Subject: Re: Hunting, Was: The Dreaded Cat Thread - large pinch of salt , required before reading
Date: Apr 21 02:40:06 1995
From: James West - jdwest at u.washington.edu


Thank you, Gene, for your eloquent defense of the combination of moral,
religious and economic thinking that drives the practices of many
indigenous peoples, or at least did until we taught them our ways. What is
true of the indigenous N Americans is equally true of the indigenous
Siberians. The Buriats, for example, in the area around Lake Baikal,
until this century always wore their best clothes to hunt bear - to wear
less would be the height of disrespect. The hunt was preceded by prayers
and entreaties to The Bears to please spare them just one little one, and
a bear bagged was considered an uncommon favor bestowed on the hunter,
not to be sought too often. Many "primitive" religions aren't so much
"quaint" as the cultural expression of economic and other varieties of
wisdom that our culture, with its emphasis on the efficient exploitation
of natural resources, has something to learn from.... And no, that isn't
a flame, it's just something worth thinking about, voiced by somebody who
is well aware that the preservation of wildfowl habitat in Europe for
most of this century has been primarily the achievement of the
duck-hunting organizations.


On Thu, 20 Apr 1995, Eugene Hunn wrote:

> Jon et al.,
>
> I can't pass this one up. As an anthropologists who has worked for 25
> years with Native American communities studying their knowledge of the
> natural environment I would like to opine that you have phrased the issue
> wrong. To suggest that Native American (or other indigenous, small-scale
> subsistence oriented communities past & present) are just as inclined to
> overhunt, degrade the environment, etc., as "we" are is not condescending
> to them nor racists. It is a fact that in many cases indigenous
> communities had in place well-regulated systems of social control
> involving their religious beliefs, moral values, and interpersonal
> relations that protected their resource bases from the so-called "Tragedy
> of the Commons" of Garrett Hardin fame. Such well-regulated systems
> depended upon their generationally-deep dependence upon a specific local
> habitat/land base. Such systems have been everywhere disrupted if not
> destroyed by the intrusion of state governments in support of opening up
> the resource bases of all lands to the more "efficient" development of
> resources for the global market. It has nothing to do with race. It has
> a great deal to do with the particular economic and governmental
> institutions that now dominate the globe. I believe indigenous
> communities deserve the opportunity to continue to practice traditional
> resource harvest management strategies, modified of course by the
> inescapable influence of the global market and the encompassing national
> societies. Such communities still have deep spiritual ties to the lands
> their ancestors occupied for thousands of years before the arrival of
> Euorpean (for the most part) immigrants withing the past two hundred years.
> Bison were driven off cliffs but there is very little real evidence that
> even under such circumstances -- special and localized as they clearly
> were -- that a significant fraction of the meat was wasted.
>
> Eugene Hunn.
>
> On Thu, 20 Apr 1995, Jon Anderson wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On Thu, 20 Apr 1995, Stuart MacKay wrote:
> >
> > >I think there is a lot to be said for tribal peoples (American Indians
> > spring to mind) , respect for the animals hunted. Not much evidence for
> > that in red-blooded white males :-))
> >
> >
> > Stuart -
> >
> > A minor flame:
> >
> > Pretending that the Native American community is more environmentally
> > correct than us 'white red-blooded males' is condescending and is a form
> > of racism in its own right.
> >
> > Historical running of bison by Lakota hunters over a cliff, resulting in
> > meat being wasted is not appropriate by contemporary standards. The
> > current use of gillnets and purse seines by the Lummi Nation to harvest
> > sockeye salmon is mostly motivated by economics - not by some 'connection
> > with the land' acsribed to native peoples by guilt-tripped WASPs.
> >
> > People are people. Different cultures often have varying perspectives on
> > the world, but please do not assume that a people are 'better' or 'worse' or
> > more or less environmentally-correct by virtue of their race or culture.
> > That is as much a disservice to the one race as it is to the other.
> >
> > Jon. Anderson
> > Olympia, WA
> > anderjda at dfw.wa.gov
> >
> >
>

_________________________________________________________________________
JAMES WEST|University of Washington DP-32, Seattle, WA 98195|206-543-4892