Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Research Articles
Submitted: 2023-01-12
Published: 2025-10-19

Vegan Universalism and Indigenous Food Ways

Utah Valley University
veganism animal ethics Indigenous food sovereignty Native American worldviews settler colonialism

Abstract

In this paper, I provide a reading of the recurring conflict between settler vegan claims to universalism and Indigenous rejections of this claim.  I show one way in which such rejections can be justified. I suggest that while veganism as a practice is not inherently culturally specific, settler veganism as one possible justificatory framework for this practice must be understood as directly tied to a particular cultural, socio-historical and discursive location. The further we move from this location, the more the validity and the moral pull of settler arguments for vegan practice diminishes.

References

  1. Aristarkhova, I. (2012). Thou Shall Not Harm All Living Beings: Feminism, Jainism, and Animals. Hypatia, 27(3), 636–650.
  2. Armstrong, J. (2017). Land Speaking. In S. McCall, D. Reder, D. Gaertner, & G. L’Hirondelle Hill (Eds.), Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island. Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
  3. Belcourt, B.-R. (2014). Animal Bodies, Colonial Subjects: (Re)Locating Animality in Decolonial Thought. Societies, 5(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc5010001
  4. Benatar, D. (2008). Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. Clarendon Press.
  5. Bendik-Keymer, J. (2021). Facing Mass Extinction, it is Prudent to Decolonise Lands & Laws: A Philosophical Essay on Respecting Jurisdiction. Griffith Law Review, 29(4), 561–584. https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2020.1878595
  6. Bobier, C. A. (2021). What Would the Virtuous Person Eat? The Case for Virtuous Omnivorism. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 34(3), 19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-021-09860-5
  7. Bradley, B. (2016). Is Death Bad for a Cow? In T. Višak & R. Garner (Eds.), The Ethics of Killing Animals (pp. 51–64). Oxford University Press.
  8. Bramble, B. (2021). Painlessly Killing Predators. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 38(2), 217–225. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12461
  9. Bruckner, D. W. (2019). Small-Scale Animal Agriculture. In B. Fischer (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics (pp. 198–210). Routledge.
  10. Bruckner, D. W. (2020). The Vegan’s Dilemma. Utilitas, 32(3), 350–367. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820820000060
  11. Burkhart, B. (2019). Indigenizing Philosophy Through the Land: A Trickster Methodology for Decolonizing Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futures. Michigan State University Press.
  12. Cao, D. (2014). Crimes against Animality: Animal Cruelty and Criminal Justice in a Globalized World. In B. A. Arrigo & H. Y. Bersot (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of international crime and justice studies (pp. 169–190). Routledge.
  13. Castro, E. B. V. de. (2004). Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies. Common Knowledge, 10(3), 463–484.
  14. Chang, D. (2020). Tensions in Contemporary Indigenous and Animal Advocacy Struggles: The Commercial Seal Hunt as a Case Study. In K. S. Montford & C. Taylor (Eds.), Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies (pp. 29–49). Routledge.
  15. Chen, M. Y. (2012). Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Duke University Press.
  16. Chu, S. (2019). Nonviolence through Veganism: An Antiracist Postcolonial Strategy for Healing, Agency, and Respect. In L. Wright (Ed.), Through a Vegan Studies Lens. Textual Ethics and Lived Activism (pp. 180–202). University of Nevada Press.
  17. Cochrane, A., & Cojocaru, M. (2022). Veganism as political Solidarity: Beyond ‘Ethical Veganism.’ Journal of Social Philosophy, josp.12460. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12460
  18. Coronado, R. (2004). Direct Actions Speak Louder than Words. In S. Best & A. J. Nocella (Eds.), Terrorists or freedom fighters? Reflections on the liberation of animals (pp. 178–184). Lantern Books.
  19. Coté, C. (2010). Spirits of our Whaling Ancestors: Revitalizing Makah and Nuu-chah-nulth Traditions. University of Washington Press ; UBC Press.
  20. Coté, C. (2016). “Indigenizing” Food Sovereignty. Revitalizing Indigenous Food Practices and Ecological Knowledges in Canada and the United States. Humanities, 5(3), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030057
  21. Crary, A. (2016). Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought. Harvard University Press.
  22. Curtin, D. (1991). Toward an Ecological Ethic of Care. Hypatia, 6(1), 60–74.
  23. Deckha, M. (2012). Toward a Postcolonial, Posthumanist Feminist Theory: Centralizing Race and Culture in Feminist Work on Nonhuman Animals. Hypatia, 27(3), 527–545.
