Perspective: Can Hunting Be an Act of Care? Lessons from Waawaashkeshi Camp
- Thi Mai Anh Tran
- Jul 24
- 7 min read
I used to believe that hunting and wildlife conservation could not coexist.
When I worked as a researcher in Save Vietnam’s Wildlife, a wildlife conservation non-profit organization at Cuc Phuong National Park, Vietnam, I often heard the same refrain: local hunters were the main threat to biodiversity. That view was so common that I never thought to question it. In the protected areas where I worked, we tracked poaching activity, removed snares, and documented declines in animal populations. It felt straightforward. If you care about wildlife, you do not hunt.
But that assumption began to unravel when I attended Waawaashkeshi (Deer) Camp in Michigan.
Waawaashkeshi Camp is an annual gathering hosted by the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, an Ojibwe Nation in northern Michigan. The camp teaches participants about traditional deer harvesting practices, including hands-on instruction in processing harvested deer, while also sharing Ojibwe language, traditional stories, and discussion of treaty rights. As a researcher studying climate adaptation and resilient livelihood, I had been collaborating with the tribe to bridge Indigenous knowledge with Western science in forest stewardship. However, I attended the camp not as a scientist collecting data, but as a guest eager to experience these teachings firsthand. The camp also welcomes everyone who wishes to learn about Indigenous perspectives on land and wildlife.
The snow was falling steadily when I stepped out of my car and into the community garden, where the camp was held. Inside the teaching facility, the atmosphere was warm with laughter, food, and shared work. Elders had already prepared venison, and a group of children stood around a table removing fat from the meat under the gentle guidance of a teacher. “Fat isn’t tasty,” the teacher said with a smile, “but it shouldn’t be wasted.” Nothing was rushed. Nothing was discarded without intention.
Around 30 of us gathered that day — most were Tribal community members, including elders, youth, and families. Others, like myself, were non-Indigenous guests who had come to learn. Everyone had a role. Some cleaned hides using sharpened deer leg bones. Others washed the meat three times to remove any trace of hair before packaging it to share. From a nearby kitchen came the scent of bannock and wild rice soup. Warm tea was poured for everyone. Later, carrots and potatoes from the community garden were handed out along with the meat. Some of us received a set of knives for helping with the processing of harvested deer. Many took home guidelines on how to hunt deer respectfully and a treaty rights book. The scene felt less like a lesson and more like a story — one where humans, animals, and the forest belonged to the same narrative.
Throughout the day, I heard words and prayers in Anishinaabemowin, the language of Ojibwe people, woven into teachings and stories. Elders told traditional stories that connected the deer to the broader cycles of life and seasonal responsibilities. These narratives were not just about the past; they were lessons that shaped present-day choices. Later, we learned about treaty rights —how agreements between the Ojibwe Nation and the U.S. government retained hunting practices, and how those rights continue to carry both legal authority and cultural responsibility. For many, this camp was not only about teaching skills, but also about affirming sovereignty.
Until then, I had never seen hunting this way. It had always been framed as an act of violence, a threat to ecosystems. But at Waawaashkeshi Camp, hunting was not a means of domination. It was a practice of care.
Here, hunting follows clear cultural protocols. Only male deer are taken, and only once a year. The community harvests not for sport or profit, but to feed families, pass on knowledge, and sustain relationships. And that responsibility extends beyond the hunt itself. During the camp, community wildlife biologists collected tissue samples from deer to test for chronic wasting disease — a fatal neurological illness spreading throughout North American deer populations. “We have been doing this for more than a decade now,” said Austin Ayres, a wildlife biologist and member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community.
That blending of knowledge systems, Western science, and Indigenous practice was unlike anything I had seen in mainstream conservation.
Still, when I shared my new experience on social media, the backlash was swift.
One commenter wrote: “This is terrible! Everyone here has guns, and they’re all killers. Animals are innocent and should be left alone.”
Another added: “It’s not honorable just because it’s traditional. Indigenous practices are archaic.”
I found myself defending what I had witnessed: “This is an honorable harvest of the whole community,” I explained.
But the divide was too vast.
