*This critique was submitted to Wild Resistance May 9th. There was no reply.

“Patriarchy and ecofeminism are distinct from sex or gender. Patriarchy is evidenced in behaviors based on dogma of exploitive domination over others and Earth that assault primal attachments. Ecofeminism is liberation from civilizing agencies, agendas, roles, expectations and biases, reawakening organic lifeway centered on ethos of interconnection in thriving habitat.” Ria

From the secluded intersection of Vegan & Primitivist I’ve struggled to submit an unrestrained essay to the impressive and inspiring anarcho-primitivist journal Wild Resistance 1 not offensive to their framing of humans as natural hunters. Then I stumbled on the film Into the Forest 2 and was shocked I’d never heard it mentioned in anprim circles. The book3 on which the film was based was even more intensely provocative. Side-stepping the contentious vegan-hunter divide, I wrote a review4 of the film and the book for submission.

Their only reply left me first bewildered, then driven to explode the vegan ecofeminist dam:

“The sole reason that I don’t recommend this book anymore and it pains me not to because otherwise it’s such a fucking good book is because of the head scratching incest scene. I so wish she hadn’t done that, it was unnecessary and will remain the reason I don’t include the book in my recommendations.”5

By ‘incest scene’ he’s referring to a page in the book where the older teen sisters make love.6 The passage is not graphic. The book is listed as ‘young adult’ literature (i.e. appropriate for teens). This sister love is not pedophilia or nonconsensual, and obviously couldn’t result in a deformed pregnancy. Was this book behind the film shown in mainstream theaters truly too ‘head scratching’ for an anprim journal editor to embrace? Civilization imposes a dizzying array of morality-based rules, and it’s so very odd to see primitivists not only blindly obeying, but policing them. The sex scene reaction is just the opener exposing reflexive imposition of moral authority that is patriarchy incarnate in anprim authority.

Into the Forest’ s Controversial Sex Scene Unplugged

Just as in the Indian film Fire7where the sexual relationship between sisters-in-law is an integral first step to liberate themselves from civilization’s customs such as male-female pair bonding entrapment,8 so too is the sisters sexual intimacy in Into the Forest liberation from civilization’s boot on basic instincts. That “unnecessary” scene is pivotal in signaling just how far the sisters are removing themselves from modern culture as they choose wild life, how they are unflinchingly shedding their chains of indoctrinated morality. After this scene they move past their grief and yearning, extinguishing all lingering hopes for return to civilization. Their rewilding begins in earnest. But if you are programmed to feel deep disgust for lesbian, teen or sister sex, you may miss the deeper meanings behind the physical act.

Have humans always placed restrictions on ‘incest’? In Us, Relatives: Scaling and Plural Life in a Forager World9 anthropologist Nurit Bird-David details how in the most common early human grouping still existing to this day, small scale foragers’ core pairing strategy is intermarriage between siblings sets through generations, including first and second cousin marriages. She reveals how this has gone negligently unreported by anthropologists due to western civilization and large scale culture bias. “Were three married couples from two sets of siblings to reside in an apartment building in a modest-sized town, their pluriconnections would stand out. They would not pass unnoticed; in fact, they might be the talk of the town.”10 Resisting bias against natural sexuality, in a booklet of essays and online comment threads Child Sexuality, feminist Chris Bearchell’s reprint from Coming On (c/o Queer Anarchist Network)11 tells true stories of teen women initiating lesbian sex with older women, in the end demonstrating how civilization’s morals and laws “are means of control that back up the more insidious, less formal controls of the family structure and socialization.”12 Have humans always placed restrictions on youth sex? In an excerpt from his book Sexual Friendship: A New Dynamic in Relationships anthropologist Richard Walters reports on the modern myth of childhood juxtaposed with freedom and long term happiness from native children having sexual relationships, including the Mangaia of Polynesia, the Maori, Eskimos, and the Lepcha.13

On what grounds do anprims think they are justified to cherry pick which parts of primitive lifeways are worthy of return? How can humans liberate themselves from civilization without liberating their sexuality? Could it be that anprims are so blinded to their own subliminal clinging to modern prescripts that they unintentionally intend to take patriarchal conventions with them into rewilding? Do they subconsciously or conscientiously believe sexuality in rewilding should be limited to adult heterosexual monogamous pair bonding, anything else still shunned? Will they repress children’s sexuality with the authoritarian shaming and punishment of today’s conventional parents and society?

