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CASS LAKE, Minnesota (AP) – Animal neglect used to be such an issue on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota because basic services like sterilization were out of reach for many due to poverty and seclusion that packs of stray dogs sometimes brought up traffic the main street to stand.
Today strays are rare. Children help their elders with animal rescues, pet food and supplies are routinely distributed throughout the community, and the first veterinary clinic in the capital, Cass Lake, is one final permit away from the groundbreaking ceremony.
This is all thanks to a long and increasingly organized push by several community members to improve animal welfare, which is deeply rooted in cultural and spiritual values relating to the relationship of the Ojibwe people with all living beings.
“It helps animals, but it also upsets people,” said Rick Haaland, who led the effort among his compatriots in Ojibwe as Community Outreach Manager at Leech Lake Tribal Police. “Our pets are the ones who walk with us.”
Animals are central to Ojibwe’s beliefs and stories of sacred origin.
According to one that, according to tradition, can only be related when snow covered the northern lands, the Creator asked primitive man and his wolf to travel the earth together, and on their journey they came as close as brothers. When their task was completed, the Creator told them to part ways, even though they would both be “feared, respected and misunderstood” by the people who later joined them on earth.
Since dogs are the relatives of the wolf, history teaches, they should be brothers of today’s aborigines, although they are separately honored.
So things like promoting pet care and providing much-needed veterinary services in the reserve nestled between forests and lakes reinforce the Creator’s intentions for harmony between humans and animals – a value that some say has faded over the years.
“Traditionally, we were told to be grateful to the animals. Cats and dogs have chosen to be with us and comfort us. But since we became assimilated and fell into deep poverty, our stories were not told. People have forgotten we need to take care of them, ”said Elaine Fleming, who started saving animals 10 years ago after holding a ceremony of prayers, chants and drums for them.
“We’re taking our culture back,” added Fleming, an elder in the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and a teacher at Leech Lake Tribal College.
Nearly 40% of the population of Leech Lake live in poverty, which makes it difficult to afford routine spay and neutering, let alone emergency care, which can cost hundreds of dollars per operation.
This meant that all too often injured animals died or were abandoned, as well as litters of puppies and kittens that no one could afford to care for.
Things started to turn around a decade ago when the Twin Cities-based nonprofit Leech Lake Legacy began taking abandoned animals – more than 9,000 to date – for adoption elsewhere and regularly moving a mobile clinic to the reservation for low-cost veterinary visits bring services.
The pandemic has caused a setback as care, especially spaying and neutering, was suspended for several months in 2020, according to Leech Lake Legacy founder Jenny Fitzer, and now it’s a scramble to get back on track.
“I can’t imagine when we can catch up,” she said, adding that there are more than 400 animals on her waiting list and may not be repaired for a year.
But a game changer for Leech Lake will be the permanent veterinary clinic, which Haaland hopes to start building before the winter frost and open its doors in spring, supported by national animal welfare organizations and local fundraising. A vet living right on the reservation would not only handle routine sterilizations, but also handle emergencies – it currently costs $ 500 just to bring a doctor to Cass Lake after hours, according to Haaland.
He envisions running informational displays in the waiting room that build on awareness programs the community is already doing on best practices like leashes and restraints to keep pets away from harm.
“I don’t think people care,” said Haaland, who owns three dogs and a cat. “It’s education. This is our way out. ”
In the meantime, Haaland has rescued abandoned pets and has taken injured animals to vets far away. With $ 115,000 this year, he was also able to work full-time in animal care thanks to the scholarship.
Pets for Life national director Rachel Thompson said communities from Louisiana to Alaska are facing the same challenge: structural inequalities that perpetuate poverty make pet care out of reach.
At the end of a day rescuing a cat, two kittens, and two ten-week-old golden-haired puppies, Haaland pulled up pictures on his cell phone of a pit bull stuck with hundreds of porcupine quills and requiring months of surgery and treatment, donated by a veterinary college. Fights with porcupines can kill dogs that are improperly housed, leashed, and trained.
The yard where Haaland found the pit bull was littered with trash, so Haaland offered to help the owners clean up before the dog was brought back. When he and other members of the tribe arrived early one morning, most of the work had already been done by the family.
“They wanted to do better,” he says. “We are a proud people who have the chance to get over the trauma of the past.”
Erik Redix, a scholar in the history of Ojibwe and a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe, said that “animals have spirits, just like us,” and their neglect is both a violation of the spiritual need to treat all living things well as well as a symptom of wider social hardship in impoverished Native American countries.
So animal care revivals like the one at Leech Lake are also reviving Ojibwe society, he added – “to get us back where we should be.”
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Associated Press religious coverage is supported by the Lilly Foundation through The Conversation US. AP is solely responsible for this content.
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