An excellent response from Kumminista on Tiktok to the ‘veganism is colonisation’ video doing the rounds at the moment. Thank you to @thatsillyfucknvegan for bringing it to my attention. You can also find my own analysis of the video below:
It pains me to see Tumblr users who seem to have zero concern for indigenous issues in any other context using the work of activists like the one featured in this video, as a shield for their own personal consumption habits which have absolutely nothing to do with indigenous sovereignty.
I can understand where this person’s conception of veganism is coming from, since this is how veganism is discussed pretty much constantly in public spaces. I understand why they believe vegans want indigenous people to be food dependent, or why they seem to assume that vegans are interested in entering indigenous spaces to tell them that they can’t practice their own culture anymore. I will explain why the idea that this view represents mainstream veganism is a misconception, but I also understand where that misconception comes from.
Firstly, is the opening line that veganism is a byproduct of colonisation. Now, this isn’t really explained so it’s difficult to unpack. Veganism is a product of colonisation in the sense that it largely developed in consumer socieites, yes, but so did factory farming, and so did our modern practices of buying pre-packed meat from the supermarket, so our tech dependence, so did pretty much all of our modern lifestyle practices. This is really just an acknowledgement of the roots of veganism, and I have no real issue with that.
I believe that the rest of this argument is a result of a misunderstanding of what veganism as a movement is trying to achieve, or at the very least, it generalises us based on the words and actions of a vocal minority within the movement. “Veganism is the next phase of creating food dependence.” Who is pushing for that, exactly? Which vegans specifically are trying to do that? Is this supposed to be our hidden agenda or what this person considers to be the unfortunate consequence of a more vegan world? Again, this unfortunately is not explained.
The goals of veganism as an ideology are explicit, and they very definitely don’t include anything about food dependence. In fact, many organisations like Food Not Bombs and The Food Action Network, devoted to food sovereignty, actively promote veganism on the grounds that growing plants directly tends to be more accessible than relying on animal agriculture.
Part of the problem here is that indigenous food sovereigty is already disrupted. Veganism didn’t do that, colonisers and ranchers did, the same ranchers who now supply animal products on that same stolen land. The World Bank has identified animal agriculture as the key driver of deforestation in the Amazon.
We talk about how we should ‘give the land back’, but why are none of us asking who actually owns that land? Is it vegans? For a start, 91% of land deforested since 1970 had been converted to cattle ranching. It isn’t just the land at risk either, indigenous people in Brazil are literally being hunted by cattle ranchers. But vegans are the problem, because we boycott animal agriculture? We aren’t the ones seizing indenous land, but the mining industry and corporate animal agriculture interests are.
One of the most significant challenges to food sovereigty everywhere is climate change, and animal agriculture is one of the key contributors to that, too. Even the most conservative estimate from the World Resources Institute holds that animal agriculture is responsible for 14% of all human caused greenhouse emissions, with the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation estimating as high at 18%.
According to even the lowest of these estimates, this means that animal agriculture accounts for more greenhouse emissions than the combined total of every car, truck, train, aeroplane and ship on the planet. We all know that climate change disproportionately impacts remote and indigenous populations, and we also know the key industries causing it. it isn’t vegans.
I’d also challenge the notion that veganism is born out of disconnection to the land. Why is meat eating the only lifestyle that can be counted as connected to the land? Small-scale, eco-friendly farming, that isn’t connected to the land? Growing vegetables in your back garden is ‘disconnected’ and in some way unnatural? The Jainist monks practicing ahisma and growing their own food are disconnected? The ecolological communes subsisting on nothing but food they grow sustainably themselves, they are disconnected?
Vegans exist all over the world and come from all kinds of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, many of us value nature and some practice veganism precisely because of our reverance for the natural world and it’s inhabitants. Keep in mind that the vast majority of people reblogging this don’t eat animals in a way that even vaguely resembles a natural process, and certainly not an ecologically sustainable one.
If you’re using this video to argue in defence of your indigenous hunting practicing then that is one thing, but using it to defend buying meat produced under an industrialised system in a consumer culture? Is buying the plastic wrapped corpse of an animal you never even saw, much less killed yourself, really any more ‘connected’ than buying plants?
Of course when you search for ‘best places to be vegan’ you get a list of cities. If you search for ‘best places to buy pizza’ you’ll probably find cities - there are just wider food options in cities. I’m not quite sure what this particular section is trying to say, but if it’s that veganism is not possible if you don’t live in a city, this is demonstrably false, as proven by any one of the millions of vegans who don’t live in a city, or don’t live in a western consumer culture at all. Vegan staples are things like lentils, chickpeas, beans, nuts, fruits, vegetables, pasta, rice, these are some of the cheapest and most widely available food products. Veganism doesn’t require soy bacon or faux cheese, it just requires plant proteins, and there are plenty of those.