While incidences of gorilla lesbian sexuality were only recently recorded in 201614, sibling and youth sex seem yet to be substantively scientifically studied. The reason for the negligent reluctance to study these topics may be that gorillas are too much like humans, making it too uncomfortably contrary to contemporary cultural normative. Even people who see through the veil don’t want the controversy; affiliation with taboos could have expulsive implications. Contrarily, feminist Shere Hite’s studies and published reports reveal raw realities on human sexuality such as in The Hite Report on the Family: Growing Up Under Patriarchy.15 While for decades and to this day she boldly persists sharing stories behind the veil often focusing on female sexuality, her liberation work remains despised by patriarchal people and groups.16 But refusal to take on hardest topics to avoid stirring machismo’s beehive leaves an academic style journal entrenched in itself.

Banishing Rationale Banishing Vegans

Paralleling this WR bias suppression, a friend attempted to submit biting prose to WR and editor Kevin Tucker replied that they don’t want anything vegan. (personal communication, April 25, 2019) Huh? A nutshell of what I gather from Tucker’s logic proceeds like this: There is no proof of any vegan primitive person ever, which serves as absolute refutation of any vegan primitivism ever, and it is even possible that early humans hunted before known weapons by long distance outrunning prey into exhaustion (and expending ample energy eating the animal’s flesh raw?), though it is not possible to leave evidence of persistence hunting because no signs remain, so if you suggest anything other than hunting humans I’ll quickly dismiss it and stand in the way of others hearing it as well. If there is no evidence of either persistence hunting or vegan primitivism, is patriarchal man-the-hunter bias revealed in attachment to one and aversion to the other?

Despite that it cannot be confirmed, Tucker raises the idea of long distance foot runner hunting origins in his Black and Green Review No 3 article Hooked on a feeling: the loss of community and the rise of addiction, writing that persistence hunting is perhaps humans’ earliest form of hunting, it was widespread amongst hunter-gatherers, but it cannot be proven only because it leaves no tangible forensics.17 In Origins of the human predatory pattern: the transition to large-animal exploitation by early hominins, paleoscientists propose exploitation of large mammals began with pounding stones scavenging bone marrow pre-dating flaked stone tools required to cut flesh by a million years or more. After earliest bipedal primates added scavenging to their long-lasting foraging dietway, they were only able to access parts of killed animals that predators and other scavengers were unable to reach, fatty bone marrow and brains. Scavenging early humans left evidence of smashed skulls and other bones.18

When flat fingernailed biologically herbivore humans19 first hunted they’d need a tool to cut flesh. If first human hunters were persistence hunters, after outrunning mammals deer sized and larger in grasslands and savannas they would have needed to cut the animal’s flesh quickly, not just to prevent rot but to avoid humans’ own predators. During times some humans first hunted they were also prey to ferocious fauna like saber toothed cats who could not only move in on humans’ kills but make a meal of the human as well.20 During this time of mighty megafauna is it not a stretch of imagination that humans would risk running out in the open in midday heat, a behavior that not only exposes them but could trigger fiercer famished predators’ instincts to charge in? Early humans more likely walked softly as foxes, taking refuge in wooded shadows and nooks with a sense of vulnerability lingering lifelong. Their earliest long distance running was running for their lives from predators,21 or passively scavenging by following vultures, taking cover in a position to observe from a safe distance if the predator leaves behind a part of their meal, and when all is calm, stealthily running in to snatch up bones and carrying the marrow containers to a concealed spot for processing and eating.22

In the book From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport, David Carrier proposes in his chapter The running-fighting dichotomy and the evolution of aggression in hominids that it was invention of weapons that allowed early humans to shift from face-to-face fighting to long distance running. Hominids’ shift from arboreal to terrestrial freed their hands to hold weapons such as rocks and branches for male-male skirmishes.23 In a few million years adding scavenged bone marrow fat (not tissue) into the diet grew brain size24 sparking a new creativity, updating weapons from simple sticks and stones technologies to wooden clubs and spears with sharpened tips or later stone arrows. Scavenging fat led to the big-brained inventive human. Hunting came after.

