Horse News

Breaking News: Navajo Nation Sells Permits to Hunt Wild Horses

By on • ( 36 Comments )

Click to access 2018_feral_horse_proclamation.pdf

Navajo Nation Department of Fish and Wildlife

This is not the first go around on this issue but we need to act fast as permits have already been sold.

https://rtfitchauthor.com/2013/07/22/former-governor-bill-richardson-and-robert-redford-join-fight-to-stop-horse-slaughterhouses/

https://rtfitchauthor.com/2013/07/27/richardson-meets-agriculture-secretary-in-washington-to-halt-horse-slaughter/

https://rtfitchauthor.com/2013/10/08/navajo-leader-drops-his-support-for-slaughter-of-wild-horses-on-the-reservation/

https://rtfitchauthor.com/2013/11/14/navajo-president-lies-too-reservation-horses-being-round-up-for-slaughter/

https://rtfitchauthor.com/2015/06/04/navajo-officials-renegotiating-wild-horse-agreement/

https://rtfitchauthor.com/2015/06/06/navajo-nation-eyes-agreement-reining-in-slaughter-of-wild-horses/

https://rtfitchauthor.com/2015/09/14/new-mexico-ag-requests-further-injunction-on-horse-slaughter/

Categories: Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Wild Horses/Mustangs

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36 replies »

    • Seems this is going against far too many of most Native American beliefs where horses are concerned. And 5 or 10 dollars isn’t going to enrich anyones pocket – only Navaho “hunters”? Whats the point? This really doesn’t make any sense. There are already Indians that are rounding up “wild” horses & taking them to kill lots – that’s where at least one rescue gets calls to come pick up foals. But they’re getting more than 5 or 10 dollars each for them. Really – whats the point here – putting themselves right out there to get slammed on social media – doesn’t make sense.

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      • I guess another question would be: why – if they can round up and sell these horses or sell permits to kill them. WHyWHY don’t they GELD the stallions in these huge herds of “feral” horses & DO something about it. I’m sure there are organizations that would help out financially to get vets to do this. There never seems to be any attempt to do anything but get rid of them!

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  4. This is terrible. What do they need to make a couple dollars so badly that they have to let people kill animals, who just want to live their lives freely?
    I don’t feel sorry for the Indians anymore. I won’t donate to their causes anymore.

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  6. Shared with (pardon the F references) OMFG!!!!! Returning to heathen status??? This is monstrous, inhumane, cruel and not a flippin’ effective way to manage their “prized” and “revered” wild horses. Tribal members get a hold of your ELDERS to rein them in from this hideous practice of selling wild horse hunting permits. What the hell is wrong with these people?????????? Mad, mad, and super, super ANGRY!!!!! Bad enough tribal members have been rounding up wild horses, ripping the babies away from their mama’s to sell the mares for slaughter and now this!!!! Outrageous!!!!! WTF are they going to do with the dead horses? Eat them??? Leave them to rot???? Arrrgh, and Aiiieeee oooo, gonna be on the war path all right. #KeepWildHorsesWild #StopInsaneHorseShooting

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  7. Not all Tribal Members support wild horse hunting: By Leland Grass
    19 hrs ·
    Hey people, Does Sweetwater, Teec Nos Pos, Red Mesa, Beclahbito, Cove and Red Valley asking for Horse Hunt on their chapter resolution? Navajo Nation Wildlife Fish and Game is moving along to remove some horses in their area with Gov’t Permit issued firearm soon. Our Last meeting w NNWF&G, May 2017, i remember we gave them a template to humane treatment of horse management plan from Dine’ people..it does NOT address horse hunt. For 9 months, NNWF&G no (will-call) back from their dept to us, and they decided to do a horse hunt is a kick in the face, the way how we are being treated from our own Gov’t. NNWF&G stating that these chapters are agreeing with Horse hunt. Need to look at their resolutions. Florida shootings? on our reservation we don’t shoot no one, but i guess it ok to bring fire arm shoot of our sacred horses. Be so, as you wish, while you don’t listen to our lands and sacred people, you bring things disharmony to your own self today and tomorrow- these message is to the horse hunters and Gov’t. Chapter house need to do alot more harmony things with the people then inhumane on animals and sacred people off the chapters.

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  9. Not ALL of the Navajo Nation is in agreement on this.
    The Wild Horse Crisis Out West Continues
    Celebrities are fighting it, deals are being brokered, and two proposals are sitting in Congress to end it. So why are horses still being slaughtered in droves?
    BY LESLIE MACMILLAN
    Oct 24, 2013

    (PHOTO) Navajo activist Leland Grass (right) confronts horse buyer Jeanne Collom.

    “The only way to get at those resources is to get rid of the horses,” said Navajo activist Leland Grass. He has been trying to stop roundups of horses, which are often bound for Mexican slaughterhouses, on the Navajo reservation

    In the next few months, a legal fight to block the opening of horse slaughterhouses in New Mexico and Missouri will reach its final stages.
    Meanwhile, Grass and his grassroots group Nohooká Diné sent a resolution to legislators in Washington, DC urging them to pass the Safeguard American Food Exports (SAFE) Act, currently pending before Congress. Protecting horses on Navajo land is important, Grass said, but a national bill is critical to ensure there is no incentive for horses to be taken from our lands or elsewhere for slaughter.

