Anonymous jt777 7w

It’s very easy to bulk up on simple things like beans rice and tofu with a lot of seasonings. That’s been the staple for many indigenous societies for thousands of years

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Anonymous jt777 7w

Lentils, avocadoes, olive oil, cashews, nuts are all great fat sources

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Nuh uh. Where im from people are subsistence hunters/fishers. Deer are overpopulated in my area and in being stewards it is our responsibility to help manage populations while building back predator balance. Further, shellfish farming in my area necessitates stewardship and promotes healthy waters! Go pick some oysters and read a book, respectfully (except jk now is not a good time of year)

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Anonymous #2 7w

Further, its very important for stewardship, community wellbeing, and tribal sovereignty for Coast Salish meat eating practices to stay alive. Salmon, shellfish, and elk (among others) are important first foods in which reduced access implies environmental degradation and adverse health outcomes.

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Anonymous #2 7w

Also also believe it or not but where i am veganism is prohibitively expensive compared to meat diets and requires significantly more resources to get out there

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Anonymous #2 7w

The people defending this by bringing up indigenous people comes off as very disrespectful and “noble savage” type tropes. We live in a world where we have the ability to sustain ourselves without killing animals. The ecosystems were also balanced before humans showed up and killed off natural predators.

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Anonymous #2 7w

It’s also obtuse to bring up subsistence hunters when in this country outside of places like Alaska that is a very small percentage of people. The vast majority of people live in proximity to some sort of store that has basics in bulk such as beans+rice.

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Anonymous OP 7w

Im not invoking noble savage tropes i work in food sovereignty and tribal community health. There are much worse settler colonial implications to implying native communities do not need to be connected to first foods. We are active agents in the ecosystem and the "killing animals is unnecessary or unethical" places a settler dichotomy of humans v nature. To move towards sustainable stewardship we must not see ourselves as uniquely held to different ethical standards of meat eating in general

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Anonymous OP 7w

Its not obtuse if its my cultural background. Mainland united states. Its significantly more common than youd expect to rely on subsistence hunting for food, especially for those rural communities which struggle with food insecurity. Hunting and fishing can be community-based rituals of food resilience when poverty and access are limited. Obv im against factory farming but the "anyone can go vegan" rhetoric is reductive

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Anonymous #2 7w

How is it colonial to recognize animals are sentient beings that do not want to be killed full stop if we have the ability to sustain ourselves with foraging and agriculture then it is unethical to kill other sentient beings. For most of history including our native ancestors it was necessary because we did not have that ability. But societies change over time. Natural predators still do not have that ability. We should be working towards an equitable society for ALL sentient beings

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Anonymous #2 7w

There are many other indigenous traditions that we have foregone because we have recognized that they are oppressive. Societies change

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Anonymous #2 7w

If a community still has no access to food and has to resort to old ways of killing then that’s a failure of our capitalist system and instead of normalizing that killing we should work towards improving their conditions. Subsistence hunters and fishers wouldn’t have to kill animals to survive

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Anonymous OP 7w

Its colonial to push the "killing" animals rhetoric, that is a notorious argument used to deprive indigenous nations from their treaty rights and necessary practices. Id check out les beldo's chasing leviathan ab the makah whaling conflict or check out Swinomish's indigenous health indicators to learn more. If you saw our animal neighbors as true equals youd see importance of not distinguishing the ethicality human meat eating and animal meat eating. It can be a reciprocal relationship.

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Anonymous OP 7w

Oookay now youre being racist

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Anonymous #2 7w

I’m not being racist at all where did you get that from??? Every single culture has practices considered oppressive it’s not racist at all to point that out. Our own society is particularly egregious at many things the mass murder of animals just being one.

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Anonymous #2 7w

Practices like the murder of sentient beings wouldn’t be necessary if these communities weren’t discriminated against and economically disadvantaged in the first place by those same treaties.

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Anonymous #2 7w

There are so many other cultural and natural practices that communities have that don’t involve hunting or death

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Anonymous OP 7w

By saying that indigenous access to first foods should be left in the past?? I dont disagree about everything but specifically that rhetoric is a primary force of settler colonialism to destroy native culture via dispossessing them from first foods. Its not "old ways" that were abandoned because theyre antiquated it is because of genocide

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Anonymous OP 7w

And again. It isnt murder. Consider that there are ways of knowing that arent your own. Im not sure you understand how important salmon is to Coast Salish community health and more broadly Salish Sea ecology. Id learn up ab the fish wars. Its okay to not be familiar with the history but your ignorance is perpetuating settler colonial logics.

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Anonymous #2 7w

An animal being alive or not alive is a pretty straight forward and universal boundary. No animal wants its life taken whether by predators or by humans. Humans however have other food sources now the world has changed whether we like it or not!! We no longer need to cause suffering to other living beings anymore.

