...The fact that the occupiers who initiated the standoff come from outside the community “is absolutely not fair,” Burns Mayor Craig Lafollette told RT’s Simone Del Rosario.
“These
folks, the Bundys, are not from this community, From the reports that
I’ve got most of the folks that are out of the refuge are not even from
Oregon, so it’s not fair that this wonderful peaceful community has been
put in the limelight for this reason,” Lafollette said, adding that the situation has also created division within the “very close-knit resilient community.”
While some people have been bringing food “and things” to the occupiers, expressing support for the self-proclaimed militia’s cause, “the overwhelming message from the community and from the folks living here in our community, is that we don’t want them here,” the mayor said...
The mayor's interview:
https://youtu.be/ihZjsH9xXgA
Meanwhile, militia leader Ammon Bundy argues he and the other men are
fighting for the people’s well-being and constitutional rights.
“We
came down here to take a county and give it back to its constitutional
premise, to work with the people so that they can begin to claim their
rights themselves and so that they can begin to use them,” Bundy told RT’s Simone Del Rosario.
“We wouldn’t sacrifice our lives, we wouldn’t sacrifice being away
from our children and families, being away from our businesses, if we
did not feel that we are going to make a difference here. We needed a
place to do it,” Bundy said...
“The constitution has been violated to the point where the ranchers
don’t have rights according to the federal government, that they are
just renters or lessees and they don’t have any rights,” he said. “[We]
basically have to lay it out that people did not give the federal
government authority... to control the land and the resources, that
those land and resources belong to people, that they are real property.”
Ranchers have established their right to the land “through beneficial use,” Bundy said. “Those are truly our rights established by common law, established by natural law,”
he argued, referring to a philosophy introduced by John Locke that
asserts that certain rights are inherent by virtue of human nature. The
philosopher believed that when man takes land that nature has provided,
and mixes it with his labor, as a consequence, he has a right to that
property .
Here's the Bundy interview:
https://youtu.be/SfQ_z8L4OTk
Native Americans, however, have a different perspective on the property issue.
“They say they are going to give it back to the ranchers, who are the rightful owners of this – [but] did the ranchers just drop out of the sky into virgin territory that has never been touched by anybody... and it just became theirs? No, it didn’t happen,” said Burns Paiute tribal chairwoman Charlotte Rodrique.
If not the federal government, the tribe is next in line as the rightful owners of the land in question, the current head of the people that were violently forced off it centuries ago told RT.
“[If] any section of that area could be reestablished under tribal control, we would gladly take it,” Rodrique said, warning the occupiers that they should not mess with people from their reservation.
“Native
people across the nation are watching us; native people across the
nation are ready. If anybody threatens, punishes or assaults [us], or
something happens with the tribal people, there’s gonna be no holding
people back,” the tribal chairperson said...
Here is the Rodrique interview:
https://youtu.be/9VMtvZEkLsM
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