“How could anyone have so much hate?” Lori Abdo-Smith says as she shakes her head in dismay. Abdo-Smith, Yankton Sioux Tribe, was describing the shootings of five of her horses by a non-Native neighbor, Raymond Johanneson. Between sobs, she recalls what happened that July day when four of her beloved horses—or sunkan wakan (holy dogs) in the Dakota language—were killed because they had escaped from their pen and wandered onto a neighbor’s land. Four of the horses died; one survived but has a bullet lodged in its abdomen. “Some of them weren’t even on his land when he shot them!” Abdo-Smith says through tears. The body of one horse was found in the ditch less than 200 yards from her home, and according to a neighbor who helped carry away the animal’s corpse said there were tire tracks leading up to the body, which strongly suggests the animal was chased and killed deliberately.Get the Story:
Mary Annette Pember: 'How Could Anyone Have So Much Hate?' New Kind of Range War in So. Dakota (Indian Country Today 9/16)
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