A gingerbread house of cards: Mapleton legal drama unfolds after gubernatorial candidate’s fundraiser

The Old World Gingerbread Village on Highway 126 in Mapleton, a closed Christmas-themed restaurant, is at the center of a legal drama involving a gubernatorial candidate, squatting claims, invocations of the Indigenous “land back” movement and more, playing out across dueling lawsuits.

It all started with a frybread fundraiser. 

Brittany N. Jones is a Springfield resident challenging incumbent Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek in the state’s Democratic primaries. (Jones also ran for president in 2024.) On Halloween, she posted about a fundraiser Nov. 1 and 2 to bring new life to the gingerbread village, which had been closed since March. 

According to posts on the Facebook page for The Ravens Party, an organization that Jones is the president of and which registered as a non-profit organization in October, the plan was to reinvent the building as The Raven’s Landing, an Indigenous restaurant with frybread burgers on the menu. 

The Ravens Party’s goals, according to public business records, are to provide “indigenous services for housing, land ownership, substance abuse support, food stability, and community gatherings.”

Old World Gingerbread Village owner Carol Sarault gave them permission to use the building for the fundraiser. 

But shortly after the fundraiser, things turned sour. 

Jones filed a lawsuit for illegal eviction Nov. 7, while Sarault, represented by Eugene attorney Frank Gibson, filed to have her and The Ravens Party evicted Dec. 12. 

After a hearing Tuesday, Dec. 23, the two parties entered into an agreement that Jones must return the keys to the building and vacate by midnight on Sunday, Dec. 28, tentatively bringing an end to the litigation. 

“At one point, Carol agreed to give us her gingerbread recipe, but that, I’m assuming, is no longer going to be done,” Jones said at a three-hour court hearing Nov. 21.

That hearing was over a preliminary injunction Jones filed for, and a judge later dissolved, to prevent Sarault from evicting her from the gingerbread bakery, interfering with utilities or selling the building as litigation continued. 

Under the terms of the agreement, both sides are barred from interviews on the case. That means the Nov. 21 hearing and Jones’ public social media posts are some of the only direct testimony available to explain how the cookie crumbled, legally. 

Lookout reviewed the recording, which was made available on the website for Gibson’s law firm Hutchinson Cox, with the URL listed in a public court filing. 

Jones’ argument: an illegal eviction, “land back” advocacy

Jones, representing herself, has argued that text and verbal conversations with Sarault indicated an agreement for long-term possession of the building.

Sarault gave Jones keys to the building ahead of the fundraiser, but did not bring a paper lease. Jones said Sarault agreed for her to move utilities to Jones’ name, which she did Monday, Nov. 3. 

That transfer of utilities, Jones argued, established tenancy and was tantamount to an agreement that she and The Ravens Party stay in the building long-term. 

But that same night, Jones said, Sarault called to say she wouldn’t be moving forward with a lease. At first, Jones was ready to leave before reading up on Oregon’s tenancy laws. 

“I didn’t know I had rights,” she said at the Nov. 21 hearing. Then, she decided not to leave. On Tuesday, Nov. 4, Sarault canceled the utilities and called the sheriff’s office, who told her she would have to have Jones removed from the property through the courts. 

That same day, Jones posted on Facebook that she was committed to operating out of the Old World Gingerbread Village, listing open hours selling food and drinks from the building on the Ravens Party Facebook page. 

On Nov. 5, Sarault changed the locks, which Jones described in the three-hour hearing as a self-help eviction, illegal in Oregon. 

Jones and her Ravens Party members returned to the property Nov. 15, after a judge granted an injunction preventing Sarault from evicting her or turning off the utilities; that injunction was later dissolved in the Nov. 21 hearing. 

From Jones’ perspective, it’s about more than a tenancy dispute. Jones, who identifies as a member of the Patawomeck Indian Tribe of Virginia, frequently uses the #landback hashtag on her TikToks about the restaurant, invoking the global movement to restore Indigenous sovereignty to ancestral lands, tying The Raven’s Landing and her tenancy in the building to a larger social movement. 

In a TikTok posted Tuesday, Dec. 23, she said her team was leaving as they were not safe in the building, pointing to harassment she said she and her employees have faced during the last two months.

“Mapleton, you do get your way, because we will not be staying in that building,” she said. “There’s too much hate, too much harassment.”

Sarault’s argument: a gubernatorial candidate and a lease that didn’t exist

When Sarault started talking with Jones about taking over the building in October, Sarault said Jones seemed like a solid prospect to lease the building. She would have an active interest no matter who took over, as she lives on the adjacent property. 

Jones’ political career, she said, gave her added credibility. 

“It started to roll out with my understanding that I’m looking at a person who is running for governor,” Sarault said at the Nov. 21 hearing. 

Sarault initially put the building up for sale in April, after a chronic medical condition stopped her from operating the gingerbread bakery.

After putting up the listing, she talked with Chief Doug Barrett of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians about the tribes possibly buying the building to start an Indigenous cultural education site there. 

A friend sent her a Facebook post from Jones, who had described wanting something similar along Highway 99. The two women began talking, and Sarault gave Jones permission to have the fundraiser at the building. She said she thought Jones and The Ravens Party were similar to the tribe she had spoken with, with a council of elders and larger organizational structure.

But when Jones asked to have the fundraiser, Sarault said she thought everything was moving a little fast. Jones said she had already bought the food, so Sarault agreed to let the frybread fundraiser continue. 

It’s unclear from the hearing or court documents what led Sarault to decline to go forward with a lease. But in the Nov. 21 hearing, an exchange between Jones and Gibson zeroed in on the two sides’ disparate understandings of what a lease would look like. 

Jones detailed an alleged lease-to-own agreement where Sarault would accept the restaurant’s monthly profits as payments toward rent, until Jones could get a loan to pay off the remainder of the mortgage. 

In talking with Jones about her plans for the building, Gibson asked how she would pay expenses on the building in a month with no profit.

“They do not include the mortgage,” Jones said during the Nov. 21 hearing. “That’s not how real estate works.”

“Well, that’s your idea of it,” Gibson responded. “But it may not have been Mrs. Sarault’s idea of it.” 

Jones also pointed to social media posts as defamatory, likely referencing posts from an account on TikTok called @PNWGem that had been recounting the situation since mid-November.

“They are painting us as scammers, as miscreants, as people who use causes to raise money to use wrongfully,” Jones said in the Nov. 21 hearing. “And that is simply not the case.”

Gibson said in closing arguments that no one was claiming Jones was “acting in bad faith.”

“I think these people both were sincerely excited about trying to put something together,” Gibson said at the Nov. 21 hearing. “They just never did.”

What happens now

This week, Jones and Sarault entered into an agreement where Jones and the Ravens Party must vacate the Old World Gingerbread Village by midnight Sunday, Dec. 28.

As part of the agreed-upon terms, neither side is permitted to speak about the case through “derogatory social media posting, word of mouth, or interviews with or by third parties.”

The agreement also requires that “All derogatory social media posts, by Carol and by those within her control to take down. Brittany will provide existing posts of concern to Gibson by Sunday 28th 2025.”  Both cases are still open, but the TikTok account for @PNWGem is gone, either deleted by the user or taken down by TikTok.

“We just want to serve food and build community spaces,” The Ravens Party posted in a Dec. 22 Facebook caption discussing the agreement. “A commercial tenant dispute has turned into something it should have never been.”

Sarault’s Facebook posts that Jones cited during the case have been taken down. 

This month, the only post on her feed about the restaurant is a repost of a 2021 video, with glimpses of the restaurant when it was still open and a plate full of smiling gingerbread faces.