Jeffrey M. LaLande regional politics and culture collection

Jeffrey M. LaLande arranged the collection's materials. The arrangement divides individual items in the collection into nine topical sub-groups, labeled and summarized here as boxes 1-6.

Box one of this special collection contains materials of early 20th-century environmental movements in Oregon. According to Jeff, most of the items in this sub-group fit into a grey area somewhere between government documents and local history. The items are primarily focused on Crater Lake. Also, materials on the Sagebrush Rebellion and War on the West from the 1990s as well as materials on Wise Use and County Home Rule movements. The box contains newspaper clippings and articles, as well as internal but non-confidential service correspondence and e-mails that relate to controversies over the use and control of federal (especially national forest system) lands. This material includes some items concerning threatened or actual violent/extra-legal actions taken against individual federal employees.

Box two contains clippings, posters, broadsides, and other publications dealing with the regional timber wars, the spotted owl controversy, and other local environmental issues. They range widely from an item or two from anonymous environmentalist groups threatening some form of direct action to mass rally protests organized by conservative rural residents in favor of continuing economic commodity uses of public land and public water. Also, it contains clippings, posters, announcements, pamphlets, and other items generated by various extreme anti-government groups. The groups' members may be local, regional and occasionally national. (The American Bulletin newsletters were written and published locally but distributed to a national readership, by the former American Bulletin associated bookstore on highway 99 in N. Medford.) Jeff obtained most of these items either from the American Bulletin bookstore or from a 1996 convention in Medford sponsored by the bookstore. Box three includes a few U.S. forest service internal items that came out following the Oklahoma City bombing, as well as a running account (clippings) about a Christian patriot squatter on BLM land in central Oregon. It also includes two national reports on militia-type groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Box four contains a sample of pamphlets and books written by Richard Landwehr (of Brookings, OR) and others. Landwehr writes and publishes a periodical called Siegrunen and apparently (based on telephone conversations from Jeff) has not only an avid interest in and a strong political fondness for the 1930s-1940s Nazi and other fascist military actions; his catalog features Holocaust Denial, and the SS Were Patriots type publications. Also, it contains information about Roy Masters and the New Age conservative guru in the Grants Pass area, 1990-2000s. Masters, a hypnotist that had a nationally syndicated emotional healing talk radio program, became a controversial political and economic presence in Southern Oregon. Some opponents called his loyal followers' Roybots', considering them to have been programmed by Masters. Jeff received most of the clippings from Mrs. Judy Boling, a Grants Pass resident and former student of Jeff's.

Box five contains a small sample of local, regional and some national ultra-conservative, fundamentalist, millennialist Christian tracts, posters, announcements, newspapers, etc. Several issues of the local Good News (distributes free through racks at gas stations and convenience stores) are included. Also, it contains newspaper clippings and articles from the 1990s that deal with scattered local episodes of prejudice, intolerance, violence arising from individual's ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. (This file is almost totally redundant with available back issues of local newspapers but could be of some assistance to researchers of this topic.)

Box six consists of miscellaneous political and cultural items. Many of the items are newspaper articles and clippings or full newspapers. It also contains many flyers, pamphlets, brochures, newsletters, and publications. Its topics are widely diverse ranging from initiative and referendum campaigns and local candidates to other materials that illustrate miscellaneous aspects of Southern Oregon's current culture and society.