The relationship between Native people and animals has a rich, complex history. For tens of thousands of years, Native people have cultivated their symbiotic relationship with the animal world, and these relationships demonstrate a unique centralized status that animals have for many tribal cultures. Beginning with early contact with Europeans, however, the relationship between Native people and animals began to deteriorate. Europeans and Native people had fundamentally different perspectives on the relationship between humans and animals. In some cases, the cosmologies of Europeans and Natives toward animals were mutually exclusive; either animals were seen as equal to humans or were subject to the complete dominion of man. This clash of worldviews parallels many other areas of colonial power, including the treatment of women and children. Whereas many tribal cultures do not view animals and humans as occupying a hierarchy, European belief systems have historically put men in complete dominion over their property— namely women, children, and animals.
Over the course of several centuries, the relationship between Native people and animals has been put to the test with the introduction of European practices, including weaponized dogs, sport hunting, over-hunting, and animal cruelty. This article thus considers these complex histories of the relationship between Native people and animals as they inform contemporary problems. Today, many reservations struggle with animal protection and control problems, such as over-population, feral dog packs, and widespread neglect. These problems, which have reached a crisis level in many communities, can be understood as an outgrowth of colonization. In order to develop concrete contemporary legal solutions, we must understand how this history has shaped and reshaped the relationship between Native people and animals. Given the particularly egregious history and myriad contemporary problems, this article proposes several approaches to help normalize and celebrate the relationship between Native people and their companion animals by considering how tribal self-determination can offer solutions.
This article proceeds in four parts. In Part II, the article considers how traditional norms and laws of many Native people have prohibited the physical and spiritual mistreatment of animals since time immemorial. Part II will also explore how the relationship between humans and animals occupies a central role in the history of many tribal nations. Part III focuses on the introduction of European practices that served to distort the relationship between animals and humans throughout North America. The contemporary reservation and village animal problems come to a head in Part IV, which considers how animal abuse and neglect have become prevalent in many tribal communities. Part V considers how tribal law reform may be the foundation for solutions to some of today’s tribal animal issues. The authors also highlight the work of the Native America Humane Society (“NAHS”) to address animal concerns in Indian country. NAHS developed a national survey about the animal challenges faced by Native people; those findings are shared and analyzed below. This article concludes by offering a series of steps that can be considered in responding to the sometimes strained relationship between people and animals in tribal communities that also acknowledges the harm that has been done to the animal-human relationship in general.
This paper intentionally and deliberately frames tribal cultural practices and customs as unwritten laws. Native peoples do not traditionally have a sharp dividing line between sacred and secular rules, and as a result, the history of western Anglo-American legal thought often characterizes tribal legal traditions as rituals, myths, and legends, but not law. This mischaracterization has sometimes led non-Native people to conclude that tribes were lawless or somehow less deserving of being recognized as independent sovereign governments. As part of reclaiming and reframing tribal expectations and practices as laws, the authors hope that tribal efforts to address contemporary animal challenges will be given the respect they deserve.