“Captain Moroni” and “Y’all-Qaeda”: Why the Armed Standoff in Oregon Is Being Mishandled—or, Rather, Not Handled at All

Back in spring of 2014, I wrote in this space about the armed confrontation in southern Nevada led by the extremist Mormon rancher Cliven Bundy.  He was in serious arrears for grazing fees on federal land and hit upon the idea that he didn’t have to pay them at all because his family had become owners of the land through “pre-emptive rights and beneficial use” (similar, ironically, to arguments used by radical leftists against absentee landlords in Latin American land-reform movements).  Federal agents arrived to confiscate his cattle in accordance with the law, but he and hundreds of armed supporters, including snipers and wielders of automatic weapons, stood their ground until finally the feds backed off.  Bundy never did have to pay those grazing fees.  I warned at the time that this would embolden future libertarian and anti-government militants.  And just last week I opined in my annual round-up article “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2016” that the rise of the Republican Party’s far-right extremist frontrunner for the presidential nomination, Donald Trump, would further inspire anti-government demonstrations and siege situations.  I was not pessimistic enough to think that I would be proven correct so soon, but events in Oregon this week have brought not just anti-government militancy, but the Bundy family in particular, back into the news.

Cliven Bundy in Nevada in 2014

On January 2nd, a group of armed militiamen led by three of Bundy’s fourteen (!) children took over a complex of administrative buildings on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon, near the town of Burns.  The events began with the imprisonment of two Oregon ranchers, Dwight and Steve Hammond, charged with arson on federal lands that are administered by the United States federal government’s Bureau of Land Management (B.L.M.).  The Hammonds and their supporters claimed to be managing invasive plants with the burns; others say they set fires to destroy evidence of their illegal poaching; but no one disputes that they broke the law, and, as laws go, arson is a serious one.  The charges against them came under anti-terrorism provisions as well, since the Hammonds had repeatedly threatened authorities with violence.

The Bundy family took up the Hammonds’ cause and publicized it among the vast network of local right-wing extremist militias that have proliferated over the past several decades in rural America, but especially whenever Democrats are in the White House.  Last month they organized a “Committee of Safety” (using language from the American Revolution), which they proclaimed as a “a governmental body established by the people in the absence of the ability of the existing government to provide for the needs and protection of civilized society.”

Some Three-Percenters with their flag (not a scene from this week’s standoff)

Ammon and Ryan Bundy, accompanied by members of the anti-government “Three-Percenters” militia (including Jon Ritzheimer, a celebrity in the militia world who rails against Muslims and had been kicked out of the Oath Keepers hate group in Arizona), took over several buildings on the wildlife preserve and set up roadblocks.  The occupiers of the buildings, calling themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, claimed initially they numbered 150 people, later revised to 20 or 25, but that has not been confirmed.  There are possibly “no more than a dozen” of them, according to one reporter.

Ammon and Ryan Bundy

It is also unclear what role the Bundy family’s conservative Mormonism may play in the ideological stew of white supremacism, anarcho-libertarianism, firearms fetishism, and good-ol’-boy frontier mentality that informs this mini-movement.  One activist in the occupied building who spoke to the media identified himself only as “Captain Moroni, from Utah.”  Some observers think that this nom de guerre is a “dogwhistle” directed at Mormons who will recognize the reference to the figure of the same name in the Book of Mormon who rallied the Nephites (a fictional ancient tribe, supposedly a remnant of the Lost Tribes of Israel who migrated to the New World) against the corrupt King Amalickiah under a flag called the “Title of Liberty.”  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has already issued a statement saying that “this armed occupation can in no way be justified on a scriptural basis.”  But what else would they say?  And even Cliven Bundy told media that the current occupation is “not exactly what I thought should happen.”

Captain Moroni with the Title of Liberty flag, from an L.D.S. illustration

The standoff is ongoing, and it is clearly about more than just the Hammonds (who began their sentence yesterday in a Los Angeles prison).  Ammon Bundy says the protesters will not leave until “the federal government ... give[s] up its unconstitutional presence in this county.”  They also point out that they are against the whole idea of federal wildlife refuges.  In the words of David M. Ward, sheriff of Harney County, where the standoff is occurring, “These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers, when in reality these men had alternative motives, to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States.”

A scene from the 2014 Nevada standoff.  Note t-shirt with “baker’s apostrophe.”

In fact, “standoff” is hardly an appropriate word for the situation, since there is no visible physical response by law enforcement to the occupation whatsoever.  It is not clear who, if anyone, and at what level, is issuing “stand down” orders, but authorities are giving the occupied buildings a very wide berth, despite state police command centers far away in Burns and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s claims that they are on the case.