Some speculate that humans’ first hunts were ambushing in groups from trees, lying in wait for lone large mammals to stroll into their trap area, then jumping down to beat them with clubs. Even weaponless ambush-chasing-trapping strategy would require a killing weapon and cutting tool in the end. Stampeding large mammals such as ancient horses, rhinos and bison off cliffs is not persistence hunting, and fire was used to initiate the herds into stampede.25 But what is the significance of pinpointing when and how humans first strategically killed other animals?

In her article Evidence for meat-eating by early humans, paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner notes “Soon after butchery marks were recognized on Early Stone Age fossils, articles on the ‘hunting or scavenging debate’ in which hunting is implicitly viewed as behaviorally superior to and more ‘modern’ than scavenging increasingly proliferated in the literature.”26 Craving to perceive primate humans as natural hunters can be interpreted by those who retain innate compassion for animals as speciesism, an exploitive domination over others that assaults wild co-existence and connections. Evidence of original lifeways is cherry picked to match points of view in such a way that exposes predispositions. Would it mean anything to Tucker if there was indisputable evidence of early human vegans? Do anprims embrace other earlier human behaviors, like rape, cannibalism or infanticide?27 An ecofeminst perspective sees primate human ‘progressions’ in hunting as fomenting patriarchal supremacy over others, concurrently dividing sexes in specializations, hierarchy and roles. Rise of human hunters simmered a long while then boiled into altering and dominating entire bioregions, colonizing the planet, then civilization in its current concentrated manifestation.

Early Humans’ Step Outside Habitat Connectivity

Paradoxically, the rise of the ‘natural’ human hunter accompanies the rise of the human path out of nature. While acknowledging that some foragers sometimes eat animals, if primate humans have a diet mainstay choice between foraging plants or killing animals, what are their selection’s implications on the nature of who they are, and their habitat role? Does hierarchy, domestication and civilization stem from division of labor, such as by sexes, and from speciesism? If so, did civilization have roots in earliest hunting humans? What is the human animal habitat range? What provokes humans into overstepping their habitat boundaries? Acknowledging that it is natural for carnivores and omnivores to hunt, with humans being herbivores in biology28, is the intrinsic sense of compassion for animals fully intact for humans who are omnivorous in behavior? Is there a direct correlation between some humans honing hunting weaponry and strategies, and humans degrading and colonizing the planet?29

While foraging humans require an intimate familiarity with plants and mushrooms to subsist, hunting animals does not involve the same risks of toxins and is feasible in colder weather shifts outside humans’ wild habitat. In essence, once humans refined killing large mammals, they could combine that capability with taming and herding to exploit animals as walking larders.30 How does herding animals into new territories compare to hunting wild animals already inhabiting the new territories? Both had and have a harder environmental impact than foraging.31

In his article Tucker gives detailed insight into how the traditional life of the semi-acculturated Rarámuri (Tarahumara) Indians in the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains of Mexico has been impacted by waves of colonization.32 A bioregions’ last pristine state is typically considered to be the time of earliest remaining human inhabitation, such as in the study. RaráMuri Bird Knowledge and Environmental Change in the Sierra Tarahumara, Chihuahua, Mexico.33 But what was the habitat condition before and during initial human encroachments? In her article Beyond Multispecies Ethnography: Engaging with Violence and Animal Rights in Anthropology, anthropologist Helen Kopnina critiques radical anthropology thusly:

Anthropologists have mediated between discriminated communities and outsiders… But can anthropological advocacy be applied to the case of violence against nonhumans? …human and nonhuman lives are entangled and emplaced within wider ecological relationships, converging in the so-called multispecies ethnography, but failing to account for exploitation. Reflecting on this omission, this article discusses the applicability of engaged anthropology to the range of issues from the use of nonhumans in… food production industry, to habitat destruction, and in broader contexts involving violence against nonhumans. Concluding that the existing forms of anthropological engagement are inadequate in dealing with the massive scale of nonhuman abuse, this article will suggest directions for a radical anthropology that engages with deep ecology, animal rights,… and ecological justice.34