  24. Deloria, V. (2003). God is Red: A Native View of Religion (3rd ed). Fulcrum Pub.
  25. Derrida, J. (2001). Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas.”. In A. Bass (Trans.), Writing and Difference (pp. 97–192). Routledge Classics.
  26. Derrida, J. (2008). The Animal That Therefore I Am (M.-L. Mallet, Trans.). Fordham University Press.
  27. Derrida, J. (2011). The Beast and the Sovereign: Volume II (M. Lisse, M.-L. Mallet, & G. Michaud, Eds.; G. Bennington, Trans.; Vol. 2). The University of Chicago Press.
  28. Dickstein, J., Dutkiewicz, J., Guha-Majumdar, J., & Winter, D. R. (2020). Veganism as Left Praxis. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2020.1837895
  29. Dotson, K. (2018). On the Way to Decolonization in a Settler Colony: Re-introducing Black Feminist Identity Politics. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 14(3), 190–199. https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180118783301
  30. Earle, M., Hodson, G., Dhont, K., & MacInnis, C. (2019). Eating with our Eyes (Closed): Effects of Visually Associating Animals with Meat on Antivegan/Vegetarian Attitudes and Meat Consumption Willingness. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22(6), 818–835. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430219861848
  31. Earthling Ed (Director). (2022, February 3). Student Confronts Vegan About Indigenous Culture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWp9qBTz1a8
  32. Edelman, M. (2014). Food Sovereignty: Forgotten Genealogies and Future Regulatory Challenges. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 41(6), 959–978. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2013.876998
  33. Erb, K.-H., Lauk, C., Kastner, T., Mayer, A., Theurl, M. C., & Haberl, H. (2016). Exploring the biophysical option Space for Feeding the World Without Deforestation. Nature Communications, 7(1), 11382. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11382
  34. Fitzgerald, A. J., Kalof, L., & Dietz, T. (2009). Slaughterhouses and Increased Crime Rates: An Empirical Analysis of the Spillover From “The Jungle” Into the Surrounding Community. Organization & Environment, 22(2), 158–184. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026609338164
  35. Francione, G. (2012). Animal Welfare, Happy Meat, and Veganism as the Moral Baseline. In D. M. Kaplan (Ed.), The Philosophy of Food (pp. 169–189). University of California Press.
  36. Francione, G. L., & Charlton, A. E. (2015). Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach.
  37. Gaard, G. (2001). Tools for a Cross-Cultural Feminist Ethics: Exploring Ethical Contexts and Contents in the Makah Whale Hunt. Hypatia, 16(1), 1–26.
  38. Gilio-Whitaker, D. (2019). As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. Beacon Press.
  39. Gruen, L. (2009). The Faces of Animal Oppression. In A. Ferguson & M. Nagel (Eds.), Dancing with Iris: The Philosophy of Iris Marion Young (pp. 161–172). Oxford University Press.
  40. Gruen, L., & Jones, R. C. (2015). Veganism as an Aspiration. In B. Bramble & B. Fischer (Eds.), The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat (pp. 153–171). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199353903.003.0010
  41. Hall, M. (2011). Indigenous Animisms, Plants Persons, and Respectful Action. In Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany (pp. 99–117). State University of New York press.
  42. Hanna, J. (2016). A Moral License to Kill?: Animal Rights and Hunting. In M. Engel & G. Comstock (Eds.), The Moral Rights of Animals (pp. 257–277). Lexington Books.
  43. Harman, E. (2011). The Moral Significance of Animal Pain and Animal Death (T. L. Beauchamp & R. G. Frey, Eds.; pp. 726–737). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195371963.013.0027
  44. Harper, A. B. (Ed.). (2010). Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and society. Lantern Books.
  45. Heldke, L. (2012). An Alternative Ontology of Food: Beyond Meataphysics. Radical Philosophy Review, 15(1), 67–88. https://doi.org/10.5840/radphilrev20121518
  46. Humane Myth FAQ: What about indigenous people who kill and eat animals, but do so in a way that respects the animal’s spirit? (n.d.). Retrieved June 15, 2022, from https://www.humanemyth.org/faq/1290.htm
  47. Jenkins, S., & Twine, R. (2014). On the Limits of Food Autonomy. Rethinking Choice and Privacy. In N. Taylor & R. Twine (Eds.), The Rise of Critical Animal Studies. From the Margins to the Center (pp. 225–240). Routledge.
  48. Jones, R. C. (2016). Veganisms. In J. Castricano & R. R. Simonsen (Eds.), Critical Perspectives on Veganism (pp. 15–39). Palgrave Macmillan.
  49. Kim, C. J. (2015). Makah Whaling and the (Non) Ecological Indian. In Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age (pp. 205–252). Cambridge University Press.
