Jacqueline Keeler: Paiute ancestors were forced on Trail of Tears

When Ammon Bundy, son of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who faced off against Bureau of Land Management agents in an armed standoff in 2014, came to Oregon to takeover the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in support of fellow ranchers, he knew nothing about the mistreatment of the Burns Paiute Tribe by the federal government and American settlers.

But, scratch the surface of any land issues in the United States, especially in the West, and you are confronted with persisting and strong land claims held by Native nations.

Bundy’s actions have brought national media coverage of the January of 1879 forced march of 500 Paiutes from the Malheur Indian Reservation some 350 miles in knee-deep snow, many shackled two by two, to the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington State—the Northern Paiutes’ “Trail of Tears.” One group that was force-marched by the U.S. army simply disappeared. No one knows what happened to them. Still more died and when a few Paiute returned to Burns, Oregon, they were considered outlaws, many were landless as their reservation had been opened completely to settlers and large California ranching corporations.