A cowboy riding the range is the icon of American western folklore. Freedom, open skies and a cattle drive are the images and imaginings of manifest destiny.

While cattle still dominate the landscapes in some western areas, the cowboy is a dying breed. Younger generations think of the west as the land of Google, Facebook and Amazon, as images of the wild west fade behind the digital circus.

Many rural Americans still call the open range home and depend on open spaces to feed their families and their herds. East of Oregon’s cascades there are hundreds of thousands of acres where ranchers raise their cattle. For many ranchers this means contracting with the federal government, which owns and administers most uninhabited land.

Over 50 percent of land in Oregon is owned by the federal government, a fact not lost on the occupiers who took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last January.

On Jan. 2, 2016, disgruntled ranchers and self-proclaimed patriots brought the simmering debate over federally owned lands to a head. Led by Ammon Bundy, armed dissidents claimed the Malheur Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon. The occupiers were protesting the sentencing of father and son Dwight and Steven Hammond, who admitted to committing arson on federal lands.

The occupation was the latest iteration of a larger movement to take back federal lands and put them in the hands of state and local agencies. Ammon Bundy, who participated in the 2014 standoff with federal officials at the Bunkerville, Nevada, ranch of his racist father Cliven Bundy, rallied followers to take a stand against federal ownership of public lands. The beginning of the end of the occupation was on Jan. 26 when the FBI arrested eight of the occupiers, including Ammon and Ryan Bundy, and shot LaVoy Finicum, killing him after a confrontation on a snowy Eastern Oregon roadside.

Closing arguments concluded on Oct. 19 in the case of Ammon Bundy and six co-defendants, charged with conspiracy to prevent federal employees from doing their jobs. The jury is currently in deliberation.

Regardless of the decisions made by the jury, it is clear that much is at stake for the future of the movement to take back public lands. If the occupiers are vindicated by the jury, they will be emboldened to further harass and intimidate federal workers. They will also gain momentum for their movement to put federal lands back in the hands of state and local agencies.

If they fail, it may be the salvation of the American cowboy.

While the idea of local ownership sounds better than some bureaucrat managing land from Washington, D.C., the reality of public land transfer is bleak. One of the most significant pushes for taking back public lands comes from congressmen Rob Bishop of Utah. Bishop has authored a series of bills in Congress that would transfer federal land in Utah to state and local ownership.

It doesn’t take long to figure out what transferring these public lands would accomplish. According to the Utah Public Lands Initiative, which features Bishop’s name on its banner, the state, “will benefit from increased energy and mineral production.” While the site makes other cases for public land transfers, I believe this is the salient point: It is easier for industries to operate on lands that lack federal protections.

This is not to say that federal lands do not have extractive industries including fracking. They do, however these lands are regulated by federal agencies subject to the influence of the public. While regulations may fall too short for some or be too stringent for others, the public has the right to know and speak out about what happens on our lands.

If federal lands were to be given back to local jurisdiction, we would relinquish our influence in the crafting of public land policy. We would be playing into the hands of the fossil fuels industry by starting a frenzied auctioning off of the commons.

Fossil fuel companies would drop bulldozer-sized loads of money on poor rural communities and make offers they couldn’t refuse. The self-interest of resource rich communities and promise of a quick fortune would trump concerns of environmental degradation and pollution. Tough decisions about creating sustainable communities would take a backseat to the riches to be gained.

The last cowboy would shake his 10-gallon hat in disgust at the oil derricks dotting the sagebrush and wonder, “What the hell were we thinking.”

On Oct. 10, the City of Eugene will recognize Indigenous People’s Day for the first time. This comes on the heels of the city council’s declaration of support for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.   

A month ago and over a thousand miles away, images of bloodied attack dogs, private security contractors with batons, and impassioned demonstrators raised awareness of the events at Standing Rock.

Over the summer, information about the Dakota Access Pipeline filtered its way through Facebook feeds and news sources without widespread coverage. That changed when Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, reporting from Standing Rock Reservation, followed protesters through a fence along a utility easement near the Missouri River on Sept. 3.

