"Colonialism and capitalism travel together," Hughes adds. "To benefit from and encourage the kind of economic success this company had processing bison bones, [which] were the byproduct of the sometimes-violent tactics of American settler colonial expansion, was to benefit from – and participate in – colonial projects that stripped Indigenous peoples of land, nationhood, and culture.
"This photo is [surely, "just" should be added here !] not a bracing reminder of the harms of colonial pasts. It is an indictment on commercial consumption practices that obscure the material and ethical conditions that make luxuries like refined sugar readily available and seemingly benign."
Killing bison was also part of military campaigns that used resource deprivation as a tactical move.
It has been well documented that Western army officials sent soldiers to kill bison as a way of depleting Native American resources during the colonisation of the US. An analysis by historian Robert Wooster in his book The Military and United States Indian Policy acknowledges that General Phillip Sheridan, an army officer responsible for the "Total War" strategy against Southern Plains tribes,"recognised that eliminating the buffalo might be the best way to force Indians to change their nomadic habits".
Sheridan was recorded telling legislators who were trying to pass laws to protect the dwindling herds: "[Hunters] are destroying the Indians' commissary. And it is a well known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage…for a lasting peace, let them kill, skin and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated."
#Nature
#Poltics
#YouUtterBastards
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241203-the-bison-skulls-photo-revealing-americas-dark-history