  50. Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants: Milkweed Editions.
  51. Ko, A., & Ko, S. (2017). Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters. Lantern Books.
  52. Kroeber, K. (Ed.). (2004). Native American Storytelling: A Reader of Myths and Legends. Blackwell Pub.
  53. Kymlicka, W., & Donaldson, S. (2015). Animal Rights and Aboriginal Rights. In V. Black, P. J. Sankoff, & K. Sykes (Eds.), Canadian Perspectives on Animals and the Law (pp. 159–186). Irwin Law.
  54. Leopold, A. (1949). A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. Oxford University Press.
  55. Lie, S. A. N., & Wickson, F. (2018). Trans-Ecology and Post-Sustainability. In M. Bess & D. W. Pasulka (Eds.), Posthumanism: The Future of Homo Sapiens (pp. 435–443). Macmillan Reference USA.
  56. MacAskill, A., & MacAskill, W. (2018, December 7). To truly End Animal Suffering, the Most Ethical Choice is to Kill Wild Predators (Especially Cecil the Lion). Quartz. https://qz.com/497675/to-truly-end-animal-suffering-the-most-ethical-choice-is-to-kill-all-predators-especially-cecil-the-lion/
  57. MacInnis, C. C., & Hodson, G. (2017). It ain’t Easy Eating Greens: Evidence of Bias Toward Vegetarians and Vegans from both Source and Target. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 20(6), 721–744. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430215618253
  58. McCallin, R. (2018, December 12). Native Tradition v. Militant Veganism. Lakota People’s Law Project. https://www.lakotalaw.org/news/2018-12-12/veganism
  59. McMahan, J. (2016). The Comparative Badness for Animals of Suffering and Death. In T. Višak & R. Garner (Eds.), The Ethics of Killing Animals (pp. 65–85). Oxford University Press.
  60. Mic the Vegan (Director). (2017). Why Vegan Diet Failed In Land Use Study. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcTVklSZHA4
  61. Mishori, D. (2017). Environmental Vegetarianism: Conflicting Principles, Constructive Virtues. The Law & Ethics of Human Rights, 11(2), 253–284. https://doi.org/10.1515/lehr-2017-0008
  62. Montford, K. S., & Taylor, C. (2020). Beyond Edibility: Towards a Nonspeciesist decolonial food ontology. In K. S. Montford & C. Taylor (Eds.), Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies (pp. 129–156). Routledge.
  63. Nieves, K. (2020, March 3). Vegan Activism and Anti-Indigeneity: Violating Indigenous Food Sovereignty. Terra Incognita Media. https://www.terraincognitamedia.com/features/vegan-activism-and-anti-indigenity-violating-indigenous-food-sovereignty2019
  64. Nobis, N. M. (2018). Xenotransplantation, Subsistence Hunting and the Pursuit of Health: Lessons for Animal Rights-Based Vegan Advocacy. Between the Species: A Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals, 21(1), 197–215.
  65. Nocella II, A. J., Sorensen, J., Socha, K., & Matsuoka, A. (Eds.). (2014). Defining Critical Animal Studies: An Intersectional Social Justice Approach for Liberation. Peter Lang.
  66. Noll, S., & Murdock, E. G. (2019). Whose Justice is it Anyway? Mitigating the Tensions Between Food Security and Food Sovereignty. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-019-09809-9
  67. Patel, R. (2009). Food sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(3), 663–706. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150903143079
  68. Patterson, C. (2002). Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. Lantern Books.
  69. Peters, C. J., Picardy, J., Darrouzet-Nardi, A. F., Wilkins, J. L., Griffin, T. S., & Fick, G. W. (2016). Carrying capacity of U.S. agricultural land: Ten diet scenarios. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 4, 000116. https://doi.org/10.12952/journal.elementa.000116
  70. Plumwood, V. (2000). Integrating Ethical Frameworks for Animals, Humans, and Nature: A Critical Feminist Eco-Socialist Analysis. Ethics and the Environment, 5(2), 285–322.
  71. Plumwood, V. (2002). Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. Routledge.
  72. Plumwood, V. (2008). Tasteless: Towards a Food-Based Approach to Death. Environmental Values, 17(3), 323–330. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327108X343103
  73. Polish, J. (2016). Decolonizing Veganism: On Resisting Vegan Whiteness and Racism. In J. Castricano & R. R. Simonsen (Eds.), Critical Perspectives on Veganism (pp. 373–391). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33419-6_12
  74. Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing Food’s Environmental Impacts Through Producers and Consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987–992. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216
  75. Randhawa, S. (2017, November 1). Animal rights activists and Inuit clash over Canada’s Indigenous food traditions. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/01/animal-rights-activists-inuit-clash-canada-indigenous-food-traditions
  76. Robinson, M. (2013). Veganism and Mi’kmaq legends. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 33(1), 189–196.