That day, protesters stopped large bulldozers from continuing construction on a pipeline that would connect the Bakken and Three Forks oil formations to refineries in Pakota, Illinois. Actions taken by security forces contracted by Energy Transfer Partners — parent corporation of DAPL — resulted in mace and dog bite injuries. These actions thrust the mounting hostilities at Standing Rock into the national spotlight.  

The demonstration camp in North Dakota. (Courtesy of Peter Capossela)

Peter Capossela, a 1988 UO law graduate, is an environmental lawyer working to defend the cultural and environmental claims of the Standing Rock Reservation. He believes DAPL and the Army Corps of Engineers broke the law when their bulldozers tore through the earth, disturbing culturally significant artifacts.

“Dakota Access has taken advantage of regulatory loopholes between state and federal law,” Capossela said. “That is how they were able to begin construction in areas outside of federal jurisdiction. The Corps of Engineers exercised federal jurisdiction very narrowly looking at its responsibilities for environmental use.”

He claims ETP should never have been permitted to build because the appropriate cultural impact assessments were not completed before the issuance of permits. Capossela believes ETP was exploiting this loophole by using pre-existing permits to build the pipeline at Standing Rock.

According to Capossela, ETP has access to the land but doesn’t have the right to construct the pipeline. Executive Order 12898 issued by President Clinton in 1994 says that minority groups — like the Standing Rock Sioux — and low income populations should not be disproportionately burdened by environmental risks.

Kirby Brown, UO professor and Cherokee tribal member, worked on a letter — signed by 37 members of the Native Strategies Group and allies — that details why Standing Rock resonates with native peoples in Eugene.

In an interview with the Emerald, Brown said “the settler-colonial context” of the United States “basically means [the United States] has claimed authority over indigenous life and land and resources.” He continued, “That context is operating everywhere across the country in relation to tribal communities, in relation to sacred sites, in relation to traditional foods, traditional cultural practices.”

The Army Corps of Engineers’ disregard for the reservation land is seen in the false impression that the Standing Rock Sioux were consulted before the pipeline project neared the area, according to Capossela.

“The notion the Corps of Engineers consulted with the tribe in a meaningful and culturally appropriate manner and that the tribe’s concerns were incorporated into the Corps of Engineers decision-making process, that notion is preposterous,” said Capossela.

Construction on the pipeline at the contested crossing of the Missouri River is temporarily halted. “They cannot do construction within a 20-mile buffer of the Missouri River pending further order of the appeals panel,” Capossela said.

Capossela told the Emerald he expects the decision of the three-person panel of judges in the Washington D.C. Federal Court of Appeals to be reached Oct. 10.

Sigvanna Topkok is following in the footsteps of Capossela by challenging the settler-colonial paradigm through legal means. Topkok said she is attending UO Law School “for reasons very similar to what’s happening in North Dakota: environmental law and how it impacts the indigenous people.” Topkok, current president of the National Native American Law Students Association, sees her UO education as a way to make a greater impact.

“I think there’s often a very big gap in the legal protections of indigenous rights and our land. I wanted to attend the UO to further educate myself to go back and work for indigenous communities on these issues,” said Topkok.

People from all parts of the country have made their way to Standing Rock in a show of support for the indigenous people standing their ground. Many more are heading there now as the protest camps prepare for a harsh winter.  

Nikos Pastos, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, is traveling to the site of the demonstrations. Pastos believes he has a responsibility to help protect the interests of the people of Standing Rock. He and his associate Carl “Angut’aq” Wassilie made a stop at the UO Many Nations Longhouse as guest speakers for a panel discussion on DAPL.

The two men spoke to about 25 students and community members at the event hosted by the Native American Student Union on Oct. 6. Afterwards, the Emerald spoke with both.

“I’m not willing to die for what I believe in; I’m willing to live for it,” said Pastos after the panel discussion. “What that means is to take a measured, balanced approach and a long-term view of the change that has to happen. We need to recognize the phenomenal historic moment that’s happening with all of these tribal nations coming together.

Pastos and Wassilie have worked together on ecological issues affecting Native American communities with Alaska’s Big Village Network.

