This past December, I spent two weeks in South Africa, where I experienced their staunch water conservation efforts and learned about the environmental hazards threatening Kruger National Park. Something drew me in and struck with me here. I saw the effects right in front of me. When traveling through the park, it took a while to come across an animal that was not a kudu or impala. There was nothing like the excitement I felt when we spotted a lion and its cub or a herd of grazing elephants. It was like a drop in my heart. Coming into contact with the wild all on my own. I was no longer in the man-made parks within New York City’s concrete jungle but face to face with a wild animal. When I learned about the wide scale rhino poaching threatening the rhino population of Kruger, it all made sense. Not only had I saw the void in the park but I actually felt their absence. Every time we went out on a drive, we would wait patiently for the rhino. Though, I did not get to experience the same excitement. This is what searching for endangered species is like.
Upon reading Linda Hogan’s novel, Power, I tried to understand Ama and the Taiga people’s fascination with the panther. My best attempt was relating it to my recent experience with the rhino while taking into consideration the Taiga people’s deeper spiritual connection. But in my attempt to best understand, I tried to relate my impatience and excitement to Ama. She had been searching for the panther her whole life and now it had come to her. But why then did she kill it?
Hunting, poaching, capturing an animal, you name the game-hunting practice, I will never understand it. When I saw the direct influences of the poachers that entered Kruger from the Mozambique boarder to poach rhinos and sell their horns for a living, I was very unsettled. Omishto’s original reaction to Ama’s actions was similar to mine. Bewildered and upset. How could she kill the innocent panther that was so important to her. “Oh Ama what have you gone and done,” as Omishto says (Hogan 67). However, Hogan’s novel helped me to better understand how these practices can be intimately related to one’s religion and culture. Ama’s compassion for the animals and connection to her tribe sensitized me to the ways that hunting may be part of one’s religious traditions. The New York Times article regarding the court case of 1987 helped me to further differentiate between the practices of the Native American people and the poachers.
”if the white man had the same commitment to preserving wildlife as the Indians, there would be no endangered species.”
This was exactly it. The Florida panther is not endangered because the Taiga people have hunted it for thousands of years. In reality, the panther is on our endangered species list due to the construction of urban cities and infiltration of human beings in areas that once were home to the panther. Florida’s new shopping malls and highways are the cause of this danger. These are the costs of capitalism and a society that only wishes to see growth in its economy. This is true for the African poacher. Poor and helpless, he sacrifices his life entering into territories fenced in barbed wire. He is the product of a capitalist system that forces us to become wage-earners and exchange goods. Had it not been for his family, his government, and his society, he would not have to endanger the rhino.
Ama kills the panther when it is sick, old, and hungry. She preserves the integrity of her culture and willingly sacrifices herself for the her people. But her sacrifice is not like that of the poacher. She does not exchange the panther as a commodity. She uplifts his spirit to her people and follows the necessary rituals to save her nation from extinction. What the article makes clear on the surface level is that hunting and protecting the panther is part of the religious narrative of the Native Americans, but the book supplements our understanding by exposing the nuances of this relationship and deep devotion. This type of “commitment” that Native Americans have is sufficient for them to hunt sustainably and follow their culture. While one may argue that killing animals will endanger the species, the Native Americans lived here long before us and sustained this lifestyle independently. It is the values within the capitalist system and behind modernization that lack this sensitivity and threaten the livelihood of the panther or just as equally, the black rhino. This is why Mr. Rogow refers to the hypothetical “if the white man had the same commitment.” The “white man’s” failing commitment is evident in the conflict between his values and actions like passing the Endangered Species Act. When passing this law, he fails to actually target the activity of illegal poachers, human pollution, and urban development. But instead he threatens the vitality of the Native American culture and their right to religious freedom.
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