For nearly two centuries, elephants worldwide have been held captive until death in circuses, zoos, and tourist attractions, their names and histories unknown to most or long forgotten. In the near future, we will be sharing some of their stories here so they are not lost to time and memory but commemorated for their endurance, courage, and indomitable spirits.
These remarkable beings have been reduced to props for birthday parties, forced to perform for crowds, and left to pace behind barriers for the amusement of visitors - with hundreds of them dying in North America alone. Many lived and died unnamed, unremembered, and unseen—their individuality erased, their suffering ignored.
Yet each one of them had a personality, a history, and a mother who loved them. They were torn from wild lands or born into confinement, and spent their entire lives as background characters in someone else’s entertainment.
Many were captured as babies in Asia and Africa, torn from their mothers and families, and shipped to zoos and circuses in countries around the world. If they landed in a circus, they were brutally beaten to perform, chained day and night, hauled for days in trucks or trains, and plagued with contagious diseases from their close confinement. In zoos, they languished for years in tiny zoo yards, their bodies and spirits broken from the lack of stimulation or opportunity to express their wild natures. If they were born in captivity, they never had even one day of freedom unless they were miraculously rescued to sanctuary.
On this page, we will begin to share their stories—not as exhibits, but as individuals. We will name them, remember them, and honor their courage, resilience, and the pieces of themselves that captivity could never take. Until every elephant is free, none should be forgotten.
We imagine these majestic but forgotten elephants, now in the spirit world, roaming wild and free on the vast savannas and forests of their ancestral lands of Africa and Asia. We continue to work to win freedom for all elephants before they perish from Earth.
This page is for them.
Soon, their stories will be told.
