On Lavoy Finicum by Davis Hammon

In light of the circumstances of Lavoy Finicum's death, a flood of emotions and memories have come out for his friends and family. Davis Hammon has been Lavoy's neighbor and friend for the last four years and shares his perspective.


I care not to partake in the spite around Lavoy Finicum’s death. He was valiant and chose freedom right up to the absolute end, giving not a hook for them to claw into his life. As he drew the fire away from the truck and the comrades inside he knew what he was getting into, so the word victim doesn't fit here. He chose his ground, where he would live free or die. He knew that the corrupt laws would stack against him in a nightmarish court system and that they would crush the open country from out of his heart. As his hands were up and that first bullet ripped into him (I believe from the first agent running toward him from the right) he had faced his enemy. He could have come out of that truck with pistol in hand firing, but he didn't. Violence was not his motivation. But he wasn't going to cower either. He did what he felt he must: face them, with hands up, to communicate that he meant no aggression, but really face them as he shouted, "If you're gonna shoot me, just shoot me". Most people cower at the site of a gun pointed at them. But not Finacum. No, he stared straight at death with the fierceness of courage and freedom running through his veins. Not many comrades can do that.

What matters to me is not whether this was an execution. Of course it was. Not just because of the events at the very last, but more importantly, the way the Feds slowly strangled the holdout, the people and the cause judiciously and calculating. I don't think they pre meditated Lavoy or anybody else's killing. They want all this to blow over and lose the public eye. And killings attract public attention. No, they wanted to strangle these people in court while the general populace quits paying attention. That's where they have them on their turf, with their corrupt laws and their playing rules. Then they can stamp guilty and keep the status quo going. It's harder to do that when there is wide attention by the populace.

What matters to me is that we don't lose focus. Lavoy's death has brought about a lot of awareness about the ideas he cared about -- the ideas he died for.

I really enjoyed spending time with Lavoy and his wife Jeannette over the past few years and was over there last fall to discuss what so many desert dwellers talk about: water! We were neighbors sharing a well and were discussing possibilities. But conversation soon veered toward the land--the Arizona Strip and the spreading grass across the monsoon drenched landscape. And how much this land mattered to us. He began sharing how he had chosen to quit paying the Feds for grazing permits on BLM land and that instead he had taken the money down to Kingman (county seat of Mohave) to offer them the payment instead. This was part of his belief in action in that lands belonged to local governance. That we, the people, of our own communities are responsible for the care taking and hold the rights to our own land. The federal govt had no right to enact monuments that gather large swaths of square miles, robbing the county and states. And that the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 was a horrible blow to our freedom and a dangerous slope toward over reach. The act, among other things, granted the Federal govt to collect dues from grazing on public lands and furthered the shift of power away from the states as the main administrators.

Now, the Taylor Grazing act was enacted in large part in response to overgrazing and destabilization of land soils. A lot of grazing has been harmful to the grasslands over the years, sometimes devastatingly so. Lavoy was not aloof to environmental care of the land. Just the opposite. I was impressed by both his knowledge of the plants and his love for being out under the open sky, sleeping on the ground and breathing in the sage smell after a summer rain. He talked about how over the years the overgrazing in the Arizona strip had fundamentally changed the way the water interacts. When the grasses were more intact many, many years ago the river would delta out and spread out across the surface, nourishing a large swath of land. It was the grass roots that held the soil. But as the grasses dwindled the roots could no longer hold that soil and the water began to cut down, instead of spread out. This resulted in deep gouges and washes forming, where the water would rush away, leaving the surface dryer, which made things even worse. Eventually this resulted in more sage and rabbit brush moving in and fundamentally changed what was once a primarily grass dominated land to sage dominated. This was Lavoy sharing all this with me. He knew what bad grazing was. And he also knew how to change the grazing practices and was already doing so. He knew that a herd, if managed properly, can actually rejuvenate the grasses and slow the water down in the desert, thus spreading out and nourishing more roots. He knew how to keep the cows grazing heavily for shorter periods of time, then moving them away to allow that land to resurge with the natural dung and hoof activated seed planting.

He was no rancher for short term profit. No, he was in it for the long haul. He really believed in not only the people of a land, but in the land itself. He believed in care taking and that a people only survive because of the dirt under their feet. So, I say what if we considered ourselves as care takers. That we the people, within our own local counties and communities, take responsibility for our own lands. Not for our gluttony, but for our children, and our children's children. We do survive because of the dirt under our feet. Because of the food it brings and the space it provides. And do we really think that some bureaucracy located thousands of miles away will care for our spaces with the same passion and dedication as us, the people dependent on it the most. Lavoy was about bringing it home -- to claim what is rightly ours and stop offsetting policy to a body of demagogues that don't walk here.