by Blake Herzog
Museum of Indigenous People Executive Director Manuel Lucero was working to come up with fresh exhibit ideas a few years ago when an encounter with some of the nonhuman inhabitants of a tribal reservation inspired the museum’s current featured exhibit.
“I was coming out of ceremony when I was walking out of the camp area, the ceremonial area, to the end of this dirt road, because most of them are on the rez,” Lucero says. “Then out of the desert comes this pack of about six rez (reservation) dogs, and they were chasing me.”
Lucero says, “And I’m reiterating the story to the staff and volunteers, and everyone’s kind of getting a chuckle out of it, and we said, let’s do an exhibit about dogs on the reservation.”
As the Rez Dogz exhibit’s placards, photos and documents explain, canines and human lives have been intertwined for thousands of years, and indigenous people are no exception. They depend on dogs for herding, hunting and protection. But after reservations were created by the U.S. government, in many cases dogs’ reproduction spiraled beyond people’s ability to control or care for the population.
Starting generations ago, some packs broke away from civilization to live in the wild.
These dogs, separate from those that continued as workers or pets, learned to see people not as friends but competitors or even prey, especially after the land has been depleted of other resources by the sheer numbers of them trying to survive. Diseases run rampant, and many of the puppies born under these conditions don’t make it to adulthood.
“The more we dug into it, the bigger the story got, so to speak,” Lucero says. “And we also wanted to look at what organizations there were providing relief to these problems — overpopulation, these violent attacks by these wild dogs that are roaming any reservation in the USA. It got to the point where we had more material than we had walls to display it on.”
Smaller reservations like the Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe’s 1,500-acre tract of land adjacent to the City of Prescott usually don’t have the same number of problematic rez dogs, Lucero says: “Most of the rez dogs running around there belong to somebody, they’re just not on a leash in their yard, and they run around and give the javelinas a hard time. Here in Prescott we really don’t have the same amount of problems as maybe, the Navajo Nation.”
The Navajo reservation, which mainly lies in northeastern Arizona, is the nation’s largest by land area at 27,000 square miles, and is home to an estimated 200,000 stray animals, outnumbering the estimated human population of 175,000. Tribal officials have adopted strengthened ordinances and programs to curb rez dog problems as well, but they and the nonprofits both contend with underfunding.
The animal welfare groups featured in the Museum of Indigenous People exhibit are dedicated to helping the Navajo and other Arizona tribes manage the overpopulation issue through sterilization, along with adopting out eligible dogs and puppies. Each has a QR code so viewers can learn more about how they can help.
“Like people, dogs can have trauma and not be good boys and girls, as it were, but dogs have a tendency to live in the now, and once they come to love you, they’ll love you forever, for the rest of their lives,” Lucero says. “More often than not, they’re a good addition to anyone’s household.”
The exhibit includes a corkboard filled with notes left by visitors who have adopted rez dogs, about where their pet came from and what they have meant to their family. “Hazel’s” owner wrote: “We rescued her @ 12 weeks old. She is the very best dog and loves her family fiercely.”
The Museum of Indigenous People’s Rez Dogz exhibit will be on display at the center of the museum through the end of this year. The museum is at 147 N. Arizona Ave. in Prescott and is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Saturday.