Humans’ first forays into the habitat of others appreciably impacted biotic and abiotic communities. Avoiding considering first humans’ impacts is suggestive of human supremacy bias, or speciesism. Humans’ initial invasions tended to have a hallmark of overhunting, dramatically plummeting habitat homeostasis.35, 36 Once their predators and easiest targets were eliminated or dominated into submission, human invaders tended to reduce hunting. They settled more into association with the remaining life, transitioning by learning the plants, mushrooms, moss and lichen, foraging and gathering in a regenerative way as staple foods and medicines.37

Archaeological sites reveal abundance of herbal medicines in association with earlier human fossils and artifacts. A 2017 DNA archaeologist Karen Hardy analyzed Neanderthal dental calculus found two individuals in a cave in El Sidrón Spain who subsisted off a vegan diet including mushrooms, pine nuts, tree bark, and moss. One of them had a tooth abscess and medicinal yarrow and chamomile, bitter plants with little nutritional value.38 In a 2019 Evolutionary Anthropology paper, Hardy analyzed plants from seven archaeological sites of human ancestors. Of the 212 plant species identified, around 60 percent were medicinal and edible to humans, 15 percent were non-edible, but may also have been used medicinally.39 In the same sample geneticists later found DNA from poplar — a tree containing natural pain-killer akin to aspirin — as well as a type of penicillin. It’s possible that this Neanderthal woman in pain from an oral infection, took poplar for pain relief, chamomile as a soothing agent and an antibiotic fungus to counteract the infection.40 A stable lifeway emerged benefiting humans and others. Ways of nourishing the habitat evolved into an intricate mutualism that in time took on intentionality, a primal forest management of sorts. Some call it wild tending.41

But for reasons including environmental changes, novelty and adaptive inventions, early humans continued expanding past their home ranges, becoming adept at colonizing, overhunting, controlling predators, and eventually herding tamer animals as portable food resources into others’ habitats.42 Before humans domesticated animals via herding, plants largely comprised the staple diet, meat was a rarity.43 Rarámuri no longer forage and gather wild plants but they garden less nutritious domesticated varieties as their food mainstay. Still, they eat enough assorted plant foods to satisfy all their nutrition requirements; their occasional meat is not required for their health.44 Nutrition science supports that while many humans today are omnivorous in behavior, Homo sapiens primate remains herbivorous in biology.45 From earliest human’s ancestors before hunting and colonizing the planet, the subsistence diet was almost if not entirely vegan.46 Since coming down from the trees human groups and individuals have swayed back and forth in the complexion of their relations and assemblages with nonhuman animals. Those fully in touch with their compassion for all animals remain and resist, longing for a wild forager-gatherer lifeway interconnected in thriving habitat in roles increasing symbiosis and diversity.

Natural Human Vegan

Despite anprim’s and civilization’s man-the-mighty-hunter storyline, there have been vegan primitive people. What speaks powerfully to me is enduring innate impulses toward veganism, especially countless independent instances of pre-indoctrinated pre-schooler rebellions against eating animals that rise up worldwide, such as shown in a video compilation.47 When some children first find out they’re being fed animals, their intrinsic empathy for animals launches a passionate revolt. Early humans created mythologies and rites in order to overcome their innate aversion to harming animals by hunting them.48 But if it’s science that pleases you, you’ll lag behind if you don’t keep up with the latest, such as the 2017 DNA analysis of two vegan Neanderthals’ dental calculus.49 Yet man-the-mighty-hunting-caveman mythology lives on, rationalizing enormous harm to domesticated and wild animals and their habitats, including humans’.50, 51

Without DNA, foraging lifeway leaves so little trace it is limited to indirect evidence, such as in a study reported in April 2019, Insights into the Timing, Intensity and Natural Setting of Neanderthal Occupation from the Geoarchaeological Study of Combustion Structures: A Micromorphological and Biomarker Investigation of El Salt, unit Xb, Alcoy, Spain. Evidence from eleven Paleolithic hearths suggests short-term occupations by high-mobility low-impact possibly seasonal bands. Their lifeway did not degrade the habitat as topsoils remained rich in herbivore excrements and herbaceous plant residues. The herbivore excrement suggests presence of mega-fauna. There was no evidence of conifers in the topsoils, but there was evidence of pine cone charcoal in the ash, suggesting fuel sources were carried distances to hearths. Fire setting was under some level of control, yet researchers report “no anthropogenic components were identified in any of them, suggesting that the activities carried out around them did not involve… cooking practices involving deposition of bone or char residues in the fire.”52 While suggestive of nomadic folio-frugivore foraging, these particular primate humans only left indirect evidence for interpretation. In civilization’s patriarchal sciences, studies such as these also have little impact on biased over-ascription of hunting to an entire group, even an entire species, when any evidence of hunting is found.

