The tips of the sagebrush flicker in the fading winter light over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Crisp gusts sweep across the high desert; a vast sea of greens and browns for miles in every direction.
This landscape, in a remote corner of southeast Oregon, was the backdrop when a group of armed, anti-government militants, led by Ammon Bundy and his brother, took over the Refuge headquarters on Jan. 2, 2016.
“We stand in defense,” Bundy said in an interview with OPB, hours after breaking into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife property. “When the time is right we will begin to defend the people of Harney County in using the land and the resources.”
Bundy and the other occupiers claimed they came to support a local ranching family, who was being prosecuted and sent back to prison by the federal government for arson.
Law enforcement officers with the FBI and Oregon State Police flooded into Harney County, as did journalists from around the world.
Over the course of a 41-day-long occupation, residents found themselves at the center of a fight over access to public lands, and a culture war over who owns the American West. Before it was over, one of the standoff’s leaders, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, was shot and killed by police. The Bundys were ultimately arrested, but prosecutors couldn’t secure a conviction.
In the decade that’s passed, many people in this deep red corner of Oregon remember the occupation as an exploitation. And ultimately, a movement that failed to take root.
“What happened here was a huge blow to this community,” said Tim Colahan, who was Harney County’s elected district attorney during the occupation. “The disruption and the attempts to cause disunity between us — it didn’t work.”
Isolation as an advantage
Across Harney County, there were people who were open to aspects of what the Bundys were trying to accomplish. On this side of the occupation, some still agree the federal government does more harm than good.
But the Bundys’ overall ideology — that the federal government couldn’t dictate what happens on public lands — didn’t fully stick.
“They represented some opinions, but I think they were opportunistic,” said Jeff Rose, who has lived in Burns, the county seat, for nearly 40 years.
During the standoff, Rose helped run the local Bureau of Land Management office, which leases public land to ranchers for cattle grazing. It was one of the federal agencies targeted by the Bundys.
“They may have believed they were assisting, but I don’t believe they assisted the community whatsoever,” Rose, who is retired, reflected during an interview at his home last month.
Some 7,000 people live in Harney County, which is roughly the same land size as the entire state of Massachusetts. The closest cities are Bend and Boise, Idaho, both hours away. That isolation has helped push the community forward in the years since the occupation, Rose said.
Another reason why the Malheur occupation didn’t resonate for most in Harney County is because people in the area were already working together to solve their problems.
Since 2005, the High Desert Partnership — a coalition made up of ranchers, conservation groups, the Burns-Paiute tribe, the state, the federal government, and others — has focused on finding common ground on issues surrounding land and resource management.
“Usually, at least when I talk about the occupation, it’s when people from outside of the county come and talk to us and want to know about the occupation, but we don’t talk about it,” said Brenda Smith, executive director of the Partnership. “We were moving on even as it was happening.”
During the standoff, Rose helped run the local Bureau of Land Management office, which leases public land to ranchers for cattle grazing. It was one of the federal agencies targeted by the Bundys.
“They may have believed they were assisting, but I don’t believe they assisted the community whatsoever,” Rose, who is retired, reflected during an interview at his home last month.
Some 7,000 people live in Harney County, which is roughly the same land size as the entire state of Massachusetts. The closest cities are Bend and Boise, Idaho, both hours away. That isolation has helped push the community forward in the years since the occupation, Rose said.
Another reason why the Malheur occupation didn’t resonate for most in Harney County is because people in the area were already working together to solve their problems.
Since 2005, the High Desert Partnership — a coalition made up of ranchers, conservation groups, the Burns-Paiute tribe, the state, the federal government, and others — has focused on finding common ground on issues surrounding land and resource management.
“Usually, at least when I talk about the occupation, it’s when people from outside of the county come and talk to us and want to know about the occupation, but we don’t talk about it,” said Brenda Smith, executive director of the Partnership. “We were moving on even as it was happening.”
The nonprofit was formed in response to the federal government making unilateral decisions about public lands. Historically, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made decisions internally about how best to manage the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and that often led to lawsuits, Smith said. That created a need for the Partnership to host and facilitate conversations, ones that can be challenging.
The Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to comment for this story. The Burns-Paiute tribe did not return interview requests.
In almost all of the conversations while reporting this story in Harney County, pretty much everyone credited the Partnership with making it easier to move on from the occupation.
