Standoff leader posted a video of him looking through artifacts and documents from the Paiute tribe at the Malheur national wildlife refuge, sparking outrage 
 
 The militiamen stationed at a federal wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon are now rummaging through artifacts and documents of the Paiute tribe, sparking outrage among local Native Americans whose ancestors originally occupied the land. 
 
 LaVoy Finicum, one of the leaders of the armed protesters occupying the Malheur national wildlife refuge, posted a video of himself inside a government building looking through cardboard boxes of papers and other items associated with the local tribe – and inviting Paiute leaders to meet with the militia and reclaim their belongings. 
 
 “We want to make sure these things are returned to their rightful owner,” said Finicum, who recently helped destroy a US Fish and Wildlife Service fence and remove cameras that he claimed the government was using for surveillance. 
 
 The rightwing militia, led by Ammon Bundy, took over the headquarters of the wildlife sanctuary on 2 January to protest the government’s land-use regulations in rural Harney County. They have demanded that local ranchers have control of public lands – not the federal government. 
 
 But days after the occupation began, leaders of the federally recognized Paiute Indian tribe in Burns, the town closest to the refuge, decried the armed occupation, pointing out that the out-of-state militiamen were trying to claim sacred lands that are part of the tribe’s ancestral territory. 
 
 
 
 The new video, posted on Wednesday night, has only further enraged tribal leaders who recently called on law enforcement officials to protect native cultural resources at the refuge and to criminally prosecute the militiamen. 
 
 “I feel disrespected that they’re even out there,” said Jarvis Kennedy, the tribal council’s sergeant-at-arms. Kennedy said he was too upset to watch all of Finicum’s video. “It’s like me going through their drawers at their house.” 
 
 Tribe leaders and federal officials say the refuge stores confidential documents and thousands of historic artifacts, such as baskets, spears, tools and beads. The refuge is also home to Paiute burial grounds, making the militia’s recent decision to pave a road through the refuge particularly alarming. 
 
 “I could go to the Bundys where his grandparents are buried,” Kennedy said. “How would they feel if I drove over their grave and went through their heirlooms?” 
 
 In his video, Finicum said that he was showing how the wildlife refuge has done a poor job maintaining the artifacts and keeping storage rooms clean. “This needs to be taken care of, and so we’re reaching out to the Paiute people in the sincerest manner as we can,” he said on camera. “Let’s make sure that we take care of the heritage of the Native American people.” 
 
 Added militia member Blaine Cooper: “The rightful owners need to come back and claim their belongings.” 
 
 But Kennedy said the tribe has a good relationship with refuge officials and noted that the Paiute people refuse to communicate with militia leaders or visit the occupation. 
 
 “I’m not going to give them the satisfaction of meeting with them,” Charlotte Rodrique, chairwoman of the Burns Paiute tribe, told the Guardian last week. 
 
 Kennedy noted that the militiamen have had no trouble leaving and returning to the refuge and feared one of them might damage or steal their artifacts and documents. “All the stuff they are doing out there, it’s like a crime scene,” he said. “Once this is done, we’ll see what’s missing.” ||||| Weeks into their government standoff at a federal wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon, a right-wing militia group's attempts to reconcile with a local Native American tribe by filming themselves rummaging through their belongings has sparked outrage. 
 
 In the three-minute YouTube video uploaded Wednesday by LaVoy Finicum, one of the men responsible for leading the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns since Jan. 2, Finicum and several other men are shown leafing through boxes of documents belonging to the Paiute tribe. 
 
 Finicum encourages tribe members to meet with the militia group to reclaim items "rotting" and "wasting away" at the government refuge, which is home to thousands of Paiute artifacts, including tools and weapons, as well as burial grounds. In the video, Finicum notes decades-old papers strewn across the floor, and one box allegedly containing a rat's nest. 
 
 "We are concerned about the way artifacts are stored here, the Paiute's artifacts, and so we're reaching out to the Paiute tribe to say we need to open up a communication," Finicum said. "We want to make sure that these things are returned to their rightful owners and that they're taken care of." 
 