How Speciesism Overtook All

In a manner portrayed in Andrew Schmookler’s The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution,53 an ecofeminist theory on origins of civilization may be summed up thusly: in step after step, expanding weaponized aggressive hunting humans overtook uncontentious humans and nonhuman animals in spasms with intervals and steady waves. Over a long stretch of time nomadic bands with a gentle-on-Earth foraging lifeway were overcome by and integrated into a predatory, dominating approach that spread the species across the world. After humans controlled all land, floods of even more brutal, more dominating humanways overtook and incorporated weaker others. By the end Earth was scorched by the fire of intensified human exploitation. Primate humans mistakenly believed that by dominating other animals they had freed themselves from their animal selves in supreme power evolutionarily bestowed upon them, repressing that they had snared themselves in dependence on the death spiral of ‘progress.’ Petrified to free themselves from their own trap, they pretended it was ‘natural’ and marched onward holding torches of supremacist speciesism higher and higher, eventually triggering a stampede toward the cliff’s edge, plagued with primal inner unease.

In an interview on Final Straw Radio Tucker declared, “We do better as hunter-gatherers. The only egalitarian societies to have ever existed long term in any way in the history of humanity has been nomadic hunter-gatherer societies.”54 No long term foragers or forager-gatherers have been egalitarian? In this overstatement, overgeneralization is indicative of authoritarian man-the-hunter bias. On what basis does anyone claim to know the lifeway and dietway of every egalitarian people and individuals that comprise the group? There is a montage of evidence on hunters behaving in ways quite contrary to flowing with nature,55 which calls into question validity of correlations between hunting and egalitarianism that cannot simply and continually be excused away. While Tucker and I agree that “(P)atriarchy is one of the first side effects of civilization,” is human primate colonizing via killing en masse egalitarian? Does it matter if “(W)e do better as hunter-gatherers” if others do not fare well under the human primates’ brutal rise into top predator position? Is rationalizing that primate humans are entitled to inhabit the entire planet as top predators because that is their natural evolutionary trajectory not patriarchal speciesism?

A more open and empathetic lens exposes raw realities behind patriarchal denials, such as the 2018 survey Subsistence Practices, Past Biodiversity, and Anthropogenic Impacts Revealed by New Zealand-wide Ancient DNA Survey revealing the evidenced story of less than 2,000 aboriginal Polynesians first to arrive to New Zealand. Subsistence hunting impacted fauna diversity, specifically driving moa, sea lions, fur seals, penguins and others to extinction or extirpation from the mainland. Elephant seals were driven from their breeding grounds.56 This story had many repetitions, same plot different characters and settings. Much farther back some early humans degraded life on Earth via hunting megafauna to extinction. The journal Science published a study in 2018, Body size downgrading of mammals over the late Quaternary led by the University of New Mexico’s Felisa Smith, showing early human hunting-caused extinction events starting at least 125,000 years ago, roughly 75,000 years after Homo sapiens entered the scene. The magnitude and scale of this extinction event surpassed any other recorded in the last 66 million years. Evidence is also clear that the extinctions were not due to climate change:

“Elephant-dwarfing wooly mammoths, elephant-sized ground sloths and various saber-toothed cats highlighted the array of massive mammals roaming Earth between 2.6 million and 12,000 years ago. Prior research suggested that such large mammals began disappearing faster than their smaller counterparts — a phenomenon known as size-biased extinction.

…as humans migrated out of Africa, other size-biased extinctions began occurring in regions and on timelines that coincide with known human migration patterns, the researchers found. Over time, the average body size of mammals on those other continents approached and then fell well below Africa’s. Mammals that survived during the span were generally far smaller than those that went extinct.