The commenters had reduced a complex, multidimensional relationship to a simple moral binary: killing animals is wrong; therefore, these practices are wrong. What they couldn’t see — what I wouldn’t have seen before my visit — was the context, the teachings, and the values behind these practices.
In many industrial farms, animals are raised in artificial conditions — confined, fattened quickly, and slaughtered in high-speed facilities with little regard for their lives. Billions of chickens, pigs, and cows live without ever touching the earth, seeing the sky, or expressing their natural behaviors. These systems deeply detach us from empathy or respect for other species. What I witnessed at Waawaashkeshi Camp was the opposite: a harvest grounded in relationship, responsibility, and gratitude. Every part of the animal was used with care, prayers were offered, and nothing was wasted. When I consider these two approaches to taking animal life for sustenance, I have to ask: which one truly reflects killing, and which reflects care and respect for the creatures that feed us?
This disconnect reveals a critical blind spot in mainstream conservation discourse. We have become adept at identifying threats to biodiversity but far less skilled at recognizing alternative models of environmental stewardship that don’t match our preconceived notions.
As urban ecologist Christopher Schell and his colleagues note, “early environmentalists such as Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Madison Grant, Gifford Pinchot, and Theodore Roosevelt argued that nature is most pristine without human influence but should be reserved for white men as a resource for personal improvement.” This contradiction continues to shape Western conservation approaches: we protect land by removing people from it, while forgetting that many Indigenous communities have been practicing conservation. Not through exclusion, but through relationships for thousands of years.
For many Indigenous communities, like the Ojibwe, hunting is not about control. It is about relationships. The land, animals, and waters are not resources to be extracted or scenery to be preserved. They are kin. And this belief comes with responsibility — not just to take sparingly, but to give back in equal measure. This ethic is known as the Honorable Harvest, a guiding principle in many Indigenous traditions. As Potawatomi botanist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer explains, it means:
“Ask permission of the ones whose lives you seek. Abide by the answer. Never taking the first. Never taking the last. Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. Take only what you need and leave some for others. Use everything that you take…”
This framework offers a profound counterpoint to the dominant Western conservation models, which often center around exclusion: fencing nature off, removing human presence, and treating wilderness as something pristine only when untouched. Rooted in colonial history, Western conservation models have helped justify the forced removal of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands. They also paint humans as inherently harmful to nature and erase centuries of reciprocal stewardship by Indigenous communities.
At Waawaashkeshi Camp, I saw a different vision — one that does not separate people from nature but embeds people within it. Where conservation is not a matter of guilt or restriction, but of love and actively participating in the care of the land.
Of course, not all hunting is ethical. Just as not all agriculture is sustainable, and not all fishing is responsible. But the presence of harmful practices does not invalidate the value of ethical ones. The question we should be asking is not, “Is hunting good or bad?” But rather, “What values does it reflect? What relationships does it sustain?”
At Waawaashkeshi Camp, I saw a different vision — one that does not separate people from nature but embeds people within it. Where conservation is not a matter of guilt or restriction, but of love and actively participating in the care of the land.
This experience taught me that hunting, when done with respect and reverence, is not a rejection of conservation. It is one of its most sustainable forms. It left me with a lasting question: is conservation a matter of control, or a matter of remembering how to be in a good relationship?
In many Indigenous cultures, there are always community members who are designated to speak for the land, the water, and the animals. Because these beings are considered relatives, they deserve a voice. But in mainstream conservation, that voice is often missing. We have policies. We have data. But what we do not always have is relationships. We forget those connections, with the land and various communities living on it.
Without connections, conservation becomes a checklist, a boundary line, or an abstraction. But when we root it in respect, in shared memory, and in ethical practice, it becomes kinship.
Attending Waawaashkeshi Camp did not make me a hunter. But it did change how I understand care through the practice of hunting. It reminded me that conservation is not just about protecting what is left. It is about remembering how to live well with all that surrounds us.
The forest doesn’t need distant saviors or online defenders. It needs relatives — people who know its seasons, its creatures, its stories. People who teach their children to take only what’s needed and to give thanks for what’s received. Perhaps the most radical act of conservation isn’t saving the forest from humans. Perhaps it’s remembering how to be human with the forest. And that remembering must begin with listening to Indigenous communities who have cared for these lands for millennia.
