herondancer said:
whitecoast said:
What's also quite telling IMO is that vegetarianism in the west didn't really become mainstream as an idea until agriculture moved away from local ranch production to mass production in feedlots. Most people no longer interact with food animals, and often only experience human-animal interactions with pets and companion animals. So in modern times there's an artificial separation of animals we love from animals we eat. To a vegan it's inconceivable that you can love animals you intend to eat, but such an interaction would have been commonplace in ancient animal domesticators and hunters.
Indeed. Many Native American ceremonies revolved around expressing gratitude to the animals that sustained them. The ceremonies expressed the idea that the tribe was able to eat only because the prey animal (bison, deer, salmon etc.) was moved by a sense of compassion for the humans that were so ill-equipped to survive in the world. The animal agreeing to be sustenance for humans was their way of serving the Creator. The human's obligation was to take no more than needed, to waste nothing, and thank the Creator and the animal for providing them with food.
This is an Anishnabe (Ojibwa/Chippewa) belief. My late father was part Ojibwa and an accomplished hunter. He taught the concept of giving thanks to the animals who sustained us with their sacrifice to me and my siblings. When he hosted a tv show in the 1960s entitled
Michigan Outdoors, he was able to expound this theory to mostly white guy hunters on the air, at Ducks Unlimited banquets, and hunter-related events. The hunters seemed to like this idea. :) My father also believed one should only hunt for food and clothing skins and not for pure sport. He encouraged sport hunters to donate their meat, bones and skins to those who would make use of them.