 Despite the militiamen's assertion that they intend to save Paiute artifacts from the government, tribe members argue it is the militiamen that their belongings need protecting from. In a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week, the tribe requested assistance in protecting Paiute artifacts from the armed protesters, calling for an inventory of items in the refuge, and criminal prosecution of the group under the Archeological Resources Protection Act. 
 
 See also: Oregon militants want you to stop sending them dildos 
 
 "They continue to desecrate one of our most important sacred sites," Burns Paiute Tribal Chair Charlotte Rodrique said in a news release. "They should be held accountable." 
 
 Also contrary to the militia group's mission to transfer control of public land from the federal government to ranchers, the Paiute argue the refuge land is a part of the tribe's ancestral territory and have refused to meet with the group. 
 
 Other members of the community surrounding the wildlife refuge have also denounced the actions of the militia members, many of whom are not from Oregon. Harney County Judge Steve Grasty said he plans to hold leader Ammon Bundy—son of notorious Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy— responsible for the cost of providing security measures for the refuge, a bill that could be as high as $70,000 a day. 
 
 See also: The ranchers at the center of the Oregon standoff 
 
 In total, the standoff has cost taxpayers nearly a half million dollars, according to Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. In letters to the White House and Department of Justice this week, Brown requested assistance from the FBI and other law enforcement in removing the militia group from federal land, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. 
 
 "For the citizens of Harney County and indeed all Oregonians, I must insist on a swift resolution to this matter," Brown wrote. "Efforts to negotiate have not been successful, and now it is unclear what steps, if any, federal authorities might take to bring this untenable situation to an end and restore normalcy to this community." ||||| BURNS PAIUTE RESERVATION -- Leaders of the Burns Paiute Tribe on Wednesday called on militants occupying a federal wildlife compound to end their standoff. 
 
 In a press conference, the tribal council sought to educate the public about their own painful history with the federal government. The militants, they said, are only making things worse for everyone in Harney County. 
 
 "They just need to get the hell out of here," said Jarvis Kennedy, a member of the tribal council. "They didn't ask anybody, we don't want them here...our little kids are sitting at home when they should be in school." 
 
 The group of 20 or so militants, led by right-wing activists Ammon Bundy and his two brothers, seized the refuge headquarters on Saturday. 
 
 The Paiute Tribe once occupied a large swath of land that includes the Malheur National Wildlife refuge -- archaeological evidence dates back 6,000 years -- but they were forced out in the late 1870s. Before settlers arrived, the tribe used it as a wintering ground, said Charlotte Rodrique, the tribal chair. 
 
 "We as a tribe view that this is still our land no matter who's living on it," Rodrique said. 
 
 In 1868, the tribe signed a treaty with the federal government that requires the government to protect natives' safety. According to the tribe, the federal government promised to prosecute "any crime or injury perpetrated by any white man upon the Indians." 
 
 Rodrique said the tribe never ceded its rights to the land. It works with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to preserve archaeological sites. 
 
 "We feel strongly because we have had a good working relationship with the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge," she said. "We view them as a protector of our cultural rights in that area." 
 
 About 200 people live in the Burns Paiute Reservation, located 30 miles from the refuge headquarters. The tribe owns 11,000 acres of land nationwide, Rodrique said. 
 
 The tribal council met with archaeologists at the refuge Tuesday. Tribal leaders said they're worried the militants could damage archaeological sites. 
 
 Although the tribe says it's pleased with the federal government's response so far, some wondered aloud whether nonwhite militants would be given such passive treatment. 
 
 "I wonder if it was bunch of natives that went out there and overtook that, or any federal land," Kennedy said. "Would they let us come into town and get supplies and re-up?" 
 