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Anonymous #2 7w

It’s not colonialism to point out if a cultural practice that is genuinely oppressive. Again there are so many oppressive practices amongst our own species involving gender race and other artificially created difference that have slowly gone away. Human sacrifice was once accepted in many societies all over the world at one point. For example europeans would burn women for being witches as a cultural practice

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Anonymous #2 7w

Of course there are many different ways to interpret the natural world other than our own but a constant is that the animals simply do not want to die. Our ways are violating their rights

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Anonymous OP 7w

Again thats just your perspective, which is pretty biased. Do you think omnivores who dont need it shouldnt eat meat? Many Coast Salish cosmologies see salmon as another family, and there is great respect taken in getting permission to fish and the reciprocity involved in eating them. There is nothing objectively or universally unethical about eating meat, you are applying a biased mindset to what you think others should think and behave to the extent that youre using genocide-enabling rhetoric

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Anonymous OP 7w

Hunting is not oppressive unless you believe there is an inherent hierarchy between humans and other beings and that a reciprocal and respect-based relationship is impossible

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Anonymous OP 7w

We don’t live in a world where we have the ability to sustain ourselves without killing animals. Plant-centered agriculture kills tons of animals. The pesticides kill insects and fish. The mechanical harvesting process kills birds and mammals. The transport of agricultural products by plane and truck contributes to climate change. I would argue it’s likely that eating locally harvested deer probably kills less animals than relying on industrially grown soy.

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Anonymous #5 7w

Further, the influence we have had on ecosystems requires the direct killing of animals either way. The spread of our suburbs has displaced wolves and other predators. *Something* needs to kill those deer. The same goes for invasive species. Either we kill them, or we allow greater environmental damage to occur.

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Anonymous #5 7w

Now I don’t like killing animals. I am extremely empathetic. I even avoid killing fish and insects whenever possible. I would like to live in a world where that was not necessary. I don’t hunt myself, and I barely ever fish. I do not feel that the death of an animal would be worth whatever enjoyment I might get out of it. But we don’t live in a world where we can avoid killing animals entirely.

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Anonymous #4 7w

Not to mention often dairy/beef cattle byproducts are necessary for organic farming and land is often rotated between cattle and vegetable land which is necessary for sustainable soil health

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Anonymous OP 7w

Homie really needs to look up the practice of reciprocity and respect of the harvest and food sovereignty in Native culture before going and making assumptions one the ways people eat and harvest

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Anonymous thunbriaralebeard 7w

I will say that I honestly don’t think reciprocity is an ideal concept. Because for example I think whaling is unethical in all circumstances because of how intelligent whales are. But within indigenous belief systems, the whale is believed to willingly let itself be killed. As much as I respect native cultures, I don’t think that’s true and I think whaling is always unethical. The animal doesn’t actually care how much you respect it after you kill it, it just doesn’t want to die.

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Anonymous #5 7w

I think there is something to respecting the animals as beings rather than as a resource, but I have a naturalistic worldview and recognize that the these animals don’t actually want to die.

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Anonymous #5 7w

Which is your prerogative, and doesn’t consider the ways of being in their culture, they are all relatives who give each other graciously, and in return the people honor the animals by using them wholly and then in the end when they pass to the spirit world, their bodies are returned to the earth in that act of reciprocity and go to nourish their animal relatives. It’s a cycle that’s more nuanced than the animals don’t want to die.

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Anonymous #5 7w

Not the anti whaling 😭😭 go like some colonizer boots bro fr

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Anonymous #5 7w

How do u not believe in reciprocity donu not believe in stewardship or sustainability?

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Anonymous thunbriaralebeard 7w

And that is what they believe. But I do not believe that, as I think the most reliable methods of understanding what is true in the world indicate that whales do not want to be killed. Whaling within a Makah or Iñupiat or Yupik worldview would be ethical, but I do not believe that aspect of their worldview reflects reality. I treat indigenous beliefs with respect, but that does not believe I think all of them are real.

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Anonymous #5 7w

And reciprocity can come with real conservation issues, as some indigenous communities in Canada believe that respect means the animal is going to be reincarnated, thus their population will not decrease, and in the past that has led to issues of overhunting

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Anonymous #2 7w

I’m anti-whaling for everyone. But I believe that the industrial whaling of Japan and Norway is of much greater importance to end than indigenous whaling, particularly because indigenous whaling is still needed for livelihoods in many rural areas and there is a lack of easily accessible alternatives. I am also opposed to the hunting of elephants, even though that is a historical food source of some Congolese cultures.

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Anonymous #5 7w

I also recognize that the difference in worldview between western conservationists and indigenous communities is part of why there is such a divide in whaling. If I believe that the intelligence of a whale makes it very unethical to kill it, and someone else believes the whale is intelligent and is willingly giving up its own life, there is little common ground.

