the most heartbreaking irony is that horses arenāt native to north america, are in fact super terrible for the environment, and should under no circumstances be allowed to roam āfreeā in ways that actively displace native wildlife and strip land.
likeā¦ frame the allegory in capitalist terms (horses were good for industrialized and agricultural labor, served in wars that were based on land acquisition, and to this day remain a status symbol for wealth and are put in competition with one another in shows and races then discarded once they can no longer win) and sure, that there is a story about PoC in america, in general, likely slaves who were, yes, brought over / displaced from their original continent.
but n. amer. tribal people are going to be the first to tell you how bad horses are for the environment, how expensive they are to keep in terms of land use and resources / care and feeding, AND how crazy delicate horses are compared to other, sturdier pack-bearing animals, like oxen or burrow (who suffered the same fate as wild horses, but werenāt as lastingly culturally popular / didnāt make the cut to status symbols for the upper class white people post-industrial use).
just a terrible, sour irony. the movie about native oppression uses an invasive animal because buffalo were too ethnic.
you know what the buffalo did when whites tried to domesticate them? fought and died. until the ruling classes voted to give them some land, to prevent the extinction of āzoologically fascinating creaturesā.
you know what native americans did when whites tried to enslave them? fought and died. until the ruling classes voted to give them some land, to prevent the extinction of āanthropologically fascinating creaturesā.
like bruh. can cartoons stop lying to kids, please? homeboy was probably going to steal that horse so he could trade it to a colonizer for some food, since his tribe would have been cut off from the summer harvest lands / fishing rivers theyād travel to each year. borders were kept by violence, farming and ranching land shot ātrespassersā, and cultural āintegrationā of native peoples in any official sense didnāt start until long after those wars were fought and settled, ā and that integration happened alongside the same efforts aimed at black peoples, because the two were considered the same kind of half-man, even if the natives were too āwildā to 'domesticateā.
I mean, if you compare the history of horses in n. amer. to the history of black people in n. amer., the comparison is a LOT stronger than that which happened to the tribal peoples. might make better sense, too, when you take into account the historical role that tribal americans played in opposing slavery and helping black escapees.
iām just saying. horses donāt belong in the n. amer. wild; itās not safe for them and itās not good for the environment, and this movie fails to actually lend any kind of representation or voice to the oppressed peoples at the time, except maybe for the horses ā they shouldnāt have been made to go to war, thatās fucked up.
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