Spring Adventures and Reflections
Hello everyone!
Hope you are all enjoying the spring—it’s just creeping up on us in Montana. Sorry for the lapse in correspondence—I’ve been travelling to book events from Tucson to Boise. Off to Seattle, Walla Walla and Coeur d’Alene tomorrow. I’m also working on a new book, which I’m really excited about. More information to come…
Here I am with the fabulous Will Grant and Melissa Sevigny at the Tucson Festival of Books.
April marks the tenth anniversary of the Battle of Bunkerville, when Cliven Bundy and his family, along with hundreds of others, engaged in an armed standoff against law enforcement and Bureau of Land Management agents. My first book, American Zion, is an exploration of this event and the incendiary land-use war they waged that day. The Bundys continue to be engaged in open conflict with America, a conflict traceable back to the time when the Latter-day Saints came west, bringing militant beliefs, some legitimate grievances, and their certainty of claiming a God-promised homeland. This homeland they called Zion, where Bundy’s ancestors and others claimed Native lands as their own. American Zion takes the reader through the early history of the Mormon church and a pervasive bitterness that became embedded, for the Mormon pioneers, in the very idea of Zion. These early convictions have endured, helping to fuel armed conflicts in Nevada and Oregon and an ongoing relationship between Mormon ranchers and the American militia movement we see today.
Here is an excerpt from American Zion on the Battle of Bunkerville:
On April 12, 2014, hundreds of protesters, including members of various militia groups, gathered near Bunkerville, Nevada, in the southeastern corner of the state, making their stand in solidarity with Cliven Bundy. They had gathered to shut down the court-ordered removal of the Bundys’ cattle from public lands. Many in the crowd carried guns and a few were positioned as snipers, their rifles aimed at federal agents and police. Agents aimed back. Men in cowboy hats rode on horseback with a crowd pushing along to face Las Vegas police and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officers. Some of the protesters threatened, and yelled obscenities. One guy in a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey asked a police officer if he was ready to die.
Cliven and Carol Bundy told me that even a backfire could have triggered another Waco. Of course, militia members and anti-government protesters say this all the time. Waco, Texas, is the town where in 1993, federal agents, along with state law-enforcement officers and US military, led a siege of the compound in which a group, the Branch Davidians, had barricaded themselves. That siege ended in a final assault and a fire, resulting in the deaths of dozens of men, women, and children, an event that became a rallying cry in anti-government circles.
Some allude to Waco as a cautionary tale, others with a kind of yearning, eager to have it out with a government they so despise. During the Bundy standoff, Interstate 15 was shut down while north- and southbound traffic idled. On that spring day in Nevada, rifles aimed and ready, some of the protesters awaited a sign that would determine the outcome. Would the feds attack first, giving the protesters their chance to defend the Bundys? To protect them from the same evil forces responsible for the fate of the poor Branch Davidians of Waco? Or would the itchy fingers of an armed protester set off a volley of bullets? Perhaps divine intervention might take place, indicating God’s sympathy for this Mormon rancher and his family. That day, in the minds of the protesters, all scenarios were possible.
After a tense standoff, no bullets were exchanged. It was no Waco. In fact, the feds and the police relented and drove away. The retreat thrilled the protesters, but left the officers and agents shaken. Sergeant Tom Jenkins of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said, “We didn’t show any fear that day, but I can tell you, we all thought in the back of our minds, we all thought it was going to be our last day on earth.” Although the law officers weren’t interested in sacrificing their lives for cattle, many Bundy supporters evidently were. Cliven’s son Ryan declared to the crowd, “The West has now been won.” Cliven Bundy, his family, and his followers reveled in the agents’ retreat. “If the standoff with the Bundys was wrong,” Cliven said later, “would the Lord have been with us? . . . Could those people that stood without fear and went through that spiritual experience . . . have done that without the Lord being there? No, they couldn’t.” To the Bundys, the day validated their position and demonstrated that God was on their side.
The Bundys and their public-land battles initially sounded like a fringe cause—an isolated family caught up in a quixotic battle with the government over a bunch of cows. But in fact, in their crusade, they have inspired hundreds of thousands of supporters in the years following the Nevada standoff. The Bundys, as western “everymen,” have become the heroic face of anti-government agitators. Taking a passionate battle from Nevada to Oregon, where members of the family later led an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge, the Bundys staked their own claims on American public land and traditional Native land. They have gotten away with illegal grazing, takeovers, standoffs, and expensive property damage. To some, they have become champions. And as such, their amalgamation of Mormon beliefs, libertarianism, and a right-wing reading of the Constitution continues to inform and embolden anti-government activism.
✷ A few more things to share…
This month, North Idaho has once again been in the headlines as a place of extremism and hate. For thoughts on this, here is an interview on Morning Edition I did with George Prentice.
In April, True West was selected by Jesse James Mullan, a candidate for Secretary of State here in Montana, as the book of the month. Big thanks to Montana Book Company for this recommendation! Here is the newsletter for information on the book and Mullan’s campaign.
Kate Groetzinger & Aaron Weiss of the Center for Western Priorities invited me their podcast, The Landscape, to talk about extremism on public lands. I love these guys!
I’m also thrilled to announce that True West is a finalist for the Center for the Study of the American West 2024 Bonney MacDonald Award and the 2023 Forward Indie Award. It also is also a longlist finalist for Reading the West Book Awards.
I’d like to recommend a few books I’ve read recently and loved: The Right Kind of White, by Garrett Bucks; A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest, by Charlie J. Stephens; and North Woods, by Daniel Mason. So good!
If you’re interested in reading American Zion, or True West, which also discusses the Bundy’s impacts on the West and this country, here is a great deal from my wonderful publisher, Torrey House Press. You can take advantage of this offer here.
Thanks all! Happy Trails, Betsy