    Horses hold an important place in Navajo cosmology. Leaving the roundup, Grass pulled his truck off the dirt road and cut the engine. A couple of the horses glanced over, swished their tails. “Look at them,” he said. “Their mane is the thunder and their eyes are the stars. They possess the same fundamental right to life as we, the five-fingered ones, do.”
    https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23720/horse-slaughter-continues-in-the-west-102413/

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    • For The Navajo Nation, Uranium Mining’s Deadly Legacy Lingers
      Laurel Morales

      All four of Welch’s grandparents have died, and she worries about her parents’ health and now her daughter’s. Cancer rates doubled in the Navajo Nation from the 1970s to the 1990s.
      “Why isn’t there more of an outrage? Why isn’t there more of a community sense of what the heck is going on? How did this happen? Why is this still occurring? Why hasn’t anything been done?” she asks.

      One company, ANDARKO PETROLEUM, and its subsidiary Kerr-McGee recently paid $1 billion to the Navajo Nation for cleanup and as compensation to people living with the effects of uranium contamination.
      But one-third of the mining companies have shut down or have run out of money. The federal government knew about some of the dangers decades ago, but only started the cleanup in recent years.

      https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/10/473547227/for-the-navajo-nation-uranium-minings-deadly-legacy-lingers

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    • “Horses hold an important place in Navajo cosmology. Leaving the roundup, Grass pulled his truck off the dirt road and cut the engine. A couple of the horses glanced over, swished their tails. “Look at them,” he said. “Their mane is the thunder and their eyes are the stars. They possess the same fundamental right to life as we, the five-fingered ones, do.””

      Lovely. 🙂

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    • How the U.S. Government Is Helping Corporations Plunder Native Land
      SPECIAL INVESTIGATION
      BY STEPHANIE WOODARD, PHOTOS BY JOSEPH ZUMMO

      A 6-month investigation reveals that the federal BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS-tasked with negotiating the best possible deal for Native landowners-often makes it cheap and easy for outside corporations to exploit Native resources. As a result, corporations are able to drill, frack, farm and fell timber on Native lands, paying landowners little in return. Companies like Koch Industries and Walmart, however, reap huge profits.
      THEY ATTACKED MY AUNT LIKE A BUNCH OF COYOTES ATTACKING SHEEP IN A CORRAL,” recalls Navajo tribal member Roberta Tovar. “They were going, ‘Mary, Mary, just go ahead and sign it.’ ”

      The “coyotes” included representatives of Western Refining, a Texas-based oil company. One of the company’s pipelines carries 15,000 barrels of crude a day from oil fields in the Four Corners region to a refinery near Gallup, N.M. On the way, the line crosses a 160-acre plot of Navajo reservation land owned by 88-year-old Mary Tom and dozens of her family members.
      http://inthesetimes.com/features/native-land-plunder-bureau-of-indian-affairs.html

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      • How the U.S. Government Is Helping Corporations Plunder Native Land
        SPECIAL INVESTIGATION
        BY STEPHANIE WOODARD, PHOTOS BY JOSEPH ZUMMO

        The oil company’s representatives weren’t the only “coyotes” in the room that day, says Tovar, Tom’s niece: Also present were officials from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the agency that manages 55 million acres of land the federal government holds in trust for Native owners. Tribes own about 44 million of those acres; individuals like Mary Tom own the rest. The BIA arranges business deals on Native land and is obligated by law to negotiate the best possible terms for landowners like Tom. But In These Times found that instead, the agency appears to make it cheap and easy for outsiders to exploit Native resources.

        At the 2013 luncheon at the El Rancho Hotel, BIA and company officials urged Tom to agree to the renewal, says Tovar. She recalls that a Western Refining employee told Tom she’d “lose out” if she didn’t consent to the deal, while a BIA staffer stroked her arm. Tovar, who is part of a group of family members that has fought the renewal, hadn’t been invited but attended at her aunt’s request. She says she was soon escorted out by a Western Refining representative.

        Speaking through a translator, Tom tells In These Times that she was distressed and confused during the gathering: “Even when we have a meeting in our own language, it’s hard to comprehend the issue. Someone has to explain.”
        http://inthesetimes.com/features/native-land-plunder-bureau-of-indian-affairs.html

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      • I remember a movie named “Thunderheart” a few years ago that did bring up the uranium contamination on a reservation. Reading this article certainly tells a large part of that story and far too many others of what has been done and is being done to the people who were already living here when we immigrants came!!!!!

