Earlier this month, the militia/terrorists/dissenters occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore. asked for supplies and got buckets of dildos, vibrators and other tools of self pleasure instead. 

What these people claim to be protesting is the resentencing of Dwight and Steven Hammond. Both have been sentenced to five-year prison terms after already being convicted in 2012 and serving three months and 366 days respectively in 2013. Their crime was setting fires that spread to land under the protection of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 2001 and 2006.

Fires like these are very common to combat invasive species, which can destroy the grazing area that ranchers rely on to feed cattle, and prevent the spread of forest fires. They started the first fire with permission from the BLM, but are now being accused of setting the fire to cover up poaching on BLM land. The second, smaller fire burned an acre of land during a “burn ban” where agency firefighters were fighting a fire caused by lightning. The first destroyed 139 acres; the second destroyed one.

The vast area in question is a mix of private and public property. The Hammonds’ private property is interlocked with public property owned by the BLM, which requires them to work together to manage the area where the Hammonds’ cattle can graze.

When I think of ranchers, I think of wealthy people in big houses who wear all white and big hats and say things like “swell.” But it’s important to remember that Harney County is an economically struggling rural area with 7,100 residents that rely on sheep and cattle ranching and the timber industry, and this conflict between federal official and local landowners is a decades-long struggle.

The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) that prosecutors used to punish the Hammonds for the fires includes mandatory minimum sentences of five years for fires that damage public property but cause no injury or death. After a series of appeals, the Hammonds were re-sentenced in October of 2015 to the full five years required by that 1990s statute, although the judge had deemed that sentence gratuitous, which is understandable when you consider the fact that these two ranchers were not terrorists.

This story has a more sinister undertone as well. As part of a deal to fend off an effort by the federal government to designate Steens Mountain as a federal monument, ranchers traded their BLM permits and private property for land on the valley floor. This allowed Congress to create a 170,000-acre wilderness in 2000.

In the October issue of Tri-State Livestock News, Erin Maupin, a former BLM range technician and watershed specialist and rancher in the area, said that not only had rancher fires spread to BLM land without issue, “the last holdouts on that cow-free wilderness are the Hammonds.” In the same article, Rusty Inglis, an area rancher and retired US Forest Service employee said, “It’s become more and more obvious over the years that the BLM and the wildlife refuge want that ranch. It would tie in with what they have.”

This isn’t the first action against the Hammonds the federal government has taken. Against the advice of government scientist and resource managers, they drained a watering hole the Hammonds used to water their cattle. The Oregon Natural Desert Association denied the family a lease of a parcel of land to expand cow-free wilderness, and the BLM refused to renew a permit that allowed the Hammonds to use a large amount of their private land that was intermingled with the BLM’s public land.

Days before Dwight and Steven Hammond were due to report to prison, which they willingly acquiesced to and publically said they wanted to happen quietly, hundreds of supporters traveled to the area to attend a public rally on their behalf. Then an armed sub-group of protesters, led by Ammon Bundy, split off to occupy the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge about 30 miles from Burns.

The protest and subsequent armed occupation were in no way supported or requested by the Hammonds, and elected officials in Burns criticized the armed protesters as an outsider militia group whose actions had thrown their community into a harsh national glare.

In an American news story about land rights, it’s always prudent to remember the original landowners. Members of the Burns Paiute Tribe, which has ancestral territory managed by the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, called on the federal government to take action against the occupiers. One tribal chair, Charlotte Rodrique, said that the armed protesters were actively desecrating one of their most important sacred sites.

The tribe is still fighting over land use, but now works with the BLM to save its archaeological sites — an effort thwarted when the occupiers of the Malheur build a road without permission.

Rodrique also said, “We have good relations with the refuge. They protect our cultural rights there.”

The land in question was once used by 100 or so ranchers, after being seized from the Paiute tribe and before being seized again by the federal government. 

According to the tribe, the Paiute never ceded its right to the land, but received federal recognition in 1868 and signed a treaty with the federal government that requires it to protect the safety of the natives and promised to prosecute any crime or injury perpetrated by any white man upon them.

In 1879 the Paiutes were forced off their land and forced to walk through deep snow under heavy guard.

According to one member of the tribe, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters also houses important official papers that document the tribe’s history and existence on the land.

The reason this story blew up, I think, is because of the anger from a different BLM, the Black Lives Matter movement. They were the first to designate that these men taking over a federal building while armed were terrorists, the first call for the government, the police, the media, anyone to do something. 

One of the first stories I read about #OregonUnderAttack or #OregonStandoff was a detailed account of why the Hammonds were arrested, the land situation and their separation from the Malheur takeover. 

The outrage from the Black Lives Matter movement is justified. Where were policemen in riot gear and rubber bullets and tear gas when a reported 300 protesters, some of whom were armed, showed up in Burns to protest a federal sentencing?

They were there in Ferguson for peaceful protests, so why not for armed protests with militias actively and publically recruiting people to commit federal crimes?

Why did the media give the Hammonds and the Bundys the space and the right to share their story as they told it — the history of their struggle with the federal government and the community supporting the Hammonds as men who know how to manage their land — when activists in Ferguson had to beg reporters to come, only to be met with stories about how Michael Brown was a criminal, was a thug, charged a police officer, made him fear for his life when none of that was true?

Why is it every time a black person is shot by the police, activists on Twitter have to get their name trending for anyone to care? Why are bunch of white men with guns in Burns called a protest while the peaceful marchers in Ferguson were considered a riot?

The government is preventing ranchers from using their land and attempting to coercively seize this land from them. This protest group has occupied a federal building and possibly desecrated sacred Paiute land. The land rightfully belongs to the Paiute tribe. The media has been biased in covering the protests of land rights versus the protest of civil rights.

This issue of land management in Oregon is multi-layered and goes back over a century. So yeah, there’s a bunch of jerks holed up in a federal building, and if you have the money you too can send boxes of dildos to them too.

But while you’re doing that, remember that the issue they’ve reduced to anti-government toxic masculinity is actually very important to the people who rely on their land for a living.