Newkirk's biography and inspirations
Ingrid Newkirk was born in 1949, in Surrey, England, but moved to New Delhi, India when she was 7 years old.
My mother had always worked for human charities as a volunteer, and so our home was always full of people in need and she always opened our house, too, to animals in need. She used to say it doesn’t matter who suffers, but how.
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I was always drawn to animals in trouble, partially because I grew up in India where the suffering of animals is very apparent. There are starving dogs on the street, and there are overloaded beasts of burden everywhere you look. -Ingrid Newkirk
"It was in India that Newkirk saw locals stuffing a dog’s mouth with mud and laughing as they watched it drowning. “I asked my servant to get it for me. The dog died in my arms,” she says. “That was a turning point.”" (Glass, 2008)
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Her experiences in India exposed Newkirk to the suffering of other living beings. She understood how important it was to give a voice to creatures who could not speak up for themselves.
"In 1972...[Newkirk's] next-door neighbor moved away and abandoned nearly a dozen cats. She looked in the Yellow Pages for the address of the nearest animal shelter, then gathered up the cats and drove over. 'When [Newkirk] arrived at the shelter, the woman said, 'Come in the back and we will just put them down there.' Newkirk was born in England and reared mostly in India. She had only recently moved to the United States, and the phrase "put them down" meant nothing to her..." (Specter, 2003)
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"'I just snapped when I heard those kittens were dead,' Newkirk [said]. 'The place was a junk heap in the middle of nowhere. It couldn't have been more horrible. For some reason, and even now I don't know what it was, I decided I needed to do something about it.'"
(Specter, 2003) |
Newkirk adopted the vegan lifestyle and personally participates in protests and campaigns.
In this photo, Newkirk allows herself to be force fed like the ducks that are specially fattened for the French dish, foie gras, to reveal the unethical treatment of these animals. |