In my day in University, starting in 1967, most European or Canadian professors assumed we had nothing to learn from Indigenous people. I did not realize it at the time, but Professor Moriarty was different. He was an Irishman teaching English literature. Somewhere somehow he learned better. He learned we could learn a lot from indigenous people. it took me many years to learn better as well.

Professor John Moriarty tells a story about Inuit [though he calls them Eskimos as they were once referred to]. They stand at a breathing hole in the ice waiting for a seal to arise. Once they saw the water rippling, they knew there was a seal and they would launch their harpoon.

When the seal was captured and killed they would cut out the liver and eat it “Eucharistically.”  It was a religious ceremony to eat that seal’s liver together. Each hunter took a part. The indigenous people believe that the animal had offered itself up to the hunters. An animal that did not want to be caught would not be caught. While eating the liver raw they would talk to the spirit of the seal and thank it for offering itself as food to the hunters. They believed that after that the animal would take upon a new body. What a beautiful way to relate to prey. Is this pure fancy? Indigenous people believe it. Are they wrong?

The eucharist meant that God was being eaten.  Is this barbaric? Or is it sublime? In the Christian tradition you can only sin against God or man. You cannot sin against a blade of grass. You cannot sin against a cow about to be slaughtered. That is barbarism. That is a barbaric attitude to nature. That is why we need a new attitude to nature.

Christians should admit, says Moriarty, that

“you can sin against a blade of grass. You can sin against the Aids Virus. To look at a tree and see only cubic feet of timber that is to sin against the tree. When you see anything as smaller than it is, you are sinning against it. When you see something only with an economic eye you are sinning against it.”

This brought Moriarty back to the buffalo dance or buffalo song. The Blackfoot say that death is not final. You can go back and the spirit is left intact. The. Spirit is not wounded by the spear [that wounded the buffalo]. It can take on a new body of its choosing.

So too the buffalo did not damage the land.  The land learned to live with the millions of hoofprints and poop. You could say the land was blessed. And so are we.