On Indigenous People and Animals

Rafeal Widad,
I'm fairly sure you're not a regular reader of this blog. Perhaps you've never read it at all. Otherwise you wouldn't be asking that question.

Rafeal,

*I* don’t have to be consistent to level a criticism against an illogical or poorly reasoned argument: the reasoning remains valid (e.g., you are inconsistent if you believe both X and Y) even if I, myself, am a complete hypocrite, or make bad arguments. Nor do I have to be "perfect", for the same reason. By your reasoning, social progress would be quite literally impossible. Indeed, working through our own inconsistencies, and helping others to do the same, seems to be essentially good; a good definition of "reason", perhaps.

I'm new to your blog, and thanks very much for a very thoughtful and provocative post. I too have been struck by the cynical co-opting of spiritual structures developed over centuries by cultures with efficient, thoughtful hunt-based economies, by people who are simply chomping down on factory meat and stealing this stuff in a bogus attempt to justify their habits. Not only is this morally and spiritually bankrupt, it is a thoughtless insult to people who wrestled with genuine moral conundrums and integrated their solutions with a carefully considered eco-theology. If you're buying hamburger at the supermarket, this has nothing to do with you, asshat! And, even if you're eating happy meat or hunting with a rifle, you better find some other way of justifying your choices. Thanks again – I'm now a fan, and grateful to Google Reader for pointing me here.

I swore I saw this posted awhile ago…I'm glad it's new because it gives me the opportunity to make this comment and have others see it. To add even more insult to the "The Native Americans prayed for them, why can't I?" excuse, it has been known that the consumption of animals was a European influence. Another excuse I get from people is "veganism is new, there were no vegans back then!" which is false because the term "vegan" was coined in 1944, meaning that vegans were the "vegetarians" and the "Pythagoreans" back then. Some vegetarians did consume animal secretions but many others followed a plant based diet.

Dear Mary Martin, what a great post! I am an AR blogger who tried to write these thoughts recently and was frustrated in the process. Your efforts here capture it well and helps me renew my effort.

Writing it down was difficult for me because I truly believe in justice for indigenous peoples, who have been historically wronged (and still are in many cases such as open-pit mining).

So it was hard for me to deconstruct the way in which their traditional respect for and co-existence with nature – with the context of survival – has been co-opted to excuse meat-eating in an industrial culture, especially by some non-natives.

But this last year I'd heard two statements from non-natives that they eat animals out of "respect" like indigenous people and that the soul of the animal willingly gave itself to them, after they prayed, and one guy actually said they are his "brothers and sisters." This is so wrong it just begs to be refuted. You have done a good job doing it, in a short space.

The people doing this live middle-class lives. They are not poor. They are certainly not starving to death in the wilderness. They can easily eat a plant-based diet and be healthy doing so. But they want to eat animals, because the like the taste of it. That is the reality, no matter the rhetoric they use.

I believe they actually believe what they're saying, in a dogmatic way, on some level, but on the unconscious level they know it's wrong, so they justify it with Aboriginal religion.. This creates a split in them, psychically — a cognitive dissonance — that culminates in hatred for those who expose it — the vegans and animal rights activists. That is why they are defensive about it and call AR activists racists.

No animal wants to die to become another animal's meal. And for these people to use indigenous culture – which was based on _subsistence hunting_ to excuse selfish desires – is just wrong.

It's really about power, not justice – power over animals, power over other people. And it's also ironic – this charge of racism – because speciesism is the moral equivalent of racism, so essentially, by indulging in speciesism they are prejudiced against those who look different than them, thinking of them as inferior and expendable. This is the real racism.

I also think that the non-natives who use this excuse are corrupting an article of Aboriginal religions by shaping it justify their self-interest in a context quite outside its origin. They do indigenous peoples and religions more harm that AR activists do, in this respect. It is exactly the same as the use of Christianity – another religion – to justify self-interest among some of its practitioners. Not all Christinity is used this way – much of it is very valuable and conveys a good message of love and forgiveness – but that aspect of it where the practitioner uses it to mask an evil deed behind the cloak of righteousness is a big problem. This is hypocrisy and abuse of power. Here we seem the same: the USE of First Nations religion, which arose in the context of survival, to disguise a morally wrong act as a good one because native people do it. And the attack on those who expose this evil as racists, which is the modern equivalent of heretic or non-believer, and carries with the price of social ostracization.

Anyway, I could not find the right words to express my concern for animals who do not need to be killed to make meals for these folks. Thank you to Mary Martin for saying what I wanted to say and what needed to be said!

Liz, in wilderness areas, animal populations manage quite nicely without human intervention. Even in suburban areas, there is wide disagreement on what constitutes deer "overpopulation."

Humans are the only species that populates out of control. I don't imagine you're in favor of a "balance" that lets us "cull" some humans, and use all their body parts. That's because you respect human indivduals' lives. Please show the same respect for nonhumans; they enjoy their lives and want to live just as much as humans do. I say this not as a "gotcha" but as a heartfelt plea.

But for lack of funding and lack of will, there are nonviolent deer population management methods that will work just fine. Anyone who loves animals should advocate for those as strongly as possible. (Note: At one time trap-neuter-return was pooh-poohed as a feral cat management strategy; now it is widely used by municipalities and businesses throughout the world. Where there's a will, there's a way.)

If you're concerned about habitat and species preservation worldwide, one of the best things you can do is go vegan. If you consume no other animal products other than deer you kill, you're almost there.

Our "balance" should be to strive to act with compassion and empathy, and to refrain from inflicting avoidable harm.