Reply #18: I take the Native American viewpoint on this [View All]

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

I've done sweats and my husband is a pipe carrier in the Lakota tradition, and the vast majority of people doing Native American ceremony eat meat. They judge ALL things to be sacred, including the rocks, the trees, and the animals. The sacredness is found in everything, and lives through everything. You show your gratitutde for the sacrifice made by things to make you be able to live, to have ceremony. For example, when you build a sweatlodge, you have a special ceremony for cutting down the willows that make up the poles of the lodge. You thank the wood used in building the fire, and thank the rocks that are used to heat the lodge. You thank the plants and the animals that you eat in a thank you feast. It is all part of the whole-each thing sacrificing, living, changing, dying, starting the process over. And we see this and are thankful. Ho Metaquiatsun.