Animal species loss inflicts spiritual and psychological harm on Indigenous peoples

Evidence

Recognizing this, we are confronted with the deep tragedies brought about by the loss of these animals for the spiritual and psychological stability of these peoples, especially as perpetrated by the colonizing mindset of European invaders and the subsequent modernist ways of life. And again, learning of the deep knowledge that Indigenous Peoples have had of animals as integral members of their communities and an interdependent world helps us to understand what our own culture has lost over the centuries of modernization. Pushing the rest of the living world metaphorically to the “outside” in order to define humans as superior to animals in modern consciousness has had disastrous effects worldwide. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1649

Categorization

• XREF: Links directly to the reader’s ch28 thread on buffalo slaughter as genocide and to the shared polyad thread on environmental racism/colonialism. — connects to: Land allotment and dam flooding drive current Lakota social pathology — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 747; Buffalo decimation caused the Lakota’s spiritual and ethnic death — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 748; Buffalo restoration is tied to restoring Native social and political structure — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 804 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Indigenous communities frame environmental harms as threats to cultural survival, not ecology #expands (0.85) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 233
• Species-level collective experiences of identity loss are as real as individual life-history crises #corroborates (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2428
• Species extinction is experienced as extinction of possible selves #expands (0.80)
• Species loss mirrors the loss of one’s own unusable capacities #expands (0.78)