By Zaydan Kabir Amanullah ’27

In “Animal Liberation,” Peter Singer argues that equal moral consideration should be extended to nonhuman animals as a result of their sentience and ability to experience enjoyment and suffering. Consider, for example, a dairy cow named Belle, who has been raised in a dairy farm to produce milk and eventually be slaughtered for her meat. Under Singer’s framework, extending equal moral consideration to Belle does not mean giving her the right to vote, but rather creating laws that serve her interests, such as reducing her suffering, which can be done by preventing her calf from being stolen from her and not sending her to the slaughterhouse when she is no longer producing milk. Central to Singer’s argument is the notion that it is “speciesist” to deny moral consideration to sentient animals simply because they are not human. He argues that species-based discrimination is an arbitrary prejudice, akin to racism or sexism, and should be rejected on the same ethical grounds. Grounding moral consideration in sentience rather than in rationality or intelligence also ensures that infants, the elderly with cognitive decline, and people with disabilities are granted equal moral standing. For Singer, there is no moral justification for valuing animal suffering less than human suffering.

In a hypothetical society where Singer’s framework forms the basis of law, the consumption of meat would be banned in order to prevent animal suffering. While this may appear morally sound to those sympathetic to Singer’s claims, I argue that such a law must include exemptions for Indigenous communities. The existence of legislation like Canada’s Indian Act, which grants tax exemptions to certain Indigenous peoples, demonstrates a legal precedent for tailoring laws to avoid harming historically marginalized communities. Even where Indigenous communities may voluntarily practice vegetarianism or veganism, formal legal carveouts that respect cultural autonomy serve to further strengthen the rights and autonomy of all Indigenous peoples. 

I argue that banning Indigenous peoples from consuming meat—on the grounds of animal sentience and sustainability—is morally reprehensible. Indigeneity, for the sake of this piece, will be defined as communities that are historically rooted in a land prior to colonization or modern state formation, and who maintain distinct spiritual, cultural, and ecological relationships with the land, developing their own traditional practices of sustainability, knowledge transmission, and cosmological belief systems. Although my analysis primarily focuses on Indigenous peoples of North America, with whom I am most familiar, I hope this piece creates broader discussion on whether Indigenous communities globally should be exempt from laws prohibiting meat consumption. 

I have begun by discussing Peter Singer’s “Animal Liberation” and the basis of the law within our hypothetical society. In the first section, I will examine how banning the consumption of meat destroys the relationship indigenous people have with the land, and how that is a larger harm to nature. The second section will address what may be Singer’s central objection to my argument: that regardless of how sacred or sustainable the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the land may be, taking the life of a sentient being still constitutes harm. I will argue that this framework is philosophically inadequate, as it fails to account for the relational, cultural, and ecological dimensions of Indigenous lifeways. Lastly, I will explore how asking indigenous peoples to give up their meat-based diets is not morally insignificant, as would be the case for other groups, and causes further harm to nature. 

To many indigenous cultures, nature is sacred in both the biological and cultural sense. For the purposes of this piece, biological sacredness refers to the attribution of sacred value to life forms that arise through natural evolutionary processes or divine forces such as God. In contrast, cultural sacredness holds that each human life is sacred because it embodies a unique creative project, marked by personal growth, distinct narratives, and cultural identity. For indigenous peoples, Nature is treated as a miracle born from their creation stories and as kin. In “Braiding Sweetgrass,” Kimmerer illustrates this ideal through describing indigenous approaches to land stewardship, ethical cultivation, and the reciprocal relationship between people and the land. According to indigenous tradition, one should never take more than what they need, and they should never take the first plant. In addition, Kimmerer’s research found that sweetgrass grew better when cultivated and harvested respectfully by indigenous peoples rather than being left alone without human contact. Perhaps the most important passage for the sake of this piece is when she discussed the hunting of animals, stating that according to the honorable harvest, indigenous peoples must “Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.” and “Sustain the ones who sustain [them] and the earth will last forever.” 

Indigenous recognition of the sacredness of land and animals is crucial, as it underscores how their hunting and gathering practices are integral to a respectful, reciprocal relationship with nature. Forcing Indigenous peoples to adopt plant-based diets would disrupt this relationship, undermining the very connection that enables them to protect and care for the land. For example, climate researcher Weicherenreider notes that in the European Arctic, the Skolt Sámi drew on their Indigenous knowledge to restore the Vainosjoki River, which had been damaged by human activity, successfully revitalizing habitats for trout, grayling, and other cold-dependent fish. Similarly, traditional Inuit hunting practices have informed adaptive management strategies, enabling scientists to integrate ecological wisdom with modern conservation techniques—such as community-based monitoring and environmental DNA databases—to guide sustainable resource management. Severing the connection between Indigenous communities and the land by restricting their practices would not only undermine these efforts but also jeopardize future initiatives that depend on their knowledge to succeed. Furthermore, preventing indigenous people from hunting increases the risk of them adopting the predominant view of nature being of primarily instrumental value, an ideology that has led us to our current ecological crisis. 