Why should a plant-based diet create more food dependence than a meat based diet, anyway? When we’re talking about hunting for a significant portion of your caloric intake this makes sense, but for most people watching and sharing this video, the way they source food is a far-cry from ecological indigenous hunting practices. While this will not be the case for subsistence hunting communities, for most of the people reading this who don’t belong to those communities, surely growing chickpeas or lentils will be more accessible than raising cows for beef and dairy? This point is never explained.
While we’re on the topic of food dependence, why aren’t we talking about meat production? Why aren’t we talking about indigenous land being stolen to grow animal feed or to use as grazing land? Isn’t that dependence? Why aren’t we talking about the fact that 1/3 of the planet’s arable land surface is devoted to animal agriculture? Why aren’t we talkling about the fisheries emptying oceans, resulting in indigenous peoples not being able to subsist on the fish they have caught for thousands of years? Hunters paying to hunt game in indigenous lands? The ranchers brutally murdering indigenous leaders? Why do we never seem to talk about any of that? Why do vegans specifically, represent the threat to indigenous sovereignty?
Of course, a plant-based diet is not accessible to all people in all spaces, and I imagine many indigenous people will fall into that category, but we must not forget that veganism is not a diet. This is the key thing that most of these critiques miss, veganism is always discussed in dietary terms. Veganism is not an issue of food morality or purity; it is a social justice issue. Vegans believe that animals deserve to have some fundamental rights, such as the right to a life free from exploitation and unnecessary killing.
This is the core of what veganism is - our diet is simply a byproduct of our opposition to the unnecessary exploitation and slaughter of sentient beings. Veganism requires us to avoid animal exploitation as far as is possible and practicable. If you exist in a space where it is not possible to eat 100% plant-based then you can still be vegan - because veganism is not just a plant-based diet, and it certainly isn’t a diet we are trying to force on indigenous people in order to create food dependence.
There is also the underlying assumption behind this entire argument, which is that vegans want to force veganism on everyone, including indigenous peoples. Now, I very much understand where this comes from as an idea, and I am not criticising the person in this video for that assumption. As I said, this is how vegans are talked about pretty much constantly and our actual views are almost never aired.
However, this ideology is absolutely not part of veganism, and I am not aware of any serious vegan activist or any respected AR organisation who are arguing for forcing indigenous people to be vegan, or even any non-indigenous activist who views advocating in indigenous spaces as any kind of priority. I am sure that there are vegans who do think this, but to present this idea as ‘veganism,’ as if it is part and parcel of our ideology, is not an accurate representative of what our movement is about - not even close.
A great many vegans take the same view I do, which is that indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination and is not the place of any non-indigenous vegans to try to ‘enforce’ veganism in spaces we do not belong. I object to exploiting and killing animals on the grounds that I believe animals should have fundamental rights, but I make an exception for subsistenance hunting (a mainstream vegan view) and I am not pushing that ideology on indigenous people - again I don’t know of any serious activist who is.
This idea of the vegans marching on indigenous lands to force them into being vegan is just a charicature at this point. There are bad actors in every movement, and I’ve no doubt that there are plenty of vegans who fail to apply intersectional principles in their activism. But in terms of veganism as an intersectional movement, we are not talking to indigenous communities living off the land here, we are talking to people who already subsist in industrialised food systems, and we’re asking them to make more ethical choices. That’s all.
If you’re interested in engaging with what actual vegans have to say about food sovereigty and indigenous issues, as opposed to what you’re all being told we have to say about it, I have a tag devoted to it here. I would also recommend checking out some of the work of Dr. A. Breeze Harper on intersectional veganism as a tool of decolonisation, or any of the excellent essays by Christopher Sebastian on this topic.
To finish, I’d just like to offer a word to all of you reblogging that post as a means to argue that you shouldn’t go vegan, despite the fact that you absolutely do subsist entirely from an industrialised food system. This video makes a lot of really valid points, but it’s a specific issue that a specific individual from a specific community has with what they perceive veganism to be. It is not your reason to not go vegan, or to hate us, or to criticse veganism as an ideology.
You don’t eat cheeseburgers because you’re concerned about indigenous food sovereigty, so please stop using the valid concerns of indogenous people as a smokescreen for your own, entirely self-motivated choices.
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