so today I wrote my very first letter to the editor, tried to get some help editing but no one was available so I sent it as is. Heres hopin! You cannot imagine the difficulty of watching as the USFWS and State Management of Wild Life and other wild life management services defeat the moral obligations of wild life preservation and protection when you are Indigenous Native American. Not all Tribal Nations are against wolf killing yet I would have to say that the majority of our Tribal communities have a very clear understanding of the need to protect any species from the management practices used today. Try and describe to someone the pain and internal distress that it causes and they will typically call you names or diagnose you based on some imprinted bias of a person who has no real idea what its like (anymore) to see the land that their ancestors were given by Creator decimated for greed, or animals murdered needlessly for sport. These are ideas that the majority of the people I know cannot even grasp let alone make excuses. The war on wolves seems to consist of a two sided mind set, those of sports hunters who cannot get help for their addiction to killing and the people and organizations who support them with funding because they share the same feelings. The other side consisting of scientists/biologist (the majority of them non native) who argue scientific facts about how the wolf is essential to the environment. Occasionally you will hear someone from the latter group expressing a moral obligation to save the wild from man. In my opinion and many others this is not enough. Its obviously not enough because neither side is winning or losing at this point. The only suffering being incurred at this point in the argument is that of the wolf. Here is where Indigenous thought enters into the works. As Indigenous People the majority finds it very easy to be racist and hateful about how they think they understand Our People because theyve read a bunch of books and talked to an Indian about these things and therefore they are now an authority on the subject of us and how we live and do things. The wolves are an integral part of Our Culture. As are all non human animals. This fact is ignored for obvious reasons, the one that stands out the most in my mind and has been said to my face on more than one instance is that we are a conquered people and we need to get over it. Somehow these beliefs make it so that we do not count in how we see this world and what is going on on this continent. Non human animals are the majority and we knew this, non human animals are a way to learn to live, a way to see the world differently. They are also a way to learn to survive. Many of our ancestors knew the benefit of following certain animals and learning from them. Where the fish are most abundant in the water, where to find the deer in whatever area we were living in, how to eat berries , herbs etc and which ones were poisonous and which ones were not. The list goes on and on and yet these facts are ignored. Spiritual connections to animals are important as well and this I will not get into because without having been born into a tradition the concept of understanding the connection spiritually tends to get misused or translated into something more fantastical then it really is. I will put it as simply as this, this interconnected spiritual way of life is a necessity to living a good life in a good way and causing no harm to the lives and life around us. It is necessary. Having said this, I dont hope for anyone to understand , I am hoping that the need to be right and the need to know why these wolves should exist gets passed on to the right authority. That authority is not man and it never has been. The wolves were not created by man and should not be destroyed by man either. When will human beings learn to live in a good way with what life already exists and stop killing and torturing for their own sadistic pleasure? When human beings get it through their heads that they are not in control and when they try to be its a mistake every single time. Let the wolves be, they exist and the live so leave them be and learn to live with them without fear. This will take an enormous amount of effort and I believe that most people, when it comes to Nature, are programmed to be afraid and that just is not right for anyone. Human and non human alike we are all animal and living in a way where we are all safe and protected benefits the whole instead of the part. Xotzinomecihuatl
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 05:18:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015