 -- Ian K. Kullgren 
 
 ikullgren@oregonian.com 
 
 503-781-4039; @IanKullgren ||||| Indian tribal leaders in Oregon say they "do not condone" an armed group's occupation of a federal building located on their ancestral lands. Charlotte Rodrique, chairwoman of the Burns Paiute Tribal Chair, said at a news conference on Jan.6 that the armed group "doesn't belong" at the site. (Reuters) 
 
 Before the Bundy brothers and fellow occupiers took over the remote headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and claimed it for private citizens, before there was even a federal wildlife refuge to occupy, there were the Northern Paiute, a tribe that hunted, fished, lived and worshiped in this harshly beautiful landscape for more than 13 centuries. 
 
 The area that is now the refuge was once their wintering grounds, but the Paiute were restricted to a reservation in 1868 after signing a treaty that would guarantee them federal recognition and protection from encroaching white settlers. Over time, that land allotment became even smaller, until the central Oregon Paiute were confined to a few thousand acres along what is now Highway 20 — the Burns Paiute Indian Reservation. 
 
 As the anti-government protesters dug in for their fifth day at the wildlife refuge, insisting that they would leave only once the land had been “returned to its rightful owners,” the Burns Paiute council convened at its tribal offices 30 minutes away. They all had one, angry question on their minds: 
 
 Who exactly did the occupiers think those “rightful owners” might be? 
 
 
 
 Charlotte Rodrique, the chairwoman of the federally recognized Burns Paiute Tribe, talks about the occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., on January 5, 2016. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters) 
 
 “Don’t tell me any of these ranchers came across the Bering Strait,” the tribal chairwoman, Charlotte Rodrique, said at a news conference Wednesday. “We were here first,” she added. “We’d like the public to acknowledge that.” 
 
 Jarvis Kennedy, a member of the tribal council, put his demand bluntly: “They just need to get the hell out of here.” 
 
 [Armed men, led by Bundy brothers, take over federal building in rural Oregon] 
 
 Although the wildlife refuge is not part of the Burns Paiute reservation, tribe members consider it sacred ancestral land. The Paiute are guaranteed access to the refuge for activities important to their heritage — hunting, fishing, gathering reeds for basket weaving and precious seeds. The tribe is also working with the Bureau of Land Management to preserve its archaeological sites. 
 
 “We have had a good working relationship with the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge,” Rodrique said, according to the Oregonian newspaper. “We view them as a protector of our cultural rights in that area.” 
 
 The occupiers, she added, are “desecrating” a site that was inhabited to the Paiute long before white settlers had even set foot in the United States. If anyone is to be angry about who the land belongs to, surely it is the tribe members who were forced off of it a century ago. 
 
 
 
 Low fog hangs in the morning at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters) 
 
 White settlers first arrived in the Malheur River basin in the early 1800s. They gave the river its name, French for “misfortune,” because of the hardships of their trip. The land in Central Oregon is severe and unforgiving — high scrubgrass desert, jagged mountains and a marshy zone along the river that would have stymied 19th-century travelers. 
 
 But the Paiute made good use of it, according to Nancy Langston, who wrote a history of the Malheur basin. Their careful management of the river and its resources sustained the roving tribe for centuries. 
 
 [The Bundys want federal land ‘returned’ to them. But it was never ‘theirs’ in the first place.] 
 
 That changed by the middle of the 1800s, Langston says. White trappers, traders and ranchers poured into the region, clashing with the migratory Paiute and altering the ecosystem by grazing their cattle. Starved and battle-worn, the Paiute signed a “Peace or Death” treaty with the U.S. government in 1868 — they would cease hostilities and move onto a reservation in exchange for federal protection. 
 
 But the treaty was never ratified, and the tribe’s right to the land was never confirmed. Over the next decades, the government allowed white settlers to increasingly encroach on the Paiute lands, eroding the tribe’s sovereignty and its fragile subsistence. 
 
 Finally, in 1876, a local chief confronted the federal agent responsible for working with the reservation, according to a contemporary account. 
 
 “Did the government tell you to come here and drive us off this reservation?” the chief demanded. “Did the Big Father say, ‘go and kill us all off, so you can have our land?’ Did he tell you to pull our children’s ears off, and put handcuffs on them, and carry a pistol to shoot us with? We want to know how the government came by this land.” 
 
