Killing Dogs, Loving Dogs: Settler-Colonialism, Indigenous Communities, & Human-Canine Relationships in Greater Amazonia & the Circum-Caribbean

Since 1492, dogs have been (and remain) one of the most effective and brutal warfare technologies used by Europeans and settler-colonists against Native peoples in the Americas. At the same time, in the early colonial period, Europeans traded dogs to Native allies, some of whom already raised dogs, and some of whom did not. Focusing on dogs and their people in the Circum-Caribbean and Greater Amazonia, this lecture explores two broad questions: What does the history of human-animal relationships reveal about settler-colonial and indigenous communities in the early modern Americas? And what do colonial histories reveal about humans’ entanglements with other animals?

Marcy Norton (George Washington University), National Endowment for the Humanities/InterAmericas Fellow