Bundy bunch vs. Dann sisters

Here’s What Happened When These Unarmed Native American Sisters Defended Their Land from the Feds

By Amanda GirardIn September of 2001, the government sent in the cavalry to show it was serious about its claim to the Shoshone tract:

The government considers it public land, and to drive the point home, 40 agents from the Bureau of Land Management descended on the Danns’ ranch in September, heavily armed and fortified with helicopters, and confiscated 232 cattle, which were later sold.

The sisters and their supporters argue that their tribe never legally ceded these range lands. Though the federal government controls 85 percent of Nevada, they contend that it has no legitimate title to the land—or the gold, water, oil and geothermal energy beneath it.

Because the Dann sisters refused to leave their land, the government once again began seizing large numbers of their livestock in 2003, claiming the horses and cattle were grazing at the public’s expense. BLM officials even deputized local cowboys to assist with the livestock seizure. At which point, the sisters were forced to remove over 400 remaining horses from the disputed range, many of them pregnant mares, but they lost track of many in the forced move.

And a comment to go with this photo:This is how the BLM and Dept of Interior handled elderly unarmed Shoshones refusing to cede their treaty rights to ancestral lands. The Dann sisters were attacked and detained numerous times over several decades sometimes with police and sometimes by mob and constantly monitored. Their horses and cattle were driven off to die of starvation. The Danns were not millionaires like the Bundys.No crackdown on whites

Other postings confirm that white conservatives like the Bundys get special treatment:

Yes, the armed Oregon occupiers would be raided if they weren’t white—same goes if they were leftists

The U.S. gov't is fundamentally right wing, and supports many of the things the Bundys & militants are calling for

By Ben NortonIn response, social media and Op-Ed pages of newspapers were inundated with condemnations of white privilege and arguments that the far-right militants would have been violently removed if they were people of color.

There is a crucial point missing from many of the liberal hot takes on the Oregon paramilitary occupation, however. In their hyper-emphasis on white privilege, many are depoliticizing the situation.

To be clear, these articles are absolutely correct. If the extremists occupying the federal building were not white, they would be attacked.

But if they were leftists, even if they were still white, countless historical examples show they would be attacked, too.Unarmed black protesters were ‘forcibly removed’ and jailed after they tried to occupy a wildlife refuge in 1979

By Travis GettysBut that’s not what happened nearly 37 years ago in Georgia.

Federal authorities secured a court order to remove the “squatters” one day after they set up camp at Harris Neck—but four of the unarmed protesters refused to leave.

They were “forcibly removed” May 2, 1979—just three days after they arrived on the land where their parents and grandparents had farmed, hunted and fished.

The four men were each sentenced to a month in jail for trespassing, and courts have ruled that the land belongs to the U.S. government—and not to the slaves’ descendants.

If you wondered if the Danns' treatment was based on racism, wonder no longer. Now we have evidence. White people get treated differently in similar circumstances. That's privilege and prejudice in action.

Final word

A couple of days later, another comment on the disparate treatment of whites and Natives:

With Militants Occupying Ancestral Land, Native Tribe Is 'Very Offended'Rodrique says she's frustrated that the federal government hasn't forced the occupiers out, and compares how law enforcement treats the anti-federalists with how the U.S. historically treated native tribes. She says the occupiers are allowed to go into town to buy groceries and gas, then return to their armed occupation.

"They did disconnect their utilities and things like that, but it's not really forcing them out," Rodrique says. "You know, in our history, that was how the military got us. They basically starved us into submission. And you could do the same thing with these occupiers."

Rodrique would like the FBI to remove the armed men, and she thinks the FBI's inaction is a double standard.

"If I, as a native person, a person of color, were to go down there and do the same thing, they would have hit me on the forehead with a baton" and dragged her out, she says. But "because they're white people, I feel that they're being treated differently."For more on Cliven Bundy, see Bundy Bunch Occupies Paiute Land and Gun Nuts' Hypocrisy on Government Power.