Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
Credit: noospheregeologic.com

Editor’s note: University of Oregon geography professor Peter Walker has just returned from Harney County, Oregon, where armed occupiers took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He spent several weeks attending community meetings and watching the events unfold, which he describes here.

On January 2, 2016, some 300 local citizens and outside militia members marched in Harney County, Oregon, to protest the resentencing for arson of local father-and-son ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond.

At stake was far more than the fate of the Hammonds. In the works was nothing less than an armed insurrection against virtually all federal ownership of land in the United States – and even against the very existence of the federal government as we know it. Had the almost surreally audacious plan succeeded, communities and economies across the American West, and the entire country, would have been changed profoundly.

As a researcher in the politics of public land, I went to Harney County to see what was going on firsthand. Having […]