4@ - Sunday, January 19, 1992 ~- North Shore News Vegans battle Spain and Spam THE OFFICIAL battle was with Spain. The unofficial battle was with Spam. Half the people on board the Sea Shepherd were natives. Hunt- ers. Fishermen. Trappers. These weren’t the folks who wander into a supermarket to get their frozen chicken. In fact, few of the Gitksan, Wet’Suwet’en, Chilcotin or Shuswap fellows on board ever ate chicken. Mostly it was rabbit — caught in their own traps. . For the militant vegetarians on board, there was a problem. Normally, the veggies inhabit the top of the moral food chain. They are convinced among themselves of their superiority to meat-eaters. This is a given, particularly with vegans, the animal-rights nard core. On an average Sea Shepherd voyage, out at sea pursuing drift- netters or sealers or whalers, the vegans were guaranteed the posi-. tion of being the most ‘‘radical”’ people on board. They controlled the engine room and the galley. Because they were volunteers, Captain Paul Watson, himself a meat-eater, couldn't fire them, nor could he force them to cook meat for other crew members. Thus, everyone was subjected to a totally vegetarian diet. | It was veggie fascism. Veggie fundamentalism. Veggie Jesuits, | called the vegans. ‘‘Green Robes.”” They didn't like that. On an individual basis, | had no difficulty with any of them. 1 don't mind someone wearing a " T-shirt telling me how many thousands of cows die each day to keep me in hamburgers. After all, it’s something I have an obligation to think about. I just hate being treated as an inferior schmuck, as though | hada’t thought about all this. If I have come to the conclusion that [ have a right to eat meat, there may in fact be a terrific ra- tionalization behind it. Maybe even a philosophy or belief system. For the natives on board, the experience of being treated as in- ferior schmucks was nothing new, of course. They were quite used to it especially coming from white people. However, they were also used to being the radicals. And being perceived as the radicals. You begin to appreciate the ex- quisite dilemma facing the vegans? As ultra-liberals at heart, they knew they couldn’t look down on native people. As eco-activists, they had to respect the natives’ front-line role in the defence of what remains of wild nature. As eco-freaks, they also vaguely but intuitively sensed the ‘‘Native Way” was ecologically superior to industrialism, and if they had the wherewithal, they’d go back to living like natives themselves, in the name of saving Mother Earth. Except that, well, gee, the natives were into killing animals, not just shooting them and cook- ing their bodies and eating them, but trapping them, for God’s sake! (Trapping being the ultimate Bob Hunter STRICTLY PERSONAL eco-liberal Nightmare Ou Elm Street.) The vegans were used to guilting-out white animal-lovers about eating meat, but they didn’t have a system perfected for guilting-out Indians. How could any white person guilt-out an In- digenous Person, for heaven’s sake? The vegans, I believe, represent iiberalism carried to its logical conclusion — namely the exten- sion of egalitarian rights to the non-human realm. Yet, at the same time, whether they wanted to admit it or not, for even the vegans, nature-lovers that they are, Indians are suppos- ‘ed to be Elder Brothers, custo- dians of an age-old harmonic wisdom. Meat-eating Elder Brothers, as it turned out. Unregentantly car- nivorous. Barbarians, eh? The poor vegans, unable to despise the noble Indians, turned their moral loathing on the gringo . meat-eating faction on board the Sea Shepherd, your correspondent among them. My stash of Spam under my bunk was the worst-kept ship secret. It symbolized the political divisions. The natives were far too polite and well brought-up to mention the obvious, which was that this voyage was supposed to be all aboui objecting to the values im- posed on the Americans by Euro- pean imperialists, starting 500 years ago. It was supposed to be a protest against the destruction of cultures that had been around on these continents for thousands of years. Yet here were a bunch of white people calling themselves ‘*vegans’? — which couldn’t be any more meaningless and weird than aliens identifying themselves as ‘‘Spaniards’’ half a millenium ago on the beaches of the Carib- bean — once again preaching a superior way of life, a greater, more compelling moral system; once again trying to force the In- dians to do things the white man’s way. , No wonder so many of the natives had been throwing up over the sides. It wasn’t sea-sickness, after all. 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