On buffalo jumps, mentioned in passing as an occasion of killing hundreds
and using only the tongues:
        Is there documentation for such an assertion? I visited
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Canada a few years ago and the presentation
used the information that all parts of the animal were used, with NAs
spending months camped at the foot of the jump, processing the remains into
a wide variety of products. In fact, the story is that the Buffalo was the
source of all the products they used.
        If this is an unsupported myth, I'd like to know that and then the
official story could be challenged. If not, then the assertion of waste
should be re-examined and perhaps retracted. If untrue, it does seem to be
at least unfair, at worst slanderous of the aboriginal culture.
-Tc
Anthony R. S. Chiaviello, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Professional Writing
Department of English
University of Houston-Downtown
One Main Street
Houston, TX 77002-0001
713.221.8520 / 713.868.3979
"Question Reality"

> ----------
> From:         Steven Bissell[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent:         Thursday, November 15, 2001 2:15 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: Hunting as a green activity
>
> Tell me Tantillo, are you one of those people who pokes caged animals with
> sticks?
>
> Anyway, a couple of interesting points herein.
>
> 1. From the article:
> "Relating the kill to the aboriginal way of life poses a challenge to
> hunting abhorrents (sic), who almost universally embrace native traditions
> as touchstones of environmentalism. In Dr. Foote's Edmonton yard-a
> typical, predator-free, fenced environment of grass and tall trees
> that humans have developed to mimic our safe ancestral
> homeland-students were challenged to confront the bloody reality of
> their existence."
>
> Bissell replies; Relating modern hunting with aboriginal/subsistence
> hunting
> is also a basic error. Take your typical Northeast bird hunter. Armed with
> a
> $2000 Italian made shotgun with an over-bred, over-trained "Franken" dog,
> wearing $1000 worth of clothes specifically designed for the gentleman
> bird
> hunter, out to demonstrate his skills with both dog training and wing
> shooting quail. What has this to do with an aboriginal hunter who would
> have
> trapped the birds or jumped them in the dark when they were sleeping? Is
> the
> closeness, or lack thereof, to aboriginal hunting the ethical test? Who
> said
> that aboriginal hunting was ethical anyway? Making an ecological saint of
> aboriginals is not only incorrect, it is patronizing, and probably racist.
> Sure aboriginals used a lot more of the animal than modern hunters *at
> times.* But this was from necessity, not from some mystical knowledge of
> the
> unity of all beings. They also drove buffalo over cliffs, killed hundreds
> at
> a time, and ate only the tongues.
>
> Hunting needs to stand or fall on its own merits, not on the similarity to
> aboriginal life-styles.
>
> 2. Again from the article;
>
> "To most people geographically or generationally isolated from eating
> wild-killed meat, these activities seem barbaric, heartless and
> uncivilized. When uncivilized becomes a pejorative, it speaks volumes
> about how far cultures have drifted from a natural way of living," he
> wrote in a recent essay, The Irreducibility of Hunting."
>
> Bissell here: Natural way of living? As opposed to un-natural life? How
> does
> that work? This sort of Boy Scout Chauvinism gives me the willies. Is
> killing a deer and eating it more "natural" than going to the Opera? And,
> killing a deer, skinning it, eating it probably is, to some extent,
> uncivilized. So what? Didn't this article just laud the aboriginal way of
> life? I thought that was the point to this; that hunting was uncivilized
> and
> therefore "natural."
>
> 3. Article;
> "Animal rights activists, of course, greet this all with scorn. John
> Livingstone, a naturalist and author of the Governor General's
> Award-winning Rogue Primate, calls hunting "gratuitous, ergo evil."
> He once likened it to child molesting."
>
> Bissell: I had to look up "gratuitous." From Webster this is the second
> meaning; "without cause or justification; uncalled for." If that is John
> Livingstone's definition of "evil," then most of what we do on a daily
> basis
> is evil. I've never heard of "Rogue Primate," but my eyes rolled at the
> title. Just another Garden of Eden story. Humans are somehow "wrong" and
> basically harmful. As to comparing hunting to child molestation, silly
> rhetoric, nothing more.
>
> 4. Article:
> "Besides, he says, wild meat simply tastes better. . . ."
>
> Bissell: Right, that's what we always tell people. But I guarantee that if
> you compare an old male sage grouse with a chicken from the store, you'll
> see that is mostly nonsense. I enjoy some wild meat, but things like
> moose,
> sage grouse, mountain sheep, and a lot of others to not, to my palate,
> taste
> as good as beef, chicken, or lamb.
>
> So, Tantillo, is this good enough for you? I think I'll retire for a
> while.
>
> Steven
>
> Quietly they moved down the calm and scared
> river that had come down to earth so that its
> waters might flow over the ashes of those long
> dead, and that would continue to flow long
> after the human race had, through hatred
> and knowledge, burned itself out.
>                              Vikram Seth
>                              A Suitable Boy
>