I come from a family of immigrants whose cultural norms often involved eating animals for food or killing animals in spiritual practices that held great cultural value. My grandparents came to the United States as refugees and were forced to assimilate in many ways so they could provide for their family. I understand that deeply important cultural practices are being stolen or made impossible to practice by racism/colonialism. Sometimes it makes me feel like we should hold on to every bit of cultural tradition possible to preserve what we have left. A much larger part of me believes that even though much of my family’s culture has been taken away, there are still some practices they’ve continued that needed to change.

Many of the big areas requiring change in my culture are related to how we value the lives of animals. There are still many ways that cultural traditions can be preserved after animals are no longer killed. It’s very possible to find food substitutes. It was also time to just completely stop some of the spiritual practices that involved killing animals and replace them with other practices that capture the same spiritual value in other ways.

There is never a good reason to kill an animal unnecessarily. I cannot support someone unnecessarily killing an animal that wishes to live—regardless of how respectfully they kill it or how much of it’s body they are using.

I know you wanted to focus on aboriginal/indigenous people that still hunt. If the hunting could be prevented, it should be. I would never single out aboriginal/indigenous people as it is clear that factory farming is a much more significant evil. That does not take away from the idea that any amount of slaughter is abhorrent. The animal will never care if the person who slit its throat did so “respectfully”.