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The contemporary animal rights movement has two chief missions. The first is to engage with pre-existing systems of animal exploitation and debase their underlying moral justifications which often take the shape of consent, necessity, or tradition. The second is to construct a framework that absorbs non-human animals into the constitutional considerations of the state through a political theory that places them within the same ecological and social ecosystem as humans (Donaldson and Kymlicka 163). In order to do so, the AR movement faces a significant legal hurdle, redefining animals as persons within our legislative schemes rather than property as they are chiefly considered (Donaldson and Kymlicka 161). Doing so would not only disrupt the human-animal binary which is “so deeply embedded in liberal legal orders”  as Marie Fox posits (477), but would also disrupt the cultural and religious practices of groups that place the killing or mistreatment of animals at the center of their traditions. One such group is the Canadian Inuits which Kazez argues would face a “radically altered culture” if their traditional means of sustenance through hunting would be disrupted by the naturalization of animals as citizens (Donaldson and Kymlicka 183). In some cases, these practices are regarded as instrumental to the cultural identity of groups, and yet a searing question remains: should the cultural and religious freedoms of certain groups take a backseat to non-human animals’ right to life? At first glance, the question seems to connote an evident anthropomorphic hierarchy that places a human's right to have their culture respected over an animal's right to have its life respected. On the other hand, when we situate this question in the context of centuries of colonialist and neo-imperialist impositions of ideologies on marginalized groups, as well as cases where human survival rests on the killing of non-human animals, the critique seems to waver in a shroud of unforeseen complexity. Donaldson and Kymlicka explore two strategies in response to this conflict of interest. The first is the traditional approach of exempting certain groups such as Indigenous communities from having to adhere to animal protection laws which interfere with their right to self-governance and culture. The second which they push forward as the more reasonable option for the AR theorist who refuses to abandon the basic ethical principles of animal protection for what seems like the potential threat of a bottomless rabithole of cultural justification for immoral practices, is the engagement with these ideologies in moral discourse (Donaldson and Kymlicka 160). In this paper I will discuss the merits and failings of both responses to cultural and religious practices which involve the harming of animals, conclude that the strategy of engagement is the most promising, as well as suggest a more constructive frame for these dialogues which seeks to promote a multicultural variation of AR theory. 

 

The first strategy is what Donaldson and Kymlicka (D&K) name the avoidance strategy. In the case of aboriginal communities in Canada and around the world, legislative bodies have often found it more convenient and legally consistent to afford these cultural groups exemptions from animal protection laws. While The international whaling commission places stringent prohibitions against commercial whaling, it makes an exception for aborigines who hunt for whale meat for the sake of local consumption rather than trade as a means of recognizing their “subsistence and cultural needs” (169).  These exemptions often follow from several justifications. The first of these justifications is that indigenous communities sometimes reside outside the confines of urbanized centers of readily available commodities, and rely on hunting for sustenance. However, in cases where survival or self-defense drive the need to kill an animal, D&K recognize that the conditions of justice necessary for the application of AR law are not met, rendering these practices justified (163). While cases such as Inuit communities in Canadian North whose physiologies have evolved in parallel to hunting diets do exist, and where the application of AR laws would seriously threaten the health of its members, AR theorists want to keep this avenue as narrow as possible (181). A claim of necessity by Indigenous communities to hunt deer for sustenance in the outskirts of Ontario fails to meet this criterion given that the absence of necessity reduces the rationale to human supremacy and the instrumentalization of animals. Conversely, the United Nations recognizes the “right to culturally appropriate food” which on one hand would ensure that Inuit communities in the Arctic receive the sustenance appropriate to their unique physiologies, and on the other would serve as an argument for the French to justify the consumption of foie gras and Americans the consumption of mass-production hamburgers (Donaldson and Kymlicka 182). A strategy of avoidance faces the threat of clumping cultural practices together in an unfamiliar pool of traditions exempt from the scope of AR, both the reasonable necessities and immoral preferences, out of an unwillingness to engage in the sensitive discussions of case by case cultural practices and their ethical consistencies. 