…the research team found little support for the idea that climate change drove size-biased extinctions during the last 66 million years. Large and small mammals seemed equally vulnerable to temperature shifts throughout that span”

University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Kate Lyons, who co-authored the study with Smith and colleagues from Stanford University and the University of California, San Diego, went on to say that restructuring from large to small mammals has “profound implications” for the world’s ecosystems. Large mammals tend to be herbivores, devouring large quantities of vegetation and effectively transporting the associated nutrients around an ecosystem. When they disappear, the small mammals are poor substitutes for important ecological functions.57 In their rise to power, whether intentional or not, the human species traded away their wild compassion, their wild life, the life of wild others, and the whole wild world.

Toward Embracing Ecofeminism

In the Final Straw interview Tucker stated “Out of all the social sciences I think anthropology has really led the way in terms of upending patriarchy, upending a lot of the colonial background, upending a lot of the ecological notions… This is our link to understanding the consequences civilization has had across the world.”58 That is exactly what radical anthropologist Helen Kopnina does in her calling to include nonhuman animals in advocacy,59 and what comparative anthropologist Layla AbdelRahim does in her thematic study on human predation. In AbdelRahim’s interview with Puntickovani Chrobaci, entitled Layla AbdelRahim on anarcho-primitivism, red anarchism and veganism, she correlates civilization with predatory humans:

Because, as I argue in the book,60 the premise in civilisation is to consume, kill, and colonise, it yields an anthropology rooted in predation: both killing and rape. Namely, civilised knowledge constructs the human as the ultimate predator and the world existing in a “natural” hierarchical “food chain” to be controlled, reproduced, and consumed. Again, observation of the principles of life reveals that hierarchical systems of subsistence are parasitic and unsustainable since, in order to thrive, life needs diversity, mutuality, and symbiosis. By constructing an anthropology rooted in consumption of labour, flesh, and life, civilisation thus yields unviable cultures of socio-environmental relationships and hence we are witnessing the anthropogenic death of the world, which is literally being devoured by civilised human animals. This is an emergency situation and we do not have the luxury to reflect on whether we can “go back” or just scamper along trying to salvage our dying bones.61

Man-the-mighty hunter myth as ‘natural order’ justifying early human primates spread across the planet sheds light on modern humans’ reluctance to admit that early humans left swaths of environmental predation impacts,62, 63 as well as their disregard for other animals’ experiences as humans invaded and obliterated their habitats and predated on them. Reaction to these realities is typically rationalization, denial, silence and willful malicious ignorance. Are waves 64, 65 of colonizing predatory humans more than mere generalist and niche opportunists surviving by natural right, no matter if it is a bloodbath ending in detriment of intact ecosystems? How are barriers to seeing human primates as something other than obligate hunters not denial that manifests as “sets of behaviors based on dogma of exploitive domination over others and Earth that assault primal attachment?” (excerpt from top quote)

To open one’s ethos for reconsideration is a vulnerable deed, holding the uneasiness of exposing oneself outside one’s comfort zone. How would WR feel about requesting Layla AbdelRahim66 submit one of her pieces on her foundational theme human predation, including human exploitation of nonhuman animals? How would WR feel about requesting self-described dread-headed freak and playful savage, nihilist, green anarchist, vegan, straight edge queer who runs Warzone Distro,67 Flower Bomb68 to write an anprim hard-hitting vegan-themed piece for its audience? If WR has time and inspiration for a written discussion with me not on sister-sister love, but on my preferred focus, civilization through colonization, why decolonizing the planet is essential for both primitive humans and thriving life across Earth, 69 I’m open to it.

The implications of ethos can linger exponentially. While WR builds an academically intelligent case, if a case has patriarchy embedded in its premise, in practice it manifests in actions such as policing sex in a conformist culture, promoting hunting in today’s nature degraded world, and ignoring humans’ entitlement to live everywhere on the planet during this human-caused sixth mass extinction event.70 WR bringing attention to indigenous land protectors and animal liberators is appreciated and vital. But with so many anprims attempting to return their lifeways into hunter-gatherers exploiting ‘resources’ in nature’s death spiral, what does anprim do to defend and assist wildlife and their habitat from rewilders?