A special Oregon version of the Gadsden (“Don’t Tread on Me”) flag
on display in Harney County this week

Given how heavily armed the occupiers are, this is quite astonishing, and more than one observer has pointed out that if, say, radical Muslims or Black nationalists were occupying those buildings, all of Harney County would be a glowing crater by now.  When the Black nationalist organization MOVE was involved in a similar standoff in Philadelphia in 1985, the city government bombed the neighborhood, destroying 65 homes and killing eleven people, including five children.  When anti-government members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) set up an armed encampment at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973, President Richard Nixon sent in the army—the only time the U.S. military has been deployed against U.S. citizens on U.S. territory since the Civil War.  Some also wonder why the media is so hesitant to call the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom (dubbed by social-media wags as “Y’all-Qaeda” or “Vanilla ISIS” and as “yee-haw-dists”) a terrorist group, and wonder if the term terrorist, as it is actually used, has more to do with people’s skin color or religion than with how armed and dangerous they are.

Philadelphia, 1985: what happens to armed protest encampments if you’re black

The White House said yesterday that President Barack Obama was monitoring the situation and that “this is a local law enforcement matter.”  In fact, that statement is not correct.  Crimes committed on federal property are a federal matter, but the federal government has decided not to enforce the law itself—just as it declined to do a year and half ago at Bundy’s ranch in Nevada.  As Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center (S.P.L.C.), an organization which monitors militias and hate groups, put it, the Bundys in 2014 “were emboldened by their ability to run federal officials off at the point of a gun.  Now, a year and half later, there have been no prosecutions whatsoever.  Pointing a gun at a federal officer is a crime.”  Clearly, the Obama administration fears a confrontation that could spin out of control, like the ones at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1993 (three dead) and at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in 1994 (86 dead, including children).  Those events became recruiting bonanzas for the increasingly widespread and angry right-wing militia movement across the U.S.

The Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in 1994

Certainly, it is true that leaving the occupiers alone, not allowing anyone else in, and waiting for them to run out of food and surrender is among the more peaceful ways to end the conflict.  If nothing else, there aren’t even any police visible to shoot at.

Is that a Nazi salute, or is he just showing people where the port-a-potties are?

On the other hand, the message the authorities are sending militias is that they have more or less free rein to take over federal facilities without opposition.  Believe me, they will take us up that invitation.

[Thanks to Jeremy Appleton and Anna Reynolds for alerting me to sources consulted for this article.]

[You can read more about right-wing militias, the American Indian Movement, Black nationalists, and other sovereignty and independence movements both famous and obscure in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Lakota Nation Launches “MazaCoin” Digital Currency to Decolonize Reservation Economy

The Lakota Nation, an indigenous group in the northern Plains of the United States, is poised to become the first American Indian group in the modern era to introduce its own currency.  But it will not be a paper or metal currency; instead, “MazaCoin,” as it will be called, is a virtual electronic currency, like Bitcoin, regulated not by a central bank but by its users.  (See the MazaCoin website here.)

Payu Harris, at the New York Stock Exchange to launch MazaCoin earlier this year

MazaCoin was developed in February by Payu Harris, a “web designer and digital currency trader” who is of both Lakota and Northern Cheyenne ancestry.  Proponents envision that MazaCoin could become the main, or even sole, currency in Lakota communities, as part of taking sovereign control over their economy back from the U.S. government.

There are about 100,000 Lakota (a.k.a. Sioux) in the U.S., about half of whom live on the Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, and other reservations, mostly in North and South Dakota.  MazaCoin, however, is not being implemented by the official administering bodies of these reservations, which are regulated under the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.), but by the “Traditional Lakota Nation,” a sovereigntist group of the Oglala “band” or subgroup of the Lakota, who are based mostly on Pine Ridge, in South Dakota. 

Harris has said, “We’re on sovereign soil so we have the right to have Bitcoin, Litecoin, MazaCoin.”  But while Chase Iron Eyes, a legal counsel for the Lakota, agrees in principle, tempers that perspective with some pessimism.  “There hasn’t been a tribal nation that has declared its own currency and has mandated that that currency is used within its borders,” he says.  “But it’s because of this pervasive, ever-present asserted dominion of the United States.  They’ll try to shut us down, try to cite us with law violations.”  However, Iron Eyes is ready for the battle, adding, “We’ve gone through 100 years of imposed poverty.  That’s the fight we’re having.  What we’re trying to do with MazaCoin is just spark something to get us out of this cycle of victimhood.”  The Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations are among the most poverty-battered communities in the U.S., with sky-high rates of unemployment, substance abuse, and suicide.

The Lakota flag

A more quotidian challenge is developing a paper medium for the digital currency, in a community where few have computers, cell phones, or other devices that currencies like Bitcoin rely on.

