By James McWilliams
August 2013
[Ed. Note: Also read They're Sacred Animals and take action at End Horse Slaughter - Always Cruel, For Any Reason]
The Native Americans—who will be paid well to make the case that these horses are destroying their ancestral lands—will be handsomely compensated for their laundering role.
What are Native American communities doing rounding up so many horses these days? Reports of roundups are rampant. I’ve written in the past how the Navajo have been corralling wild horses in New Mexico.
And right now [August 16] in Fallon, Nevada 417 houses—the result of a tribal roundup by the Paiute Shoshone Tribe—are being held in anticipation of a “slaughter auction”—an event that will send the horses to Canada and Mexico for slaughter. Some of the horses have brands, indicating ownership by the tribe, but reports suggest that many others do not, indicating that they were illegally obtained.
Federally protected wild horses have no place at a slaughter auction. The Bureau of Land Management, however, seems to think otherwise.
It has been making a case that these horses are trampling land and thus need to be killed (in fact they just want to more land to lease for more lucrative cattle operations). BLM almost authorized the Paiute Shoshone to collect wild horses for sale but rescinded the commission at the last minute due to activist outrage. This was two weeks ago.
In any case, something seriously suspicious is going on among slaughterhouses, the federal government, and Native American tribes. Here is my guess, and I think it’s a good one: as states inch closer and closer to re-legalizing horse slaughter, meatpacking plants are lobbying the federal government to loosen protections on wild horses, thereby freeing them up for slaughter (and the profits that ensue) while clearing more BLM land for the cattle industry.
The Native Americans—who will be paid well to make the case that these horses are destroying their ancestral lands—will be handsomely compensated for their laundering role.These are the dots. If you know investigative researchers and writers, or are one, I think there is a big story that will emerge once they are connected.
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