Seneca City Council meeting regarding ONAC KM central east sanctuary exhausts without formal decisio
To the city counsels surprise, ONAC KM was heard as last nights city council meeting despite their lack of notification it's agenda was to address one of the three properties of there "Central East Sanctuary" and initiate an abatement against them.
One of the KM youth members, whom had traveled out to Seneca just a few short months ago to assist with the cleaning and preparing the sanctuary for ceremonial use was the first of the church members who would arrive in defense of preserving the sanctity of the sanctuary, armed with a letter of Official Notice from Sachem Graves, leader of the church and property owner. She was refused by the council the right to be heard at the meeting and told so almost immediately upon entering the door.
Moments before the meeting would be called to order, church member Raymond "Scott" Martin, who has been custodian of the sanctuary land since 2014 and who faced a 16 year prison sentence for tending to the same church land then through 2015 arrived at the meeting and was told the same thing, that he was being refused the right to be heard on behalf of the property, "But fortunately that Mecautea (warrior soldier) would not allow such a mis-justice and persisted until they ultimately agreed to let him speak and be heard, including reading the letter of Notice demanding that their "Racial profile targeting" against the land, church and members immediately be stopped and that they correct and then contain their city representatives or that there could end up being legal consequence.
Josh Walker, the primary city official targeting and harassing the church members and land was "smiling smugly" the entire time Martin addressed the counsel defending the rights of the church and members be protected opposed to violated according to witnesses in attendance at the meeting, but city council members didn't appear as confident as Walker and ultimately decided to "review" the situation further before rendering a decision, which did not come by the time of the closing of the meeting. It is presumed that the issue will be addressed at their next monthly meeting.
ONAC KM officials state that despite Walkers efforts to Prevent their ability to focus on clearing and preparing the land, they plan to continue onward and remain hopeful in accomplishing having the sanctuary open for sweat and other ceremonies in 2018. "We know there's still a lot of work to get done, we would be a great deal farther ahead in having things done if they would simply keep Josh Walker back and out of our hair so we can Get it done" says Raymond Martin. "I've been out here trying to get things done and ready for ceremony since 2014, it's the government officials continued interference that's been dragging out the progress, not us."
When asked to share with us a timeline since he's been out there trying to accomplish this goal, Martin had this to say:
"I first came to Oregon from my home in Missouri in March of 2014, for the blessing of the establishment of this property being devoted to the use and purpose as our church sanctuary. It was at first the county stopped me by putting an order saying I couldn't go To our churches property which wasn't lifted until the middle of 2015 when Judge Cramer agreed our church and rights were illegally violated. In 2015 Josh demanded we make a noticeable effort or else, and then when we took an entire structure down, the worst of them, he turned Nazi on us, harassing us at every opportunity and making hateful sarcastic comments about our church, and even went so far as to say we weren't a legal church. When we continued working on clearing the land, is when he began criminally trespassing, taking pictures and ultimately got us fined a decent chunk of money we don't have in fines which ultimately turned into a lien against our South valley sanctuary 7 to 8 hours away across the state. Now that it's the season to start in again, they pull this, saying it's abandoned when they know we're here to get working, so now there trying to get a restraining order so we can't, then charge us for not doing it. it's crazy"
When we asked Martin and other church leaders and community supporters Why they think the city is trying to Stop them from cleaning up the property, all seemed to concur that "Rumor is they think they will some how be able to take the land from us." I guess only time will tell how things are going to turn out, so please stay tuned for further updates about this and other KM related news.
