Native communities are diverse and have responded in different ways to rez dogs. Many native communities have their own law enforcement and/or animal care and control services tasked with investigating potential harm and/or enforcing the communities’ animal bylaws, which may permit free-roaming dogs or not. Understanding these truths, and working for reconciliation and healing, is difficult but necessary. Decades of these patterns have created widespread and intergenerational trauma with psychological, social, and economic symptoms as well as mistrust.

The children experienced harsh treatment, abuse, and disease, and many died. Native children have been taken into state systems or religious residential schools designed to assimilate and destroy Indigenous cultures and spirits. This has not only happened with dogs but also with children. “Today, we offer veterinary services, culturally relevant education, and real-life solutions for communities that would otherwise not have them.” Dialogue and relationship building must come first, particularly because of the longer pattern of outsiders telling native people that they can’t take care of their own. With its successful Northern Dogs project, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, for example, built relationships with First Nations to better understand challenges before co-developing programs to address issues facing the communities. Other animal organizations have been invited into native communities (usually called First Nations or Indigenous communities in Canada) to exchange knowledge. These organizations have proceeded in a range of ways: Some have stolen the dogs right off the land, while others have reached out to leaders in these communities to offer assistance by bringing veterinary services, food, and other supplies, or rehoming the dogs outside the community. If they are sick, it is because we are also sick.”Īlthough unknown to many outside native communities, rez dogs have attracted the attention of some animal protection groups concerned about their health and safety, especially those in regions with harsher climates. “The condition of dogs in our communities is a reflection of us. If they are sick, it is because we are also sick.” Many other Indigenous people who work with animals make a similar argument. “I want to know their stories: How did they get to where they are today? How did they survive? What happened to their babies, their parents, their friends, and their culture? What do they dream about? What hopes do they have for the future? What can they tell us about the fate of the human race and the planet?” He says that the lives of rez dogs cannot be uncoupled from human-human relationships, and particularly from the impacts of European arrival on native ways of living, learning, and honoring fellow creatures, including dogs. Michael Yellow Bird, dean of social work at the University of Manitoba and member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation in North Dakota. “Whenever I visit tribal communities, I am always on the lookout for my relatives, the rez dogs,” writes Dr.

This article is excerpted from Kendra Coulter’s book “ Defending Animals: Finding Hope on the Front Lines of Animal Protection“

Intergenerational trauma dogs