Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Bundy's 'ancestral rights' come under scrutiny

...This land is unusually fertile and green for southern Nevada. Cliven Bundy grows melons there. They are said to be the best in the state. His cattle, until recently, roamed freely on land managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management. Before the roundup that sparked protests, confrontations and gunmen taking a bridge, Bundy explained his "ancestral rights" to the I-Team. "I've lived my lifetime here. My forefathers have been up and down the Virgin Valley here ever since 1877. All these rights that I claim, have been created through pre-emptive rights and beneficial use of the forage and the water and the access and range improvements," Bundy said. Clark County property records show Cliven Bundy's parents moved from Bundyville, Arizona and bought the 160 acre ranch in 1948 from Raoul and Ruth Leavitt. Water rights were transferred too, but only to the ranch, not the federally managed land surrounding it. Court records show Bundy family cattle didn't start grazing on that land until 1954. The Bureau of Land Management was created 1946, the same year Cliven was born. "My rights are before the BLM even existed, but my rights are created by beneficial use. Beneficial use means we created the forage and the water from the time the very first pioneers come here," Bundy said. Early census records show Cliven's maternal grandmother, Christena Jensen, was born in Nevada in 1901. One genealogical researcher says records indicate Jensen helped settle Bunkerville some years later. One word spreading through Bundy supporters and his armed guards is that what the federal government is doing to Bundy is exactly what they did to native Americans. "They are literally treating western United States citizens, ranchers, rural folks like this- are the modern day Indians. We're being driven off of our lands. We're being forced into reservations known as cities," Justin Giles, an Oathkeeper from Alaska, said.  The local Paiute Indians were forced into reservations by federal troops in 1875. Two years prior, the tribe was promised the same land Cliven Bundy now grows his melons ,and until recently, grazed his cattle. The I-Team's research team has come up with an in-depth look at the genealogy and property records that form the basis of Cliven Bundy's claim of ancestral rights on the ranch land...more


The gentleman who put this report together for KLAS-TV doesn't seem to understand that whatever rights Bundy may have do not originate with his date of birth or when the BLM was created.  They originate, with water for instance, on the date his predecessors diverted the water and put it to beneficial use.  Ranchers have a preference right to graze on federal land based on either control of water rights or ownership of private property near the federal land, called base property.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bundy is a criminal and belongs in jail.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Cliven Bundy is a racist and moocher. Read his remarks: “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.
“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

This guy is an idiot. No wonder Stormfront, a neo-Nazi group supports him!
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/us/politics/rancher-proudly-breaks-the-law-becoming-a-hero-in-the-west.html?smid=fb-share

Anonymous said...

http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2014/04/14/cliven-bundy-has-no-claim-to-federal-land-and-grazing/

Enough said.