News from the Natural World: ‘Oh Great! Another Western import sent to save us’ – Indigenous peoples express their view on Veganism.
Indigenous humans have long looked to the western world for ethical guidance and morality. First, the Westerners brought diseases and plagues. Smallpox wiped out millions of indigenous people in South America and North America. In fact, almost everywhere that Westerners went they spread their diseases. As if that wasn’t bad enough they then raped huge numbers of woman and spread STD’s. Then they forced their Western religions upon them, lecturing and obliterating those who didn’t want to acknowledge their Christian God. Any humans who didn’t comply were brutally slaughtered in holy wars of righteous indignation. There were genocides almost everywhere western humans turned up. Aborigines in Australia, Maoris in New Zealand, Native Americans in the USA and Canada. When westerners showed up, Indigenous peoples suffered.
As if that wasn’t enough then westerners ransacked their lands and destroyed their natural worlds for profit. The very ecosystems that the indigenous people depended on for survival were collapsed all so that little Charlie Frinkly-Bottom could have a second car, loads of presents for Christmas and eat out three times a week. But the westerners didn’t stop there. They were so insecure about their past that they simply refused to accept what they had done to indigenous peoples. They whitewashed the conservation movement, built the white saviour narrative and lectured indigenous people on how to live their lives. So when the Indigenous People heard that the Western world had a knew import that would save them from their sorry lives they braced themselves. What was this new Western import?
‘Oh Great! Another Western Import Sent to Save Us’
The new western import was called Veganism. It abolished the consumption of all animal products and declared that any animal consumption was unethical and evil. It had really caught on in the western world where people could afford to consider these things and their supermarkets were stocked full of alternatives. But maybe the Vegan movement had failed to take into account all Indigenous People and their ways of life?
It wasn’t just indigenous people that Veganism forgot but the billions of people around the world who quite literally depended on consuming animals for survival. What choice did they have? Many Indigenous People were confused, one said “There is no Wholefoods or supermarket near me where I can buy Soy Milk, Vegetarian Sausages or Tofu. Should we build a supermarket here in the rainforest? I have become ‘unethical’ overnight!” But the Vegans had a thoroughly patronizing solution – “Don’t worry they said, we’ll modernise you in no time. We’ll have an ethical supermarket and Whole Foods here asap. In the meantime just eat some roots and tubers and don’t you bloody dare try and catch a fish. Look I know every single time the Western World has ever tried to ram its suggestions down your throats you’ve suffered. But trust me, trust me, this time it’s different. This time I’m right!”