Humans have proven that they can adapt. Anarcho-primitivism urgently needs action and clarity adapting its habitat role from takers to givers, from rewilding themselves in struggling wild remnants to protecting and rewilding the remnants. In these times bushmeat hunting is driving a global extinction crisis71, and domesticated animal agriculture is using 1/3 of global arable land for animal feed, and 26% of terrestrial surface for grazing.72 Ecofeminist dietway can take many forms gentler on Earth. Urban anprims who choose to explore rewilding themselves can adopt a less impactful local foraging diet 73, 74 from ‘weeds’ before they spread into nearby natural areas, giving wild lands and threatened species time to regenerate. Anprims can scavenge from civilization’s excess o plenty, or glean fruits and nuts from nearby trees before they overripen.75 In larger swaths of remnant wilds they can learn which species are invasive to the local indigenous habitat and assist indigenous species recovering by harvesting the human-introduced invasives.76, 77, 78 In everyday compassionate dietway ecofeminist anprims step down from the civilized human primate pseudo-role of world’s top predator and give space for return of habitats supporting true indigenous nonhuman top predators.

“Widening the circles of inclusion and involvement,”79 illuminating ecofeminist perspective within anarcho-primitivism’s narrative could be inviting for others to consider and connect, could shape into a new, old way of relating to each other and to other animals based not on speciesism and predatory exploitation, but thriving interconnected diversity in essential roles rewilding Earth.

ria montana, forest and wetland rewilder

https://veganprimitivist.wordpress.com/

Endnotes

Wild Resistance: A Journal of Primal Anarchy, www.wildresistance.org/. Rozema, Patricia, director. Into the Forest. Performance by Ellen Page, and Evan Rachael Wood, Elevation Pictures, 2016.

Hegland, Jean. Into the Forest: Bantam Books, 1997. Montana, Ria. “FUGUE STATE: A Review of ‘Into the Forest.’” Vegan Primitivist, 28 Apr. 2019, veganprimitivist.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/fugue-state-a-review-of-into-the-forest.

Black and Green Review. “Re: Submission: Fugue State.” Received by Ria Montana, Re: Submission: Fugue State, 23 Apr. 2019. Hegland, 1997, Pg 160 Mehta, Deepa, director. Fire. Performance by Shabana Azmi , and Nandita Das, Eagle, 1996. The film is loosely based on Ismat Chughtai’s 1942 story, Lihaaf (The Quilt). Suparn, Verma. “1997. An Interview with Deepa Mehta (on Her Film Fire).” Redfinn on the Net, Movies, rediff.com/entertai/oct/24deep.htm Bird-David, Nurit. Us, Relatives: Scaling and Plural Life in a Forager World. University of California Press, 2017. Pgs. 100-1. Pgs 101. “Queer Anarchist NetworkOrganization Profile Published 1988.” Queer Anarchist Network, http://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/CX3370.htm.

Bearchell, Chris. “Pedophilia: Views from the Other Side.” Child sexuality, Ardent Press, 2008. Pgs 1-4. Walters, Richard. “Save the Children:. Child sexuality. Ardent Press, 2008. Pgs 8-19. Grueter, Cyril C., and Tara S. Stoinski. “Homosexual Behavior in Female Mountain Gorillas: Reflection of Dominance, Affiliation, Reconciliation or Arousal?” Plos One, vol. 11, no. 5, 2016, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0154185.

Hite, Shere. The Hite Report on the Family: Growing up under Patriarchy. Arcadia, 2014. “The Official Website of Shere Hite.” The Official Website of Shere Hite, www.hiteresearchfoundation.org/. Tucker, Kevin. “Hooked on a Feeling: the Loss of Community and the Rise of Addiction.” Black and Green Review, vol. 3, Spring 2016, pp. 53–131. Pg 87. Thompson, Jessica C., et al. “Origins of the Human Predatory Pattern: The Transition to Large-Animal Exploitation by Early Hominins.” Current Anthropology, vol. 60, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1–23., doi:10.1086/701477. Mills, Milton R. The Comparative Anatomy of Eating . 2019, adaptt.org/archive/Mills The Comparative Anatomy of Eating1.pdf. Hart, Donna, and Robert W. Sussman. Man the Hunted Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution. Westview Press, 2009.

Ibid. Thompson, 2019. Carrier, David. “The Running-Fighting Dichotomy and the Evolution of Aggression in Hominids.” From Biped to Strider: the Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport, by D. Jeffrey. Meldrum and Charles E. Hilton, Kluwer, 2004.

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