  77. Robinson, M. (2014). Animal Personhood in Mi’kmaq Perspective. Societies, 4(4), 672–688. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc4040672
  78. Robinson, M. (2016). Is the Moose Still My Brother if We Don’t Eat Him? In J. Castricano & R. R. Simonsen (Eds.), Critical Perspectives on Veganism (pp. 261–284). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33419-6_12
  79. Scarborough, P., Appleby, P. N., Mizdrak, A., Briggs, A. D. M., Travis, R. C., Bradbury, K. E., & Key, T. J. (2014). Dietary greenhouse Gas Emissions of Meat-Eaters, Fish-Eaters, Vegetarians and Vegans in the UK. Climatic Change, 125(2), 179–192. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1169-1
  80. Singer, P. (2011). Practical Ethics (3rd ed). Cambridge University Press.
  81. Sobrevila, C. (2008). The Role of Indigenous Peoples in Biodiversity Conservation: The Natural but Often Forgotten Partners. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank. https://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTBIODIVERSITY/Resources/RoleofIndigenousPeoplesinBiodiversityConservation.pdf
  82. Springmann, M., Godfray, H. C. J., Rayner, M., & Scarborough, P. (2016). Analysis and Valuation of the Health and Climate Change Cobenefits of Dietary Change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(15), 4146–4151. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1523119113
  83. Stănescu, V. (2010). “Green” Eggs and Ham? The Myth of Sustainable Meat and the Danger of the Local. Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 8(1–2), 9–32.
  84. Stănescu, V. (2013). Why “Loving” Animals is Not Enough: A response to Kathy Rudy, Locavorism, and the Marketing of “Humane” Meat. The Journal of American Culture, 36(2), 100–110.
  85. Steiner, G. (2013). Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism. Columbia University Press.
  86. TallBear, K. (2017). Beyond the Life/Not-Life Binary: A Feminist-Indigenous Reading of Cryopreservation, Interspecies Thinking, and the New Materialisms. In J. Radin & E. Kowal (Eds.), Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World (pp. 179–202). The MIT Press.
  87. TallBear, K. (2019). Caretaking Relations, Not American Dreaming. Kalfou, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.15367/kf.v6i1.228
  88. Vandermoere, F., Geerts, R., De Backer, C., Erreygers, S., & Van Doorslaer, E. (2019). Meat Consumption and Vegaphobia: An Exploration of the Characteristics of Meat Eaters, Vegaphobes, and Their Social Environment. Sustainability, 11(14), 3936. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11143936
  89. Via Campesina. (2007). The Declaration of Nyéléni. https://nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290
  90. Wadiwel, D. (2018, October 17). Food Sovereignty Without Animal Liberation? Review of A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism: Understanding the Political Economy of What we Eat (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017) by Eric Holt-Giménez. Animal Liberation Currents. https://animalliberationcurrents.com/food-sovereignty-without-animal-liberation/
  91. Watt-Cloutier, S. (2015). The Right to be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet. Allen Lane.
  92. Weis, T. (2013). The Ecological Hoofprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock. Zed Books.
  93. Whitt, L., & Clarke, A. W. (2019). North American Genocides: Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism, and International Law. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108348461
  94. Whyte, K. P. (2018a). Indigenous Science (Fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral Dystopias and Fantasies of Climate Change Crises. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1(1–2), 224–242. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848618777621
  95. Whyte, K. P. (2018b). Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Injustice. Environment and Society, 9(1), 125–144. https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2018.090109
  96. Whyte, K. P., Caldwell, C., & Schaefer, M. (2018). Indigenous Lesson about Sustainaility are not Just for “All Humanity.” In J. Sze (Ed.), Sustainability: Approaches to environmental justice and social power (pp. 149–179). New York University Press.
  97. Whyte, K. P., & Cuomo, C. J. (2017). Ethics of Caring in Environmental Ethics: Indigenous and Feminist Philosophies. In S. M. Gardiner & A. Thompson (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics (pp. 234–247). Oxford University Press.
  98. Wildquetzal (Director). (2021, March 19). Untitled TikTok post by Wildquetzal. https://www.tiktok.com/@wildquetzal/video/6941409301726645509?sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=6889794967922050566&is_from_webapp=v1&is_copy_url=0
  99. Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240
  100. Yunkaporta, T. (2020). Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking can Save the World (First edition). HarperOne.