Property and whiteness: the Oregon standoff and the contradictions of the U.S. Settler State

ABSTRACT

On 2 January 2016, armed anti-government protestors took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (MNWR) in rural Oregon. The takeover of the MNWR is part of a larger, much longer set of movements called the Sagebrush Rebellion that has come to define contemporary white contestations about the federal regulation of lands in the American West. Specifically, we argue that the armed takeover of MNWR is revelatory of the way white supremacy intersects with place in important and consequential ways. In addition, we examine the politics of place and property to interrogate the way settler imaginaries affords settlers a perceived right to property and the land. We contend that this perception, illustrated by the events at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, is enmeshed within particular conceptions of property, the frontier, and whiteness. The MNWR takeover illuminates how discourses of whiteness and property rights are essential to the ongoing production of white supremacy within the US settler state.

KEYWORDS:

• Settler colonialism
• property
• whiteness
• white supremacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Joshua F. J. Inwood holds a joint appointment with the Department of Geography and the Rock Ethics Institute at Pennsylvania State University. His work engages with questions of race and racism and focuses on white supremacy.

Anne Bonds holds an appointment with the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Her research examines community development, poverty, and the politics of difference and geographies of white supremacy.

Notes

1 Following Robbins, Meehan, Gosnell, and Gilbertz (2009), we use the term American West to refer to the 11 westernmost states in the U.S. In using this term, we recognize both changing definitions of ‘the West’ and the problems of constructing the region as a unified spatial category. Rather than seeing the region as coherently bounded or fixed, we instead identify the region as a dynamic and contested area that is discursively and materially produced through social and economic processes.

2 During his testimony in February 2017, Bundy contradicted his original accounting that the protest turned into a takeover by admitting that he had planned to takeover prior to the date the occupation began (Wilson, 2017). In previous testimony, he said there was no plan to occupy the refuge.

3 It is important to note that our use of the terms ‘whiteness’ and ‘white identity’ is not meant to fix or stabilize whiteness as a discrete, static social category. We see whiteness as a fundamentally contested category that is constantly remade and that varies historically and geographically.

4 Charlotte Rodrique Paiute Tribal Chair, as quoted in: ‘Burns Paiute Tribe: Militants Need to Get Off ‘Our Land’ (Kullgren, 2016).

5 As with many aspects of the movement, the notion of ‘county supremacy’ is taken up by different actors and groups in different ways. For Christian Reconstructionists and those on the Christian Right, the idea of county supremacy refers to the county as being the ideal scale for government (De Vega, 2016). These ideas have been widely circulated by the John Birch Society, which, in support of white supremacy, advocated for county sheriffs to contain civil rights protest in the 1950s and 1960s, and by prominent members of the Church of Latter Day Saints (ibid).

6 McCarthy (2002), however, challenges the idea that the Sagebrush Rebellion is corporate driven in his examination of the Wise Use Movement.