The demonstration camp in North Dakota. (Courtesy of Peter Capossela)

“It’s a paradigm shift because now, [Native Americans] are the ones that have the opportunity to defend America from its own corporations that are trying to destroy our water, which the government — both federal and state — is allowing to go forth without any public process, administrative oversight [or] any type of opportunity for American citizens to be able to have insight into what is actually occurring in our major waterways,” Wassilie said.

Ryder Coen, a UO junior majoring in environmental studies, travelled from Eugene to join the demonstrations in North Dakota. Coen said “Mni waconi,” which means “water is life” in the Lakota Sioux dialect, was the mantra he heard repeated during the time he spent at the camp.

Coen stressed that the people camping at Standing Rock do not consider themselves protestors but are instead engaged in a “stand of protection.” This distinction has great significance to those at the demonstrations. According to Coen, they are not occupying others’ lands but are instead protecting indigenous land from being built upon by ETP.

A sense of unity and momentum is growing from the struggle against DAPL. Capossela expressed the optimism and energy he felt when he visited the camp at Standing Rock.

“The protest camp is an awesome place. It’s kind of like a Native American United Nations because there are so many tribes camped out there,” said Capossela. “It’s on a different level than the legal and administrative machinations that are going on between the tribe and the government. It’s at a different level. It’s at a better level and that gives one hope that we will be able to stop this thing in the long run.”

The basis for this article is novel. It involves taking the stairs and going to the library. Should you find yourself doing these two somewhat antiquated activities you will run into another relic of a different time.

I recently interviewed Kevin Bourgault, who received a Ph.D. in Education at the University of Oregon and who is also a Skokomish tribal member. As we ironed out the details of our interview, little did I know he had ulterior motives for asking me to meet at the Knight Library.

Before we began our conversation, Dr. Bourgault ushered me up the two stairwells on either side of the foyer of the Knight Library to view the twin murals the “Development of the Arts” and the “Development of the Sciences.” 

Painted in the 1930s, the murals by brothers Arthur and Albert Runquist each center around a tree trunk that purports to show human development as it rises from its primitive base to the flowering of high culture and modernity.

In broad strokes each mural depicts eras of development in a linear progression as the characters in the scenes develop more sophisticated forms of art and science, ending with representatives of modernity including the artists Shaw, Paderewski, Caruso, Bernhardt, Orozco and the scientists Einstein, Curie, Marconi, Edison and Burbank.

A large mural in the stairwell of the Knight Library. This mural depicts a racist past through the artwork.Absent from the artist’s interpretation of the more ‘developed’ and physically higher levels of the murals are any images of Indigenous, African or Asian cultures. Of the eight panels in each mural, Egyptians are the last vestige of any remotely dark skin on the third panel from the bottom in each.

The linear narrative of higher civilization rising from the primitive and graphic depiction from dark skinned to light skinned is a stark reminder of the cultural narratives that seep into so many facets of our history and which have become so depressingly normalized in our society.

As a university community, with a campus on the land of the Calapooia Indigenous people, it is important to challenge these vestiges of the past and build bridges of understanding and appreciation for the cultural, social, and environmental histories of Indigenous people and people of color. The reductionist history and focus on technological advance as progress has left many in our society fractured and out of touch with our planet and the shared human history that lies beyond the mainstream Euro-American narrative.

Solving these problems is a piecemeal process, with slow gains and frequent setbacks. Though painfully slow and deliberate, some progress has recently been made on the UO campus with the renaming of Dunn Hall and the movement of the UO Foundation towards divesting in fossil fuels. In keeping with this trend the University should also honor the demands of the Black Students Task Force and approve their proposal for a black cultural center on campus.

With regard to the murals, there seems to be a few different solutions. The easy one, and I think least instructive or productive, would be taking down the murals and writing them off as a vestige of a narrow minded and tacitly racist past. While this would remove the affront of the art to Indigenous people and people of color, it would fail to recognize the past and capitalize on what I think could be an instructive learning moment.

The option Dr. Bourgault suggested, and I agree with, would be a pair of artistic rebuttals to the murals. Commissioning artistic rebuttals to these murals by native artists and artists from communities of color would acknowledge the historic nature of the existing murals while giving modern artists and thinkers the opportunity to push back against the degrading racist imagery of the existing murals.