 

This unwillingness comes from judicial prioritization of Indigenous treaty and self-determination rights, as well as out of a more general wish to respect the cultural integrity of an already disenfranchised group (Donaldson and Kymlicka 171). Indigenous tribes in Canada have been afforded the right to hunt on their own lands as well as self-govern by treaties that serve to salvage an already tumultuous relationship between the federal and provincial governments and the tribes. In fact, these denunciations of federal authority over the policy decisions of these communities extend to a general disavowal of international treaties that Indigenous scholars argue discluded Indigenous voices and representation given the distinct status of governance they hold independently of the governments which signed these treaties on their behalf. While the colonial histories which have ailed Indigenous communities have granted them these essential rights, treaty rights can’t extend beyond the jurisdiction of the governments with which they were contracted with. The Makah Treaty of 1855 preserved the Makah’s right to hunt whales but disavowed their right to own slaves (Donaldson and Kymlicka 174). However even if the US had recognized the Makah’s self-governance rights to employ policies that continued the practice, this would not be considered a treaty right given that neither the US government nor the Makah held the right over the life of a citizen under the legislative body which validated the treaty in the first place. Similarly, if animals are to be recognized as being bearers of a right to life and self-determination under AR reforms, then any claim over the life of an animal made either by the government or the Indigenous community would be rendered mute and outside the scope of what a treaty right may afford. And yet, it is this exact authority that flows from the federal government and its consideration of animals as either property or citizens that is under scrutiny by Indigenous communities. While aboriginals are likely to regard this legal transgression on their cultural identity as echoing historical attempts at “civilizing” Indigenous communities with Euro-centric ideologies as well as a federal overreach into their self-governance rights, to simply abandon the ethical duties we hold towards animals seems unconstructive to say the least and would fail to engage with the ethical dimension of the culturally driven mistreatment of animals.  

 

Instead, D&K propose a second strategy, that of engagement. In order to promote equitable change in the cultural practices of Indigenous communities and their alignment with AR reforms, constructive and cross-cultural dialogue must be opened (Donaldson and Kymlicka 177). According to some academics such as Nasdady such open forums, even if designed to consider structural and power imbalances when examining issues from the purview of western academia, will find “no basis on which to evaluate the relative merits of Indigenous versus Euro-American theories about animals” given that they are both communicated within a cultural context of consistent moral and logical frameworks (Donaldson and Kymlicka 178). While this may hold some force when engaging with the practical outcomes of AR theories such as when interpreting animal behaviors, surely some form of cross-cultural understanding and comparison can be achieved. After all, both AR theories and Indigenous worldviews share the common disdain for the Euro-centric instrumentalization of animals as property, as well as regard animals as selves, co-authors in their own narratives, and willfully conscious co-inhabitants of a shared social system (Donaldson and Kymlicka 165). So why is there disagreement, and is the best way to respond to cultural practices of killing animals to bridge these disagreements? 

 

A crucial line of divergence between AR theorists and Indigenous defenders of hunting practices is over the interpretation of animal consent. According to Cote the belief behind whaling practices is that the Indigenous tribes and the animal have entered into a long-term “process of reciprocal exchange” whereby the animal consents to its killing, and in turn, the hunters venerate the animal with the proper rituals (Donaldson and Kymlicka 178). In response to such claims, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society deployed boats to the Neah Bay to record the cries of agony that whales were letting out at being hunted by the Makah (179). The claim of animals consenting to their own deaths, just as a human who would consent to their death in order to be eaten by their hunter, is difficult to accept. Not only would this open grounds for other animal exploitation practices such as testing on monkeys to justify their mistreatment of animals on the frail basis of ‘consent’, but it also brings to light another weakness in this interpretation which Robinson points to, that these animals have no means of withholding consent (180). Cultural differences in interpreting the practical ramifications of active relationships between animals might pose some challenges, but they are nevertheless bound by a universal system of reason. If animals have no means of retracting consent, and can arguably lack the cognitive capacity to understand the implications of that consent, a feature crucial to our legal mechanization of the concept of consent, then cultural differences aren’t sufficient grounds to neglect the ethical inconsistencies of these practices with their own moral ideologies. Yet, the authorship of such analysis seems misplaced given that Indigenous ideological consistencies are being evaluated by non-Indigenous academics. While numerous Indigenous scholars grow to share this view of the unjustified interpretation of consent, if cultural practices are to be overturned by a rising tide of animal activists, this activism can only grow internally, otherwise, we are bound to face the same accusations of neo-colonial interjections as well as a less productive AR movement.    

