For every Earth Day celebration at rabble.ca, the news site hosts a Vegan Challenge.
According to the call-out — which for 2013 can be found at this link here — “You are encouraged to go vegan for a week along with rabble.ca staff and contributors to help protect the environment, show compassion for animals and enjoy some wholesome, nutritious and yummy food!
Going vegan is one of the strongest ways most of us can contribute to Earth Week and make every day Earth Day!”
While this sounds highly noble, my relationship with the vegan community has soured long ago, shot down with a fury of cultural racism and mistrust. There, I said it. But it’s true.
I have nothing personal against vegans, I really don’t. I don’t understand why they have something personal against me.
Let me explain.
First, I want to note that, “the evidence of the fossil record is, by and large, clear: Since the inception of the earliest humans (i.e., the genus Homo, approximately 2.5 million years ago), the human diet has included meat. This is well-known in paleoanthropological circles, and is discussed in Setting the Scientific Record Straight on Humanity’s Evolutionary Prehistoric Diet and Ape Diets.”
But I have a more personal reason for my feelings, ancestral in nature. This seems to stop vegans in their tracks, like they had never considered any lifestyle other than Indo-European. I have expressed these in the past and reiterate them here.
While my love and commitment for rabble.ca will always remain strong, I have always questioned the fervor of some on the left who push the issue of veganism as — quote taken from above — “Going vegan is one of the strongest ways most of us can contribute to Earth Week and make every day Earth Day!”
I consider it very bad form that anyone would announce such a proclamation that considers veganism as a superior cultural phenomenon (either in the case, for example, of some Indo-European or South Asian cultures or of a certain urban dwelling, lefty-types). My beef (no pun intended, I swear) lies with the latter of two cultures and the exotic and privileged nature that veganism takes within the city of Toronto.
It is this cultural statement of superiority found in the Vegan Earth Week Challenge call-out above that fuels my wrath. This call-out for going vegan as “one of the strongest ways… contribute to Earth” as if those two elements are inclusively linked to one other.
By cultural superiority (with the usual hint of righteous indignation), I mean that this call-out and others I have heard are supposing that veganism is better than other forms of human diet and cultural practices that involve meat.
Does that make hunting cultures or animal herding, cultures that include meat in their diet as a cultural and biological history, less concerned about the environment?
Am I and my people — who are the Saami, which were primarily a hunting, then and now a herding culture with very little formal agriculture less righteous in our Indigenous lifestyle (as was noted as far back as 500 AD, where we had no wool, only furs as clothes and lived off reindeer)?
Historically, other than supplementing our diet by gathering berries, lichen and stripping the inner back of birch trees, does our reliance on reindeer meat make us as a people less concerned about the environment because of our historical and cultural use of hunting as a form of sustenance and meat in our diet?
Does our reliance — as a hallmark of the Saami culture — on reindeer husbandry make us akin to animal slave owners?
Traditionally and currently, there is still a lot of meat in our diet. The estimate is about 80 per cent. Perhaps not 100 per cent reindeer meat, but it’s a cultural staple of our diet. Are we less civilized or advanced because we haven’t been moved away from the consumption of meat and refuse to relinquish our Indigenous right to use hunting and herding as a means of survival — and thus our natural, historic hunting and herding grounds?
Are we then savage in our consumption of meat and the inclusion of the hunt in our, for example, Bear Cult Rite (“Bear” -“Isaivoî” meaning sacred) ceremonies, where meat is consumed?
In Canada, on Turtle Island, if someone is from the Bear of Wolf clan and/or Spirit, are they savage meat consumers because in some cases of cultural custom, they would be encouraged to consume meat — for example deer, you do not eat of your own clan — to honour their clan or Spirit?
Are they savage because they wish to use hunting as a formal of cultural sustenance? Living off the land — as hunting is — does this make them less environmentally concerned? Less environmentally dedicated?
You see, that’s what I feel like — because I am Saami and because I am culturally involved with First Nations communities — when someone goes on about the superiority of veganism at the neglect or expense of other cultures.
And frankly — and yes, call me on this bias — I can make the case that Indigenous people around the world right now are doing much more than caring whether they support Earth Week. They are on the front lines regarding struggle to defend Mother Earth and passing the lessons of All Our Relations to others.
So I’m not even sure what the point of boasting veganism as a culturally superior trait unless you want to assume that all Canadians live in a homogenous Canadian culture, which would then vilify a First Nations community if it wants to utilize its tribal right to fish or hunt for game.
These are points that vegans need to think about when being evangelistical about their culture.
I don’t act that way and impose my cultural beliefs on you even though my people’s culture is centuries old. Please do not do the same to me.
Giitu/ Miigwetch
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
