Red Meat Republic
The expansion of cattle ranches across Turtle Island was anything but an inevitable result of technology and progress and was not a restoration of the natural way of things. The expansion of industrial meat production was driven by the self-interest of meatpacking plant owners, cattle ranchers, and other corporate owners who would benefit from industrial food production.
Before the industrialization of meat production, a different transformation first took place, a transformation of genocidal proportions. Cattle ranching in the west would serve as a justification to steal even more Indigenous land and further cattle ranchers would directly collaborate with the US military supplying them food, accompanying the military on raids, and organizing army expeditions.
The profits that accompanied cattle ranching encouraged further settlement on Indigenous land and replaced the natural system of relations between Indigenous persons and Bison with uniform monoculture cattle ranches.