 When in 1878 some Paiute took part in a failed attempt to unite the area’s tribes in a general uprising, the reservation was dissolved and its inhabitants forced to march to Yakima, Washington, through brutal winter snow. Army records indicate that five people froze to death during the journey; Paiute histories put that number much higher. 
 
 The land that was the reservation was never turned over to private ownership — there are no ranchers, farmers or others to whom what is now the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge can be “returned,” as Janell Ross has reported for The Washington Post. The former Paiute reservation remained controlled by various federal agencies until 1907, when the lands that now make up the Malheur National Forest were consolidated into a reserve. 
 
 
 
 A sign is posted on a fence at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) 
 
 The Bundy family and other occupiers argue that local government and private owners could manage the land better than the federal government. 
 
 “It is our goal to get the logger back to logging, the rancher back to ranching,” Ammon Bundy, one of the brothers at the refuge, told the Associated Press on Tuesday. 
 
 The land has suffered somewhat in the past century or so, mostly because of overgrazing and misguided irrigation and dam projects, Langston says, which contributed to erosion and habitat loss for the area’s prized wildlife. But those programs were largely aimed at helping farmers and ranchers; it’s unlikely that the area would have fared differently if the reserve had been privately owned. 
 
 A century later, the descendants of the wildlife refuge’s only other “owners” — the Northern Paiute — say that they’re worried about the effect that the militia members’ occupation might have on their ancestral land. The tribal council met with archaeologists for the refuge Tuesday, according to the Oregonian, to talk about protecting the area’s historic sites. The refuge also houses important papers documenting the tribe’s history and relationship to the land. 
 
 “It gets tiring. It’s the same battles that my ancestors had. And now it’s just a bunch of different cavalry wearing a bunch of different coats,” Kennedy told CNN. 
 
 [The Oregon standoff and the recent history of anti-government groups in the U.S.] 
 
 Kennedy also wondered how authorities would respond if tribe members had taken over Malheur rather than white anti-government militants. 
 
 “We’d be already shot up, blown up or in jail. Just being honest; they are used to killing us,” Kennedy told CNN. “They are white men. That is the difference. That is just how I see it.” 
 
 So far, police and federal agents have kept their distance from the occupied refuge, leery of confrontation after deadly showdowns like the one in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and Waco, Tex., in 1993. 
 
 On Wednesday night, residents of Harney County crammed into a building at the local fairgrounds to discuss their community and its future in often impassioned terms. Though some residents spoke in support of the occupiers, most urged for peace and respect for the law, according to the New York Times. 
 
 When Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward, who ran the meeting, got up to speak, the crowd erupted into cheers. 
 
 “You don’t get to come here and tell us how we get to live our lives,” he said, according to the Times. “I’m here to ask those folks to go home and let us go back to our lives in Harney County.”
– The Paiute tribe is really getting fed up with the militia occupying federal land in Oregon. The latest straw came Wednesday when an occupier posted a video showing him rummaging through Paiute artifacts and documents. LaVoy Finicum apparently had good intentions. "We want to make sure these things are returned to their rightful owner … so we're reaching out to the Paiute people in the sincerest manner," he said, inviting leaders to pick up the relics he said were "rotting" in cardboard boxes, per Mashable. "Let's make sure that we take care of the heritage of the Native American people." However, Paiute leaders—who say they have a positive relationship with refuge officials—argue the militia is trying to seize land that's part of their ancestral territory, per the Guardian. "I feel disrespected that they're even out there. It's like me going through their drawers at their house," says Jarvis Kennedy, the tribal council's sergeant-at-arms. "How would they feel if I drove over their grave and went through their heirlooms?" he adds. Though he fears some artifacts will be stolen, Kennedy gave no indication that he would go pick them up. "All the stuff they are doing out there, it's like a crime scene," he says. "Once this is done, we'll see what's missing." Last week, the tribe asked federal agencies to prosecute occupiers who "disturb, damage, remove, alter, or deface any archaeological resource on the refuge property," per Indian Country Today Media Network.