Leaving the murals as is and refusing to acknowledge the reprehensible messages of racial and cultural superiority would leave an existing injustice and embarrassment in place and an opportunity to further progress towards equity and inclusion would be lost.  

Nick Cady, a University of Oregon Law School Alumnus and the Legal Director for Eugene-based nonprofit Cascadia Wildlands, dedicates himself to the protection of Oregon’s natural resources and wildlife.

Drawn to UO for its public interest law program, Cady left his home state of Missouri for Eugene in 2009 and has been planting roots and protecting trees ever since. Cascadia Wildlands, the organization Cady represents, was founded by UO students in 1998 when they traded tree sit-ins for lawsuits in attempt to tackle environmental protection using more legal tactics.

Cady began his tenure with Cascadia Wildlands in 2010 as an intern during law school. He grew into the role of full-time Legal Director as soon as he graduated and passed the bar exam. As a litigator and agitator on behalf of forests, wolves and wildlife, Cady has positioned himself against some of the strongest and most entrenched interests in the state including ranchers, timber companies and state legislators.

At age 30, Cady lists the greatest achievement in his young career as the halting of clear-cut logging on old growth forest in the 80,000+ acre Elliott State Forest, which was under intense pressure to be logged during the Governorship of John Kitzhaber. “While that was a huge success, the state, in retaliation, and foolishly I think, is moving to sell the forest,” said Cady.

The Elliott State Forest is currently for sale to private buyers by the state of Oregon for $220.8 million, a move which Cady said he believes is unconstitutional and which he will be litigating and organizing against in the months and years to come.

Through his work protecting the Elliott State Forest, Cady became privy to the tit-for-tat politics that too often determine how decisions are made regarding natural resources.

Nick Cady (courtesy of Cascadia Wildlands)

His experience in the Elliott State Forest case helped him prepare to take on one of the most heavily contested environmental issues in Oregon, the future status of wolves in the state.

While wolves once roamed freely throughout Oregon, the westward expansion of Euro-American settlers laid a heavy toll on the native carnivores. In The Wolf Almanac, historian Robert Busch cites records that show the last remaining wolf in Oregon was killed in 1946 by settlers and ranchers.

At the end of the 21st century, as attitudes toward wolves and nature conservation in general shifted, wolves were slowly re-introduced into their former habitats. According to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), the first re-entry of wolves into Oregon occurred in 1999 and the first documentation of a wolf pup born in Oregon was in 2008. At the time of their re-entry, a public opinion poll conducted by independent public research firm Davis and Hibbits found that 70 percent of Oregonians approved of wolves reentering the state. As the wolf population rose to around 85 with 13 breeding pairs in 2015, the D.C. based research firm, Mason-Dixon Polling and Research, found that support for wolves had stayed consistent with 66 percent of Oregonians supporting the then current protections for gray wolves.

Despite public support for wolves, the ODFW and State Legislature have recently delisted wolves as endangered species. This was a move that Cady argues both does not consider the best available biological knowledge nor honestly represent the conservation status of the gray wolf.

Cady has recently butted heads with Oregon state legislators, some of whom he has even filed ethics complaints against regarding House Bill 4040, which ratifies the decision of the ODFW to delist wolves as endangered species. Cady contends that some legislators “blatantly mischaracterized” the bill by portraying it as a simple pat on the back to the ODFW, while in practice it has effectively undermined judicial review of the ODFW’s recommendation to delist wolves as endangered species.

While Cady’s ethic complaints were dismissed on shaky and seemingly political grounds, the fight to protect wolves continues as Cady and other wolf advocates continue to argue against the legality of wolf delisting and challenge the constitutionality of HB 4040.

Outside of the courtroom and back on campus, Cady was a recent panelist at the “Howling Mad” event hosted by the UO Law School on Aug. 16. Cady continues to work on cases with fellow law graduates and speaks fondly of his former wildlife law professor Julia Olson’s current climate change justice case.

From sturdy UO roots, Cady stands tall in defense of the environment and the natural inheritance of generations to come.