At the moment, the status of MazaCoin is unclear.  Digital currencies are still mostly uncharted legal territory.  But it seems sure to prove controversial.  Nor is MazaCoin by any means the first foray into innovative approaches to sovereignty by the Oglala.  In the late 19th century, in response to the federal government’s unilateral slashing back of Lakota territories promised by treaty, followed by a deliberate economic blockade that threatened the community with starvation, Oglala and other Lakota adapted a Paiute religious ritual from Nevada called the Ghost Dance that purported to have the power to resurrect deceased warriors, render Lakota people bulletproof, and cleanse their land of the white invaders.  This prompted the U.S. military’s massacre of 300 unarmed Lakota, including women and children, in the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890.  In the early 1970s, during the height of the “Red Power” movement, an uprising on Pine Ridge against a corrupt reservation leadership in league with the feds spawned a protest encampment at the site of Wounded Knee that declared an Independent Oglala Nation.  In response, President Richard M. Nixon dispatched military snipers, tanks, and even a warplane to keep order, in the first deployment of U.S. troops against U.S. citizens on U.S. territory since the Civil War.  Three people were killed before the standoff ended.

In 1973 on Pine Ridge, shit got real.

Lakota people have continually refused to accept cash compensation for their lost lands, which include the sacred Black Hills.  There have been several declarations of independence, including a 1974 “Declaration of Continuing Independence of the Sovereign Native American Indian Nations,” signed at Standing Rock, and another by the Confederacy of the Black Hills in 1991, which also included Northern Cheyenne and Arapahoe communities.  In 2007, the former Libertarian presidential candidate Russell Means and three other Wounded Knee veteran activists declared an independent Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians, which today, after Means’s death, persists as a provisional government for a Republic of Lakotah covering vast, unceded territory.

The federal government has a very low tolerance for anything that seems like a competing currency.  In 2011, a self-described “ex-surfer guy” named Bernard von NotHaus, founder of the Free Marijuana Church of Honolulu, was convicted of counterfeiting for issuing something called the Liberty Dollar out of his self-described Royal Hawaiian Mint Company.  Just for good measure, the feds slathered on some “domestic terrorism” charges.  He currently awaits sentencing.

If this surfer dude’s play money brought charges of terrorism,
who knows how the feds will react to MazaCoin.

But the Lakota are not just a bunch of ex-surfer dudes.  They have never backed down from a fight.  We’ll be hearing more about MazaCoin.

Your tax dollars at work, 1890

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in mid 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Related articles from this blog:
“Florida Con Man Busted in New Guinea Ferrying ‘Funny Money’ to Self-Styled Bougainville ‘King’” (Feb. 2014)
“Shots Fired as French Authorities Arrest Tahitian ‘King’ Issuing His Own Currency” (Feb. 2014)
“EPA Extends Jurisdiction of Wind River Indian Reservation, Swallowing 3 Wyoming Towns” (Jan. 2014)
“Which Part of ‘Wet’suwet’en Territory’ Don’t They Understand?” (Nov. 2012)
“Obituary: Russell Charles Means (1939-2012)” (Oct. 2012)

Obituary: Russell Charles Means (1939-2012)

Russell Means, the Lakota Sioux political activist, separatist leader, actor, author, and even United States presidential aspirant, died October 22nd at his home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, at the age of 72.

Russell Means is on the far left.

Born on Pine Ridge in 1939, he grew up in California and in the late 1960s and early ’70s gained prominence as an early member and leader of the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.), the premier voice of the “Red Power” movement.  He was a central figure, along with Leonard Peltier and Dennis Banks, in actions such as the Trail of Broken Treaties, the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.) offices in Washington, D.C., and, in 1973, the months-long occupation of wounded Knee, South Dakota, which riveted the nation and became the most important act of American Indian resistance in the 20th century.  In it, an Independent Oglala Nation was declared and protesters demanded that the U.S. adhere to treaties which, if adhered to, would create a gigantic autonomous region for Sioux people in the northern Plains.  Two people were killed, and President Richard Nixon suppressed the uprising with the military, the only time since the Civil War that the U.S. military has used violence against U.S. citizens on U.S. territory.

Means confounded categories of political left and right.  Though he railed against American imperialism, he also cooperated with Ronald Reagan’s administration in documenting atrocities against Miskito Indians to demonize the Communist dictatorship in Nicaragua, and in 1987 he ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, losing the nomination to Ron Paul, then an unknown.    He saw parallels between the libertarian cause and the Indian one, saying at one point, “So Indian policy has become institutionalized and the result has been that American people have become more dependent on government and that the American people have become more dependent on corporations.”

Politics makes strange bedfellows.

In 1992 he played Chingachgook opposite Daniel Day-Lewis’s Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, and he also appeared in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and in numerous other roles in film and television.  His 1995 autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread was a best-seller.  

Means as Chingachgook, third from left

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]