I'm now in El Paso, TX with my friend Katarra...she is one of the most inspiring people I know, mostly because she embodies all of the skills and knowledge that I want to know intimately. For example, her house is full of the hides of different animals she's tanned (most of which she found as roadkill, but some of which she killed herself.) She is an excellent tanner; and I've been really enjoying lounging around on deer skins that smell like the bark she uses to tan them (sometimes she also uses brains, urine, etc, depending on the type of animal she is tanning.) Besides really being into tanning she is also into ice-beaver-trapping (we watched this documentary made in the seventies last night about Cree Indians in Northern Quebec who trap beavers for a living, it was amazing, it is called the Cree Hunters of Mistassini.) Katarra is also becoming a midwife, studying here in Texas at Maternidad La Luz (Motherhood of Light,) and the main thing she has taught me so far is that midwifery and being a hunter-gatherer don't have to be worlds apart; in fact, to me and to her and to her friend Portia here, who is from Alaska and who lives on caribou meat she has hunted herself, midwifery and all the other things we love go hand in hand; we love the visceral experiences life has to offer, we love blood and guts and life and death situations; we are the type of people who need to experience new life coming into the world, as well as someone breathing his or her last breath...don't ask me why, but we are often born with a desire to explore these things.
I remember being seven and my parents had picked up a roadkill white tail deer for us to eat; they where butchering it on the kitchen table. I was really excited and wanted to help; this to me, was LIFE in all of its abundance and sadness and joy; this deer was going to become part of my body, to keep me alive longer, to provide protein to nourish and rebuild parts of myself that needed to be rebuilt. I'm sure I didn't think that deeply about it, but even as a little girl I had a sense that in a small way, I was going to become the deer; that the essence of the whitetail would be in me, making red blood cells, growing hair, fixing minuscule cuts, tears and bruises. I watched as blood covered the kitchen table, the floor, my parents. I remember realizing that deer have red blood, just as we do. I remember looking at the skinned body on the table and thinking "that deer isn't so much different then we are..."
I asked my parents if I could have the hide, to try to tan it.
"No," my mom said, "you don't know how to do it and it will just rot and be messy..." I don't know if they buried or burned it.
Since growing up, and now starting to learn to tan hides, I've learned that for most people, that is what happens; their first hide usually ends up getting messed up somehow, whether they don't work fast enough and end up letting it rot, they don't scrape all the fat off, they use an instrument that is too sharp and they puncture the hide a bunch of times, or something like that. I wish as a seven yr old, my parents had let me begin to practice on that hide, by now I'd probably be an expert, rather then a novice.
My parents only picked up a few roadkill deer when I was small, but I learned some valuable lessons from the times that they did. For one thing, I learned that roadkill isn't necessarily dirty and disgusting (thanks mom and dad!) I also learned that venison is one of the best tasting foods in the world, perhaps because deer tend to have such great diets and are so lean.
Is it wrong to kill animals for food? At my house, most of the people I live with where once vegans, now they eat roadkill and some eat dumpstered meat. They say that is ok, because they found the animals already dead, they did nothing to support death and the "death industry" as they call it. Katarra and Portia feel that it is also ok to kill a wild animal; as long as you have a good use for most of its' body. The beavers Katarra kills she eats and also uses their hides, the same with the caribou that Portia kills. Katarra says killing beavers has helped her learn about and respect the beaver more then she would have if she'd never begun trapping them; she says she is more dedicated then ever to making sure there is habitat for beavers and that beavers will continue to exist. This is what the beaver-trappers in the documentary we watched last night said as well. The Cree trappers said that because beavers where their main livelihood, they did a lot to make sure the beaver did not get over trapped and would continue to have territory to exist in. For example, they take turns hunting on each others lands; they will typically let one piece of land sit for two year after they've hunted on it before they hunt there again.
Anyway, I have a lot of ethical things to think about as far as meat goes..
Love ya,
Carrot
