Animal Advocates And Indigenous Peoples: Survey Results
This study evaluates and analyzes animal activists’ attitudes toward indigenous peoples, their use of animals, and the animal advocacy movement’s interactions with them. Equal numbers of animal advocates are sympathetic and unsympathetic toward the indigenous rights movement, possibly due to previous disputes with indigenous people over hunting and trapping.
The majority of respondents are opposed to the use of animals by indigenous people for any purpose other than survival. 15.5% felt that killing was acceptable for survival and a smaller percentage felt that it was acceptable for money or “cultural survival.” Respondent animal advocates, through comments, seemed to indicate that they felt it was acceptable to kill animals for survival, although there were also indications that many felt the global availability of non-animal products made it no longer necessary.
82.8% of respondents agreed that the animal advocacy movement should try to prevent the “exploitation” of animals by indigenous people, but 60% felt that it is the responsibility of advocates to assess the impact of these actions on indigenous people.
Advocates feel that acceptable alternatives to animal exploitation include plant-based agriculture (77.8%), importation of goods (68.8%), tourism (65%), college education (56.6%), and wage labor (51.3%). 38.1% of respondents favored asking indigenous people to migrate from areas where use of animals is necessary, while encouragement of welfare dependency in lieu of killing animals was acceptable by 8.8%.
17% of respondents have participated in a protest directed at the use of animals by indigenous people.
79.9% of respondents would discourage indigenous people from using animals if they could.
53% of respondents consider themselves “somewhat” or “very” informed about interactions between animal advocates and indigenous people.
55.3% of respondents said that western culture has had a “completely” or “mostly” negative impact on indigenous people, while 11.2% believe that animal advocacy has had the same effect.