Professor Peter Walker, Geography and ENVS Core Faculty, Featured in the Oregon Quarterly.
Excerpt from Around the O Article about Walker on Harney County and the Malheur Occupation-
But the community was not interested in joining the Bundy rebellion. They had congregated on that brisk January evening to discuss the militia’s unwelcome presence in their town.
Steve Grasty, the Harney County judge presiding over that meeting, broke the tense silence as he walked up to one of the occupation leaders and told him to leave. The community members rose to their feet and began to echo Grasty’s demand. Their voices surged in unison.
“Go home. Go home. Go home,” the crowd chanted, with a sea of fingers aimed at the heavily armed occupiers.
“It was one of the greatest displays of courage I’ve witnessed,” Walker recalled.
Walker believes the brave resilience he saw that night—and throughout the occupation—was driven by Harney County’s rich history of using collaboration to solve contentious problems, including the very issues the Bundys were trying to leverage into an armed rebellion.