“Somebody didn’t do their homework about the work we’d been doing for a long time to try to repair some hard relationships that had been happening specifically around public and private land management,” Smith said.
The coalition has new and complex problems to solve: controlling invasive species, the growing scarcity of groundwater, and figuring out how to best use the land for wildlife and cattle.
Just outside of Burns, Scott Franklin sits atop his John Deere, spreading hay for about 140 heifers on his acreage, just outside the wildlife refuge. He’s lived in the area for decades, and remembers the occupation as an ugly, divisive time, and called the Bundys “carpetbaggers with nothing to offer.”
Mostly, he just tries to forget about it.
“What those guys did here 10 years ago was a waste of time,” he said, “and got a lot of people fired up — but it was just stupid.”
Franklin said the community has larger concerns than fighting over the wildlife refuge, like mining and water accessibility.
“We have much bigger issues here now, great big issues with our groundwater, and the way that’s being handled and the impact that’s going to make on this community,” he said. “I don’t think people have really soaked that up yet, as far as how big an impact that is, but I think it’s going to affect everybody one way or another.”
Nellie Franklin, Scott’s wife, served as Harney County’s elected treasurer for nearly 27 years, including during the refuge standoff. Even though she agrees most people here want to — or have — put the event behind them, she has noticed some of the ideas stuck.
“It did kind of start a movement maybe,” she said. “I think more people spoke out about — and I hate this term — the government overreach.”
The occupation exposed long-simmering tensions and gave voice to anti-government sentiments that have only grown nationally. In the years since, political divisions across the country have deepened, often stoked by politicians themselves.
In Harney County, the occupation pit neighbors against each other. Since then, Nellie said, the county has tried to put their divisions firmly in the past and move forward together.
“There’s some people that were just really gung ho, but we’re still friends with them,” she said. “A lot of us had been friends for a long time. That just kind of comes through as you pick up your relationships and go on.”
Moving on
In downtown Burns there are few, if any, reminders of the occupation.
Along the town’s main drag is the newsroom of The Burns-Times Herald, whose motto promises readers its articles are “covering Harney County like the sage brush.” The newspaper’s owners say they don’t have any special issues or coverage planned to mark the 10th anniversary of the standoff.
Instead, the community is buzzing about issues that matter in the here and now, like the first housing development to go up in decades. Another example of the ways in which the community is moving forward.
“No one in this community desired to have the Bundys come in and hold us hostage,” said Mark Owens, a farmer and Republican state representative. “That wasn’t grassroot. That wasn’t caused by community members. It wasn’t caused by conflict between community members and state agencies or federal agencies.”
Looking to the future, he said the conflict over natural resources is rising again, particularly given the growing scarcity of groundwater in the region. A year-end report from the High Desert Partnership noted draft rules from the state — requiring a major reduction in pumping groundwater — could have a “stark” economic impact in the area, resulting in millions in financial losses.
“We’ll take care of each other,” Owens said. “And we don’t want a whole lot of people coming and telling us what we can do, whether that be the Bundys, the BLM, the Forest Service or the water resource department.”
Near the end of the main drag in Burns sits a museum, run by the Harney County Historical Society.
It has a little bit of everything.
On one end sits an enclosed diorama of the Malheur refuge, decorated with taxidermied birds. Photographs and newspaper clippings mark historic events, and a giant ball of string made from animal feed sacks is rolled in one corner. Upstairs, there are saddles, arrowheads, even an impressive collection of salt and pepper shakers.
But alongside all these mementos of Harney County’s past, there’s an obvious absence: the museum doesn’t have anything to mark the occupation that happened ten years ago.
For some, the memories have persistently stuck around.
“In hindsight, and very rarely does this come up in some of these conversations, but I see a little bit of PTSD from this event, from the 41 days,” said former Harney County Judge Steve Grasty, who led the county’s government during the occupation. “You didn’t know what was going to happen next, and plenty of firearms around.”
This article, 10 years after the Malheur occupation, Harney County is moving on, was reported by Conrad Wilson & Eli Imadali, written by Conrad Wilson, and with photography by Eli Imadali. Story editing by Michelle Wiley, photo editing by Kristyna Wentz-Graff, and digital production by Francisca Benitez.
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.