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 Suffering
in the Wild: The Fur Industry and Indigenous Trappers
"The fur trade is the most insidious source of prejudice
against native peoples. The Fur Institute of Canada and the government
drag token Indians all over Europe to get support for the white fashion
and fur industry as if natives were some sort of noble gods. In contrast,
back at home, they cut education programs that could get natives out
of subsistence jobs like fur trapping."
—Paul Hollingsworth, founder Native/Animal Brotherhood
After a decade of lackluster sales and plummeting profits, the fur
industry is shamelessly attempting to justify its bloody trade by
claiming to care about indigenous people.
The fur wars of the 1970s and 1980s permanently linked fur, in the
minds of consumers, with the barbaric cruelty of steel-jawed traps
and the hideous cramped confinement of cage-raised furbearers. With
increasing numbers of compassionate people turning their backs on
cruelty, the fur industry now alleges to support the traditional trapping
lifestyle of aboriginal people. While some indigenous cultures have
trapped animals for sustenance, killing animals for the sake of fashion
and vanity is irreconcilable with indigenous philosophies of respect
for the land and the animals.
The Native/Animal Brotherhood notes that the fur industry is anti-traditional
and that the fur industry was a primary force behind the historical
subjugation of native peoples. Paul Hollingsworth, founder of the
Native/Animal Brotherhood states: "For 300 years the native people
have been tools of the fur trade. The fur trade took our land, our
culture, and our animal brothers. Once we were one with Mother Earth
and all her creatures. It's time we listened to the animals' voices
instead of trading in their blood.”
According to Statistics Canada, only 3% of all fur available for sale
in North America comes from native trapping. Making an average of
$225 per year from the sale of animal skins, aboriginal trappers are
paid a pittance for doing the dirty, exhausting, bloody work of an
industry that cares nothing about the indigenous people and even less
about the animals. While the fur industry claims that aboriginal survival
depends on trapping and the sale of fur, clearly, the continuation
of trapping as the sole source of income will keep aboriginal people
below even subsistence-level incomes.
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