Shadowlands

Starred review from May 13, 2019
Poet McCann (Thing Music) presents a riveting in-depth investigation into the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by armed right-wing protesters determined to wrest control of the land from the government. The setting, which McCann renders with a poet’s precision (“sun-crisped juniper fecund muck”), is Harney County, Ore., where Ammon and Ryan Bundy, sons of rancher Cliven, assembled like-minded militia members to undertake an armed occupation of the refuge to protest the idea of federal management and conservation of public lands, rather than allowing them to be used for logging and cattle-grazing. The monthlong occupation reached a climax with the shooting death of Bundy follower LaVoy Finicum by FBI agents and the remaining protestors’ subsequent surrender. McCann then documents the carnival-like atmosphere at the protestors’ conspiracy trials. He portrays his characters vividly, Ammon in particular, describing his oratory style as “theo-legalistic” and casting a “spell of urgency.” He provides context on the underlying motivations of the protesters “bitterly hanging on to the last threads of privilege” in an increasingly diverse America, and the broader history: Manifest Destiny and the atrocities inflicted upon Native Americans, Joseph Smith’s writings (the Bundys are Mormon), and Thomas Jefferson’s often contradictory ideas about government and rebellion. McCann’s arresting and brilliant firsthand account is required reading for anyone interested in the ideological gap between the American Left and Right. Agent: Stephanie Steiker, Regal Hoffman Literary Agency.

May 15, 2019
Pensive, provocative account of the rebel seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. Poet McCann (Creative Writing/California Institute of the Arts; Thing Music, 2014, etc.) turns journalist and essayist at turns in this well-written, occasionally ponderous examination of the so-called Oregon Occupation, when members of a Latter-day Saints clan united with various alt-right and hard libertarian elements to take over a federal bird sanctuary in southeastern Oregon. The author takes pains to understand the ideas underlying the occupation: "Desires, urges, shadows, and types--our story begins with huge feelings, historical feelings." Leader Ammon Bundy, who has since disavowed militia actions, came into the seizure with a complex set of religiously fueled ideas about the proper dominion of humans over the Earth coupled with the view that bringing a cow to a water source constitutes improving the land, thereby making it the domain of the person who owns the cow--a doctrine long ago dismissed in a West crisscrossed with lands in the public domain. Others worked from the theory that states supersede the federal government when it comes to what happens within their borders, a theory tested and found faulty 150 years ago. A tangled misunderstanding of the Constitution supports such views, but then, as McCann writes, "the Constitution has long been an object of fantasy," holy scripture more often invoked than actually read. Throw in the "paranoid fringe" and assorted antinomians, and you have a recipe for disaster that fortunately did not end in a bloodbath--though the author wonders along the way whether there wasn't a death wish at play in the minds of at least some of the participants, suicide brought on by despair and isolation: "Just you and the sagebrush, just you and the pines." In the end, McCann suggests, it was all just another lost cause but one not entirely without merit. Students of modern environmentalism, federalism and its discontents, and extremist politics alike will find McCann's on-the-ground reportage to be of great value.

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October 25, 2019

McCann (creative writing, California Inst. of the Arts, Santa Clarita) offers a vivid journey through eastern Oregon's Great Basin, detailing the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by Ammon Bundy and his militant followers in 2016. In often lyrical prose, McCann approaches Bundy's following as a modern-day messiah movement, comparing him to the Paiute religious leader Wovoka and the 19th-century ghost dance religion of the Native American tribe. McCann takes seriously Bundy's legal arguments, comparing his personal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution to Protestantism vs. the traditional Catholic/Federal interpretation by the U.S. Supreme Court. While James Pogue's detailed Chosen Country takes the view of an embedded reporter, McCann visited and interviewed people in the area during and after the occupation, providing additional perspectives. VERDICT McCann places the Malheur occupation in a fresh and broadly anthropological context that furthers our understanding of the ramifications of this political-religious movement in an era of extreme political demagoguery. Highly recommended.--Nathan Bender, Albany Cty. P.L., Laramie, WY

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2019
Poet McCann (Thing Music, 2014) makes a momentous nonfiction debut with this account of the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by armed, right-wing protestors. McCann takes a kaleidoscopic long-view, examining the historical roots of the occupation, its emotive leader Ammon Bundy, its divisive effect on a country poised to elect Donald Trump, and its messy aftermath in federal court. The core subject is nothing less than the nature of American identity and the concept of freedom. Admirably, McCann's ethos is not that of a neutral bystander but of a truth seeker. He thinks through viewpoints with depth and empathy, but he also takes stands and calls out the problematic. For example, protestors claimed the federal government had no right to own these public lands, while members of the Paiute publicly questioned what right Bundy's group of white ranchers had to occupy their tribe's historical lands, which were forcibly taken. Contradictions, hypocrisies, and sanitized history were at the forefront of a standoff that cost at least one man his life. This heavily researched and thoughtful book, written with detail and care, asks big questions of readers and the country.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)