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09/15/2005: "SLAVERY AND FORCED LABOR ALIVE AND KICKING IN SPOKANE"

Man, you gotta love a headline like that. PETA explains why they picked Spokane.

The huge walk-through exhibit juxtaposes images of once-accepted acts of cruelty to humans with images of present-day cruelty to animals. Why Spokane? Because just as it is still considered acceptable for circuses to remove elephants and other animals from their families and beat them for exhibiting natural behaviors, it was once thought acceptable to remove Native American children from their families and "educate" them in boarding schools—including the Fort Spokane Indian School—where they suffered severe punishment for speaking their native languages:

The exhibit reminds observers that not long ago, it wasn’t just other animals who were persecuted because they were deemed inferior. The display includes images of slaves who were chained, beaten, branded, and forcibly separated from their families; Native Americans who were evicted from their ancestral lands; women who fought for the right not to be treated as their husbands’ property; and children forced to work long hours in dangerous and unhealthy conditions.