James Pogue

Growing up in the eastern half of the country, I never thought much about federal land. But having lived in the west for close to a decade now, it turns out it can be a very big deal. The first controversy over federal land I really followed after I moved was the Bunkerville situation, orchestrated by a Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy, and his sons Ammon and Ryan. Not too long after that incident, Ammon and Ryan led the takeover of Malhuer National Wildlife Refuge. Reporter James Pogue was in and around the Refuge during its occupation, and turned his experience with it into a book: Chosen Country.

Pogue half-heartedly tries to tie the Malhuer episode to the greater scope of the dying out of the "traditional" ranching culture of the west and the long-standing libertarian streak of the people here, their sense of independence and alienation from a bureaucracy so far away. I say half-heartedly not because the connection is tenuous, but because it's poorly explored. There's a rich history here, but Pogue only glances over it, completely leaving out incidents like Ruby Ridge (which aren't tied into the lands dispute, but definitely inform the prickly relationship between people who live in the rural areas and the federal government), so that he can spend more time talking about the relationships he built with the men who occupied the refuge and the things he did with them. In this choice, I really feel like he fails his readers, who I imagine are mostly picking up this book out of curiosity about the larger movement and Malhuer's place within it.

Pogue also stumbles in his organization of the book. Perhaps if I'd been reading a hard copy rather than an e-book, it might have been easier to flip back and forth and have a better sense of who he was talking about when, but Pogue tends to introduce a person (and there's a fairly large cast of them) and then go on to never again place them in context. For some of the more prominent people, like the Bundy brothers and LaVoy Finecum (who was ultimately killed), that's probably not necessary, but I kept forgetting who everyone was and their relationships (if any) to each other. He also jumbles his timelines quite a bit between Malhuer, Bunkerville, and a smaller incident he highlights involving a dispute over a mining claim. He's constantly ping-ponging back and forth in time and place without re-orienting his reader and it's confusing.

I know that's a lot of negativity, but I didn't hate the book. I mostly was disappointed in it...Pogue is talented at his work and paints a captivating portrait of Ammon Bundy in particular, as well as Finecum. His reporting for Vice about these events is very worth reading, and I can understand why he was able to pitch a book on the strength of it. I don't regret having read it, but I wish it had undergone more vigorous editing and done a better job of illuminating the environment in which the takeover took place. Instead we get stories about how Pogue understands why people value public lands so much after he takes a bunch of drugs while he camps in BLM land. Instead of reading this book, I'd recommend finding his original articles, which cover much the same territory without feeling like a padded-out term paper.… (más)

Living in a state with a large part of it either National Forest, BLM, Reservation or National Park I found the premise of this book interesting. What I don't understand is the arrogance of people who think they own land meant for the use of all. Mr. Bundy and his refusal to pay his grazing fees is nothing more than a denial of the fact that he does not own the land his cattle use. The occupation of the Malheur Refuge was a disgrace - the damage done to the refuge will take years to recover. All for petulant temper tantrums. The gentleman did not have to die in this cause.

The book covers the anti government outlook of the men who think they can just ignore the state of things and interpret the Constitution in their own way.… (más)

Wikipedia entry: “From January 2 to February 11, 2016, the (Oregon Malheur Wildlife) refuge's headquarters was seized by armed protesters related to the 2014 Bundy standoff. For most of the occupation, law enforcement allowed the occupiers to come and go at will. At the conclusion, most of the leaders were arrested, and one was killed while traveling away from the refuge when the group he was leading attempting to evade a police road block. The remaining occupiers either departed or surrendered peacefully.”

“It was around this time I began to notice how much of what seems to be deep American authenticity is really just pageantry.” p 46

Writer, drifter and free spirit James Pogue embedded in the 2016 takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in order to explore the demands, backstory and personalities driving the rebellion.

The leaders of the takeover believe that the federal government does not have the authority under the Constitution to own federal lands or to police them with various federal agencies, such as the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Such rights, they believe belong to the states which should govern them for economic interests of state inhabitants.

Some of this comes from a far right wing reading/misreading of the Constitution. Interestingly enough, it also comes from fundamentalist Mormon writings, that state that the US Constitution is a God-given and sacred document. And finally, it comes from what many see as government overstepping its authority in taking away generations-old rights to graze stock or run small mines on federal lands – often due to new environmental regulations.

>“Those people are the range cops and forest rangers of the BLM and Forest Service, and they're dealing with communities where some large percentage of people don't want them there, don't agree with the rules they're enforcing, where people have gotten progressively poorer over the last few decades, and have lots of guns. I always try to tell angry westerners that they could not possibly imagine how much harder they'd have it dealing with the police in most any black neighborhood in this country. I tell them that the resources they'd love to maintain the same access they'd always had to are now increasingly desired by others, and that there's going to have to be some give on their part. But this is a hard argument to make, because the sympathetic figures of angry ranchers have been manipulated very successfully by a network of oligarchical billionaires and major companies – because they're resource conglomerates with an interest in breaking down drilling and mining restrictions; or because they can use the image of beset ranchers facing off against the big bad feds to try to color all environmental regulation and any attempt to address the issue of climate change as tyrannous federal overreach.” p 33

The author inserts himself with weed and booze, learning to love four wheeling over desert landscape and guns, also while in the midst of grief and loss of a family member.

There are some interesting points in this book. I did learn from it – however the results are a somewhat chaotic picture. That's the word I would generally use to describe this book: the uprising itself was chaotic and only loosely bound; While the author sometimes has a glorious turn of phrase, his actions and writing also sometimes deserve the same chaotic adjective.… (más)