The current issue of the Umatilla Tribe’s newspaper implores Congress to recognize what’s happening on tribal lands. Not funding horse inspectors “resulted in widespread starvation, neglect, abandonment, and unnecessary suffering of the horse, especially in Indian Country,” wrote the newspaper’s editor.

Robert Redford has proclaimed that “Horse slaughter has no place in our culture.” The actor forgets that there used to be horse slaughter houses in America. And at race tracks and horse ranches around America horses are slaughtered when they break legs. While horse meat is not an American diet preference, it is in other countries.

It is possible to maintain a romantic image of the horse and also be a realist about the kind of deprivation that is apparent on public and tribal lands because of horse abandonment.