wildlife refuge in Oregon, to protest policies governing the use of federal land in the West.

“The protesters have no right to this land. It belongs to the native people who live here,” tribal leader Charlotte Rodrique said.

Video: The leader of an Oregon Paiute Indian tribe joined the chorus of local residents calling for the armed militia camped out at a local federal wildlife refuge to give up their fight and go home..

She spoke at a news conference on Wednesday at the tribe’s cultural center, about half-hour drive from Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which is being occupied by some 20 men led by Ammon Bundy, whose father Cliven was at the center of a standoff in Nevada with federal officials in 2014 over use of public lands.

Bundy is demanding that the refuge be “returned” to the people of Harney County.

Rodrique says that she is “offended by occupiers’ statements about returning the land to its rightful owners,” OPB, Amanda Peacher reports.

“You know, who are the rightful owners?” says Rodrique. “It just really rubs me the wrong way that we have a bunch of misinformed people in here — they’re not the original owners.”

The tribe once occupied a large swath of land that includes the Malheur National Wildlife refuge — archaeological evidence dates back 6,000 years — but they were forced out in the late 1870s.

The tribal council’s Sergeant-at-Arms Jarvis Kennedy took a much more direct approach towards the occupiers (see video above), saying “They just need to get the hell out of here, I’m sorry. Because we didn’t ask them here. We don’t want them here.”

“We as Harney County residents don’t need some clown to come in here and stand up for us,” he said.

Rodrique and Kennedy said the Paiute people spent their winters in the area long before settlers, ranchers and trappers arrived.

Rodrique says the tribe signed a federal treaty in 1868 and expected the government to honor the agreement to protect their interests, though the U.S. Senate never approved it.

Ammon Bundy, one of the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, arrives for a news conference at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Despite the tribe’s request for the protesters to leave the refuge, one of groups leaders told BuzzFeed News they had no intention of leaving at the moment, though he called the tribe’s role in the issue important.

“When it comes to the tribes, I actually have some native blood in me,” LaVoy Finicum told BuzzFeed News. “Those claims are important, but you must make a claim, you must have continual use of the land, and you must defend it.”

He said ranchers continued to have rights to the land, and that the group occupying the refuge would continue to demand them.

“If we ranchers lose our rights, we’ll go the way of all Indians,” he told BuzzFeed News.

Sean Anderson, of Idaho, a supporter of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, stands by the front gate Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016, near Burns, Ore. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

The motley militia, which calls itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, started the now five-day occupation of the refuge near Burns, operated by the US Fish and Game Service; after staging a rally on behalf of two local ranchers who were imprisoned on federal arson charges.

Authorities had not yet moved to oust the group, but the Bundys and militia members reportedly begun taking defensive positions in preparation for a raid, blockading a nearby road with government vehicles.

Bundys and militia taking defensive positions and using government vehicles to Barricade off refuge https://t.co/IlEW1je40O—
Joe Biggs (@Rambobiggs) January 06, 2016

“The (FBI) has assured me that those at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge will at some point face charges,” Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward told NBC News. A representative for the FBI, told MSNBC there is “no information regarding arrests” and said he could not confirm Ward’s assertion.

According to Reuters‎, authorities have been told to avoid a violent confrontation, in line with official U.S. policy after deadly clashes in the 1990s, said three Obama administration officials.

Clashes in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and Waco, Texas, in 1993 turned violent and dozens of people were killed. Since then, the FBI and other agencies have adopted more patient, flexible tactics, stressing negotiation over confrontation.