Superbowl

I can't say that I really understand animal sacrifice, as it goes opposite to a lot of my personal choice of actions, and while most of my understanding comes out of looking up things I've come across in historical fiction, there does seem to be respect for the natural world behind it.

The Ainu of Hokkaido and Sakhalin had bears and the Blakiston's Fish Owl as some of their highest animals they paid respect to. The physical body was just a disguise of their gods, and they felt if they treated the animals well, the gods would look favorably on their village and keep providing them with what they needed to survive. They would hand raise baby animals to show their care and generosity, and then sacrifice them at the end of the year.

The sacrifice was not to other gods, but to the animal itself, as a sendoff back to the realm of the gods after being shown generosity by the people. The meat and furs were a small gift from the spirit within the animal.

Again, my life experience is completely different to what theirs must have been, and I can sorta make some sense of it. From the Wiki article on the sacrifice I don't know if I'd use any of the methods they used in the drawings for a humane execution, but I can only assume it made some sense to them. I'm off to go deer hunting after Thanksgiving and then the following weekend going to an animal rehab conference to learn new things to save wild animals, so I probably don't make sense to other people sometimes either.

Native people nowadays are still doing a lot to protect what is left of our waterways, forests, and animals, so there is still a strongly implied reverence to the natural world that is more up front than it seems to be with non-indigenous people. As long as people are doing the best they can to their understanding, it's hard to ask for anything more.