Liberate

The sun is a wheel and so is the moon, they both move in cycles.

The stars are points of light but when filmed with a time-elapse camera become rings of stars, time measured in light.

When trees grow they develop rings in their grain, this is time solidified into matter.

The seasons move in a cycle.

The flow of the river Thames does not move in a straight line but takes the form of a spiral helix.

The flowing river has always been a metaphor for time, and the helix is itself the basic building block for life itself DNA.

The process of life and death is often described as circular, as one Native American described it.

For the Indian the spirit of the land is still vested; it will be until other men are able to divine and meet its rhythm.

Men must be born and reborn to belong. Their bodies must be formed of the dust of their forefathers bones.

The respect felt for animals by the animal rights movement and by many indigenous people are complementary, but in no way the same.

As Ojibway magazine states:
When Indians referred to animals as “people” – just a different sort of person from Man – they were not being quaint.

Nature to them was a community of such “people” for whom they had a great deal of genuine regard and with whom they had a contractual relationship to protect one another’s interests and to fulfill their mutual needs.

Man and Nature, in short was joined by a contract – not by ethical ties – a contract predicated on mutual esteem.

This was the essence of the traditional land relationship.

This is a world away from modern capitalist view of animals. In their eyes animals are objects or resources.

Commodification of animals goes hand in hand with capitalism’s desire to reduce all life and aspects of life to products.

Much of modern humanity believes that by choice or circumstance, they exist above and outside of nature, but they do not, the only thing that exists above and outside of nature is the technological, industrial system.

Unfortunately, many Vegans and Vegetarians seem to believe they exist above the world in there eating practices. The fact is many health food companies that make vegetarian food are owned by multinational companies. In America two of these companies consist of General Mills who owns the organic brands Cascadian Farms, Muir Glenn and Heinz which holds shares in the company that makes Rice Dream soy milk.

Their New Zealand counterparts include Meadowlea owned by Unilever which participates in vivisection and sanitarium which makes So-Good soy milk and is one of many companies owned by the 7th day Adventist church.

Multinational companies institutionalized abuse of animals, humans and the bio-sphere is well documented and need not be repeated here.

This split between reality and appearance often resemble comments by some meat eaters, the comment I eat meat but “couldn’t if I had to work in a slaughterhouse” that is common to many vegetarians.

They can’t face what they are eating. We can’t face the consequences of what we are eating. How is eating monoculture soy beans any different in it’s ravages on the environment and animal life?

The most disturbing thing is how love and respect for life can turn into self righteousness such as when The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and PAWS came up against a native american tribe the Makah.

The Makah is a tribe with a strong connection to the sea, they hunted whales for nearly two thousand years in the waters of Neah Bay. However, due to the industrialized rape of the sea by the whaling industry they were forced to give up the center of there spiritual life.

Recently whale population has increased enough for small scale hunting to be sustainable. In their words

Whaling and whales are central to Makah culture.

The conduct of a whale hunt requires rituals and ceremonies which are deeply spiritual. They are the subject and inspiration of Makah songs, dances, designs, and basketry. For the Makah Tribe, whale hunting imposes a purpose and a discipline which benefits their entire community.

When a whale was caught …..

Canoes from many surrounding villages came to assist the Makah in delivering the quarry to the people. As the whale was towed to shore, the people ran into the water to have a closer look.

With eyes wide, they touched the smooth skin and examined its mottled pattern. Children were amazed at the size of the creature.

The whale was then prayed over, as were the whalers.

Prayers were offered to thank the whale for giving its life to sustain that of the Makah and to free its spirit for passage to the other side.

Despite the obvious respect the Makah had for the creature Animal rights groups were unwavering in opposition, resorting to lies that the Makah were going to sell the whale meat to the Japanese and verbal abuse.

This is sickening when one thinks how white people have treated native peoples of America, after a Holocaust greater in scale, magnitude and length than the Jews suffered during World War Two and destruction of their means of life due to industrialized hunting, now white activists have inadvertently tried to destroy the remnants of their culture. A move that would plunge the Makah back into the morass of despair and alcoholism that they were combating.

However this does not need to be the case as animal rights activists and indigenous people have recently been worked together to try and stop a cull of some 500 kangaroos at a military base in Canberra. Even though they failed to stop the cull they showed cooperation on an important ongoing issue in Australia.

The kangaroo is regarded as a
sacred creature by indigenous Australians as Aboriginal Elder Uncle Max says

I think hunters shooting large numbers of kangaroos, as they are doing nightly in the Outback, are a farce. The Industry is trying to tell us that everybody’s eaten kangaroo now but the reality is if you put kangaroo on the dinner table then everyone cocks their nose up at it and cries “Yuck”. The Kangaroo Industry would like us to think it has the right a way for promoting one more product but where the kangaroo really is going is in large amounts of pet food. I’m pretty concerned about that.

They like to call it culling but really it’s a slaughter that’s going on out there and it’s like most indigenous things in this country that’s important to us such as the kangaroo. They will be on the endangered species list soon.

This parallels with the Genocide of Tasmanian Aborigines who were used for dog food by early settlers or the some 9000 Aboriginal deaths in police custody since the 1980’s.

We have to look beyond objective morality and isolating ourselves and others with simplistic statements like “meat is murder”.

Respect needs to be shown to those individuals who “strive to survive causing the least suffering possible” but this love and empathy for all life cannot be allowed to degenerate into black and white thinking.

Respect for animals and acknowledgement of there status as fellow creatures instead of passive objects, and a diversity of movements that work towards the destruction of industrial farming and institutionalized animal abuse a multiplicity of movement that encompasses both indigenous people, anti-authoritarian and animal rights activists.

The animals and the earth are suffering terribly under capitalism, to have any chance of stopping this we need to forget our differences and celebrate our similarities. Our togetherness will be greater than their separation.