The futility of the Oregon armed standoff

By Ron Ewart

 As advocates for the American rural landowner, (NARLO) we have great empathy for what landowners are having to endure at the hands of a heavy-handed government, the environmentalists that have infiltrated every nick and cranny of government and the Indians that are finding creative ways to seek revenge against the White Man with sympathetic courts, high-paid lawyers and ancient Indian treaties. The fact that the anger is rising in the landowners of the American West is as predictable as the Sun rising in the East.

 There have been many confrontations between landowners and the government, environmentalists and the Indians and those confrontations are only going to grow. That rising anger has led to the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade in Northern Nevada near Elko, the Klamath Bucket Brigade in Southern Oregon, the infamous Wayne Hage lawsuit against the government and the Bundy standoff against heavily armed BLM agents in Southeastern Nevada and now the standoff at the Malheur Nature Preserve in Southeastern Oregon. 
 

On the Indian front, besides Indian Casinos, little has been said or is known about the Boldt decision that gave the Indians 50% of the Salmon harvest every year, or the giant monetary award to the Puyallup Indians in Washington State ($162,000,000) over a land claim, or the Coeur d’Alene Indians trying to claim for the tribe all of Lake Coeur d’Alene in Idaho, or the Flathead Indians taking control of all land, water and electricity rights in Western Montana, with the help of the federal and Montana State governments.

Then there is the dictatorial control and abuse by the Bureau of Land Management and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Agency in the management of federal lands that have spilled over into private land holdings with a vengeance.

All of these events directly affect the rural landowners of the Western United States and has lit a match to what could become a raging land war in the West.

The Western landowners have found themselves in the unrelenting grip of a giant bully known as the U. S. Federal Government. They have tried in numerous legal ways to fight that government, but with courts leaning in favor of the government and the radical environmental movement, the rural landowner has found little redress going the legal route. The hard truth is, you can’t fight the power of the federal government alone, which way too many landowners try.

A blaring case in point is the Wayne Hage family ranchers in Southeastern Nevada...

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