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  11. Cannot believe that the Navajo Nation would even think of killing these wild horses by letting someone shoot them by obtaining a $10.00 or $5.00 permit…..This is a horrendous plan. Instead of cowboys and Indians chasing each other on horseback, shooting and killing each other in the “old” West, we have progressed to “cowboys and Indians chasing horses, shooting and killing them in the “new West????? Are these people all crazy? If the Navajo Nation feels they have too many wild horses (and/or burros), why aren’t they implementing a humane solution to address their over-population….. This is terribly wrong and needs to be stopped before the first hunt begins……..Is anyone listening????? Please……

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    • Here’s one clue: poverty. Permits won’t resolve that but more intensive management requires resources most simply don’t have. Anybody who holds title to western lands might do some thinking about how that property was obtained, and what it meant to the indigenous peoples of this continent. The Navajos were not alone in being forcibly removed from their ancestral lands, then “relocated” to areas less harmonic with their lifeways, which included horses as they are a horse tribe. Reduced area, desert vegetation, few to no income opportunities, and freely breeding horses. What other result could anyone expect? We could probably help more horses by helping the people, not blaming them yet again for problems rooted in our own past.

      Is there a nationwide adoption effort underway? Any crowdfunding to provide darting training and materials? Any funds to support wild horse based tourism or other income streams on the Navajo reservation?

      Per Capita Income $7,269
      Median Household Income $20,005
      Median Family Income $22,392
      % Individuals Below Poverty Level 42.90
      % Families Below Poverty Level 40.10
      % Families w/Female Householder Below Poverty Level 53.10

      http://navajobusiness.com/fastFacts/demographics.htm

      In 1863 Kit Carson launched a brutal and relentless search-and-destroy campaign against the Navajo people. Under his command, the US Cavalry swept across the Navajo countryside chopping down fruit trees, destroying crops and butchering sheep. Thousands of Navajos were killed, and approximately 8,500 Navajo men, women and children were captured and forced to walk more than 400 miles in the dead of winter to Fort Summer, a barren, 40-square-mile reservation in eastern New Mexico. This became known in Native American history as “The Long Walk.”

      More than 100 years later, Navajo people, or Dineh as they call themselves, once again are being removed from their ancestral homelands; their livestock are being seized, they are being harassed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and denied the right to repair their dwellings or build new homes. Why another forced relocation? The Navajo are once again in the way of westward expansion, this time in the form of energy resources development.

      https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/historical-overview-navajo-relocation

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  14. HOW THE U.S. GOVERNMENT IS HELPING CORPORATIONS PLUNDER NATIVE LAND
    SPECIAL INVESTIGATION
    BY STEPHANIE WOODARD, PHOTOS BY JOSEPH ZUMMO

    Why do Native landowners remain resource rich but cash poor? A big part of the answer has to do with the BIA’s role as a paternalistic landlord. Established in 1824, the agency is tasked with promoting economic opportunity on Native land. The question is, opportunity for whom?

    In a 2009 Nebraska Law Review article, Emory University visiting scholar Brian Sawers provides decades’ worth of figures showing tribal members’ land and products exploited in exchange for tiny percentages of their value on the private market.
    That’s perhaps unsurprising, given the agency’s origins. “The BIA’s perceived mission for many years was to develop Indian-owned resources for the public benefit,” Sawers notes. Despite reforms, the federal agency “has little incentive to bargain hard with potential lessees.”
    http://inthesetimes.com/features/native-land-plunder-bureau-of-indian-affairs.html

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  15. Wow…animals are sacred in Navajo philosophy. You are going against what is right. Stop try to assimilate with the Biliganas and follow tradition.

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  17. HORSES ARE SACRED: A VIEW FROM THE NOHOOKÁ DINE’

    ” This issue of horses is tied to our way of life as Indigenous Peoples so we realize that it’s not only the horses that are threatened but it is also our way of life that is threatened. It is our understanding that the health and future of the horses are intricately tied to our own. That is why we are fighting so hard. We are fighting for our own future generations.”

    Leland Grass is a Dine’ Traditionalist from the Betatakin Canyon area of Arizona, south of Navajo National Monument. He is the youngest Ho’ya’nee’ (vigilant one) for the 12 Traditional Headsmen Council of Nahooká Dine’.

    The following article by Leland offers a perspective concerning what horses mean to the Dine’ and why the Nohooká Dine’ feel horse slaughter is a grievous violation of their culture and tradition.. https://awionline.org/awi-quarterly/2013-fall/horses-are-sacred-view-nohooka-dine

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  18. Trump and the tribes must stop this slaughter of wild horses or I am not going to speak up for the tribes and Bears Ears ! I was happy to hear about the lawsuits . The horse round up gives me reason to p ause . Please reconsider These lands should be the Tribes and it should be left like Onlbama intended . You will loose allies over the horse slaughter .

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  20. This is utterly wrong … such a betrayal of “brother/sister horse” and sign of “moral compass” gone awry! Must be stopped!

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  21. Check out the Indigenous Horse Nation Protector Alliance’s FB page. This group and others including 3H Humans Horses & Herds are holding a march & rally against the “horse hunt” starting at 10 am March 2 at Navajo Veterans Field in Window Rock AZ. So there’s definitely resistance from within the Navajo community. One good approach would be to support & help broaden this effort.

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