a meeting with White Feather...

i recently had a meeting with one of my elders White Feather, a respected and beloved Blackfoot medicine man, and posed some questons to him about many wild horse issues on a day when my heart was heavy. what he said rocked my world and i'm still thinking on it. when i mentioned the many attemps that folks are making to save the horses he asked me "what makes you think they want to be saved? do you not understand that the wild ones are perfectly capable of making the decision to stay or leave themselves? do you not understand that they have and have always had other, better, realms to live in? perhaps this is where they have chosen to depart to and they are letting the evil hand of man deliver them there". i started to cry when he said this and he reminded me again that what happens to them may truly be of their choosing because life here for them has been tragic and hard. he reminded me of a tribe of people in australia we had talked about years ago who had consiously decided as a tribe, to die out, go away, cease to grow, because things in the world had become too painful and foreign  for them. and, he reminded me too that we keep imposing what we think is good for animals upon them and that this is not a noble thing it is a weakness that humans have. thinking that they know what is best for another, especialy an animal. he asked me "how can you tell your horse is happy?" i said i look at his face, his expression, body language etc. and, i ask him. he said "yes, good. and does that decide your opinion about whether he's happy or not?" i said that yes for the most part it does. he then said that very few people truly have the ability to hear their horses and that many think they do and make up rules and ways of treating them based upon false readings. when i asked him how one gets better at it he said that it is given gift. not something that can be bought or read or learned only given or inherited through blood. when i asked him if the fight by man to save them is futile he said "in the long run... yes. but it puts good medicine in the air and it makes us silly two-leggeds feel better. nothing wrong with that." he smiled and wiped away my tears...