#Paiute land at issue in #Oregon militia showdown | World War 4 Report

5.1.16

Paiute land at issue in Oregon militia showdown | World War 4 Report: A sympathetic right-wing website, The Last Refuge, provides an historical outline of the conflict over the lands in question, beginning: "The Harney Basin (were [sic] the Hammond ranch is established) was settled in the 1870’s. The valley was settled by multiple ranchers and was known to have run over 300,000 head of cattle... In 1908 President Theodor [sic] Roosevelt, in a political scheme, create an 'Indian reservation' around the Malheur, Mud & Harney Lakes and declared it 'as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds'. Later this 'Indian reservation' (without Indians) became the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge." In other words, the land was not "settled" before white ranchers arrived, and the "Indian reservation" (in scare quotes, of course) was a scam to establish federal control of the area. The names of the Harney Basin's indigenous peoples are not even mentioned.

Indian Country Today Media Network, as you might guess, portrays it rather differently. The Malheur Indian Reservation was actually established in 1872 by President Ulysses S. Grant for the Northern Paiute. White settler encroachment on the reservation resulted in the Bannock War of 1878, which ended with the surrender of the Paiutes and Bannocks, and their "removal" to the Yakama Reservation in Washington Territory. The Burns Paiute Reservation, a tiny patch of land in the north of the basin, is a surviving fragment of the original reservation. The rest of it seems to have wound up in the hands of private ranchers, the BLM and the Wildlife Refuge.