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Anonymous #5 7w

I recognize that other peoples have other belief systems, but that does not mean I think it is morally correct. I think the scientific method is the best way we have developed to understand the world. And I apply this for beliefs originating from my own western Christian cultural upbringing too, which is why I am no longer a Christian and have rejected associated values such as homophobia and circumcision

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Anonymous #2 7w

I believe in responsible stewardship and management. In those ways I think that indigenous practices have a lot of value. I believe that the principle that we should appreciate the resources provided from an animal is good, and that we should not kill animals frivolously. But I do not believe that the act of respect means that the loss to the animal is any less. It is still killed, and its conscious experience is ended. That is a grave moral action that must be taken extremely seriously.

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Anonymous #5 7w

My belief in respecting indigenous worldviews also means I also do not seek to infantilize them, whitewash them, or place them on a pedestal free of criticism. “Noble savage” stuff sucks. I treat them with the same weight and respect that I would treat my own cultural upbringing or any culture. Every culture has good and bad aspects, every culture has things to praise or critique.

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Anonymous #2 7w

You can feel free to explain why you believe whaling to be ethical under some circumstances. But I think that the belief systems surrounding an action does not change the negative impact of said action. Myself having been raised in a moral system that supports actions (ex forced conversions) which are internally moral within its own worldview but very unethical in reality has contributed to why I feel this way.

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Anonymous #5 7w

Yes, there are morally wrong things about all cultures but to just dismiss something as bad and irrelevant because it doesn’t fit your worldview. Like #2 has covered, this goes further than just the act of killing, this also has to weigh the identity of a culture and their right to practice their ways and sovereignty in where their food comes and not face erasure because it doesn’t fit a modern worldview which is one that has always pushed for the genocide of the indigenous people and erasure

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Anonymous thunbriaralebeard 7w

*because it doesn’t fit your worldview isn’t inherently a good thing either

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Anonymous thunbriaralebeard 7w

Of course I’m going to follow the moral system of my worldview? My worldview is what i believe to be true about the world, as is theirs for them. I will base my moral stances off of what I believe to be true. And I already said that I view indigenous whaling as less of a problem than industrial whaling and I will say additionally how many whales are killed by boat strikes and pollution. We have capacity to reduce global whale deaths moreso than isolated arctic communities.

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Anonymous thunbriaralebeard 7w

Generally, the reason a culture may do something morally wrong is because it isn’t considered morally wrong within said culture. And this goes much beyond the narrow topic of whaling, but I do not believe that something being someone else’s culture absolves it from moral critique.

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Anonymous #5 7w

And I will say that you are right that indigenous cultural erasure and genocide plays into this. It motivates the historical suppression of indigenous practices. And this leads to a defensiveness surrounding modern practices. A people whose culture has constantly attempted to be erased isn’t going to take kindly to external critique.

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Anonymous #5 7w

Weirdly enough, this dynamic has actually played out with Icelandic whaling. Icelandic whaling was on the decline in the 80s, but when mainland European activists sank Icelandic whaling vessels, Icelanders perceived it as an attack on their culture and rallied in support of the declining whaling industry.

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Anonymous #5 7w

Obviously this was an isolated incident and Icelanders have never been subject to genocide like indigenous North Americans have. But it’s specifically within the context of whaling as a marker of cultural identity so it feels relevant.

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Anonymous #5 7w

Do you know where the reverence for cetacean intelligence comes from because it is in fact mk ultra

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Anonymous #2 7w

And? Why would the circumstances in which animal intelligence is discovered matter to the fact that they are intelligent? Edward Drinker Cope was a reckless eugenicist but he still discovered real fossil species. Cetacean intelligence is well documented in subsequent literature. I believe that the intelligence of cetaceans, primates, elephants, and corvids means they carry more moral weight.

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Anonymous #5 7w

Yeah but the cetaceans rigjts movement was made by this crackpot fed who thought if he gave them lsd he could teach them english

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Anonymous #2 7w

Again, and? Why does it matter if he was a weirdo if the scientific evidence for their intelligence is very solid.

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Anonymous #5 7w

Its one of those "soft fuzzy thing" rhetorical devices normative conservationists use to justify conservation of particular species, we assign more protective value on "cool" animals like eagles or bears or whales but theres a converse reaction to animals deemed "lame" and efforts to conserve them have been rejected due these animals being perceived as boring. Its bias in how normative conservation has a skewed perspective of ecology by ascribing sentimental value deeming the creature's worth

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Anonymous #2 7w

My job is surveying endangered freshwater fish. My favorite animal is a velvet worm. I am plenty familiar with charismatic species hogging up all the conservation attention. My issue with whaling is not just a conservation issue, it’s also an ethical one. The Icelandic and Norwegian North Atlantic minke whale harvest is plenty sustainable, but it’s immoral.

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