 

Instead of viewing these challenges to AR reform as the conflict between AR reformists and Indigenous communities, I submit that it would be more effective to view them as an internal struggle within the Indigenous community between the progressive animal activists who ought to be supported, and the conservative champions of culture. However, this approach to dialogue would have to allow room for a multicultural understanding of AR which would promote and widen the net of support found within Indigenous communities who naturally face a struggle to relinquish archaic practices in exchange for the culturally sound and ethically consistent tradition of respecting animal life in a way that is more consistent with how the community has grown to understand animal consent and behavior. As it stands one of the chief obstacles to liberal and ethnocultural minority scholars taking up the mantle of animal rights support is the perception of the movement as being racially privileged and charged with cultural imperialism (Donaldson and Kymlicka 122). In fact Angela Harris echoes the sentiment and poses that the “animal rights movement is perceived by many African American people as a ‘white thing’” (15). Maneesha Deckha makes the case for multiculturalism in the animal rights movement by arguing that when developed as an anti-racist movement, it can communicate the “linkages between racism and anthropocentrism” (83). 

 

In the case of Indigenous communities, it would go one step further by acknowledging both the AR and the Indigenous break from the colonially driven conception of animals as property. When Europeans first colonized Indigenous lands they charged the local tribes with being backward and irrational because they lacked the legal binary of human-animal, person-property (Donaldson and Kymlicka 165). This aided in the justifications for imposing a Eurocentric legal system on the Indigenous communities. AR theory in its efforts to veer from this imperialist tradition of anthropocentric worldviews revolving around the dominance of the white man, shares a common bond with the Indigenous efforts. Allowing Indigenous scholars to develop their own variations and valid understandings of AR theory centered around their own cultural roots, rather than structuring forums aimed at correcting the Indigenous view behind the guise of open dialogue, would help diversify the movement as well as grow the ranks of Indigenous animal activists resisting cultural traditions. Indigenous writers such as Barsh acknowledge that “the significance of resuming the hunt is fundamentally political”, an exercise of resistive power against a history of cultural tradition that comes at the expense of animals (Donaldson and Kymlicka 184). Not only would this circumvent the accusations of neo-imperialist cultural interjections, but it would also give way for some very crucial nuances that might be missed from a western conception of AR theory. 

 

AR theory as D&K develop it, as far removed from the western notion of a dualistic interpretation of humans and animals, nevertheless grew out of it, and seeks to rectify it by considering humans and their natural rights in the exact same way that animals ought to be considered. However, eliminating the anthropocentric hierarchy does not entail neglecting the crucial differences and roles that different sentient beings play in an ecosystem. In this regard, an AR Indigenous view would more closely resemble the ecological approach to animal rights which might justify the protection of the balance of an ecosystem against an overpopulated species of wolves, while the AR view might resist such efforts. Multicultural approaches to AR might even serve to protect animals in other unforeseen ways. In India, the Central Zoo Authority of the Indian Ministry of the Environment and Forests issued a statement protecting dolphins from capture and argued they should be seen as “non-human persons” on the basis of their high intelligence (Deckha 72). This approach might facilitate the integration of animals within western legislative schemes which dispense legal considerations on the basis of a cognitive continuum from which legal scholars derive notions of personhood from. More directly, however, in cases where entangled empathy calls on humans to supplement the absence of cognitive understanding of animals who find themselves in moral predicaments in order to protect them. Acknowledging the differences in different mental capabilities might justify human intervention in cases where monkeys who have been afforded the novel right to consent seem to have consented to experimentation on the basis of habitation and food in exchange for their ‘services’. 

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Citations:

Deckha, Maneesha. “Is Multiculturalism Good for Animals?” Animals, Race, and Multiculturalism, 2017, pp. 61–93., doi:10.1007/978-3-319-66568-9_4.

Donaldson, Sue, and Will Kymlicka. Zoopolis: a Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Fox, M. “Re-Thinking Kinship: Laws Construction of the Animal Body.” Current Legal Problems, vol. 57, no. 1, 2004, pp. 469–493., doi:10.1093/clp/57.1.469.

Harris, Angela P. “Should People of Color Support Animal Rights?” Journal of Animal Law, vol. 5, no. 15, 2009, pp. 15–32.