Central to this piece is the notion of sentience–a topic that I have not done enough to address. One may raise an objection to my piece, stating that regardless of how sacred and sustainable the relationship indigenous people have with nature, killing animals is still morally reprehensible because one is taking the life of a sentient being that suffers and can feel enjoyment. Prima facie, this argument can be quite compelling, as no matter how lovingly one kills a sentient being, they are still causing it suffering and going against its interest to live. In response, I argue that this logic begins to unravel when introduced to indigenous ways of conceptualizing animals. I believe that the moral status of killing a sentient being should not be solely determined by the fact of its sentience, but rather must also include the intention behind the act and the relational context. 

What’s problematic about Singer’s view is that it collapses all forms of killing for sustenance into one neat category, ignoring indigenous traditions which do not treat animals as just sentient beings, but with more significance, and kin and co-participants in a sustainable web of reciprocal obligation. In the Honorable Harvest, rules are based on accountability to both the metaphysical and physical world, with the taking of life being far more significant when you recognize the beings as nonhuman persons, with vested awareness, spirit, and intelligence. Furthermore, Kimmerer states killing a who demands something different than killing an it, with their regard of animals as kin constituting extensive harvesting regulations beyond other societies. In this worldview, the providers, that is, the deer and sturgeons, have the upper hand because they create the rules of the agreement, choosing to give their lives as long as they are respected. As displayed, indigenous hunting practices acknowledge an animal’s sentience through ritual and gratitude, preserving ecological balance through their limited scale and intention rooted in sustainability. It is one of the strongest interests of indigenous peoples to reduce the suffering felt by their kin, and Singer’s framework, one organized around modern conceptions of factory farming and slaughter en masse, does not take into account the nuance of this moral framework, which elevates animals to powerful nonhuman kin, making decisions about how and who they provide their physical bodies to. 

In Singer’s “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” he argues that individuals should have a moral duty to prevent suffering caused by famine or poverty, especially when doing so requires giving up morally insignificant things. To argue his case, he uses the case of a drowning child and what our duties should be towards them. For example, even if we are wearing an expensive suit or have an important meeting to attend, leaving the child to drown due to these aforementioned reasons is a serious moral failing, and any individual with a sense of morality would save the child if they had the ability to swim with ease. One can imagine the child to be a personification of the starving and famine-inflicted, and for the case of my argument, I want the child to be a personification of the planet. 

For non-indigenous peoples, giving up the consumption of meat constitutes a loss in the pleasure they derive from its consumption, a price that is morally insignificant in the face of saving our planet from ecological collapse. It is likened to getting one’s expensive clothes drenched to save a drowning child. But to ask indigenous people to give up meat to save the planet is not as morally insignificant, because the price they pay is the further erasure of their creation stories, along with their ways of knowing and living in harmony with the land. For example, in one of the Haudenosaunee creation stories, Skywoman falls from the sky world onto a water-covered Earth, prompting animals like the muskrat or duck to dive to the ocean’s depths to retrieve soil. One sacrifices its life in the process, bringing up the earth that becomes Turtle Island—the land on which Skywoman’s descendants, human beings, would eventually live. This narrative establishes a worldview in which hunting is understood as a reciprocal act: animals give their lives so humans may survive, and in return, humans are expected to show deep respect and gratitude. Such stories are not only foundational but also offer ethical guidance, providing spiritual comfort and moral justification for taking the lives of revered animals. As a result, one can see how creation stories are foundational to how Indigenous peoples interpret their perceived duty to the world, shaping their philosophies of land, community, and identity. Legal interventions that prevent the intergenerational transmission of these narratives harken back to historical attempts to erase Indigenous cultures, such as Canada’s residential school system, which served as a model for Nazi concentration camps. Asking indigenous people to give up meat can thus be likened to us having to cut an arm off to save the drowning child, a price rarely any of us are willing to pay. 

Central to this piece is the claim that in a society that prohibits the consumption of meat on the grounds of Singer’s sentience argument in his “Animal Liberation” article, exemptions must be made for indigenous peoples. First, I discussed how restricting the consumption of meat harms the relationship indigenous peoples have with the land, and that is a larger harm to nature. I then responded to what may be Singer’s central objection to my piece by discussing the need to expand the scope of sentience to account for the ecological, cultural, and relational dimensions of Indigenous life. Lastly, I addressed how giving up meat is not morally insignificant to indigenous people.

Contributor: Senior Editor Nason Li ’29

Photo Credit: Human Rights Watch