But, Is It Art?

The San Francisco Art Institute has canceled its art exhibition of Algerian-born Paris artist Adel Abdessemed. Even artists supported censoring the material.

The show generated controversy for the inclusion of video of six animal executions. The animals were being put down as part of the process for food production, but that didn't set well with animal rights groups.

Ironically, the piece was intended to demonstrate how separated people in modern cultures are from how our food gets to our table. The artist feels that people are in denial as to how animals have to die in order to provide meat on our tables. It was intended to provoke a reaction. On that front, it greatly succeeded.

I'm not so sure it would have received the same visceral reaction in Des Moines that it did in San Francisco. The closer you are to the farm, the less likely you are to be in denial of how animals are killed to provide the meat we eat and the clothing that we wear.

It reminds me of an online conversation I had with some Scottish folk who did not like the traditional full mask sporrans (men's purses worn with kilts) where the head of the animal was included as part of the sporran.

Scotland is requiring that sporrans containing animal fur be registered as part of an animal rights legislative agenda. It had wide support for those with whom I was chatting.

As an American Indian, I have a different view. I feel that we have become so removed from nature that we no longer respect animals in a balanced and healthy way. Either we regard them as inferior and beneath consideration or we place them on pedestals above humans and plants. Neither approach is balanced nor respectful.

As an Indian, humans, animals and plants are all part of the same world in which we seek balance. There is no hierarchy of one type over the other. Killing a plant or taking its fruit is just as damaging to the plant as killing an animal or taking its young.

But balance doesn't mean that there should be no hunting nor farming. Let's be rational.

A lion doesn't concern itself about being humane when it kills the gazelle. It knows that to live, it must eat. Likewise, the gazelle doesn't concern itself about whether the grass can regrow after it eats it.

If we are brothers to the animals and plants, we do have differences: we can think about such things and find ways to maintain ecological balance. Balance means finding a middle road and having respect for the things we kill, both plant and animal so that we may live and be protected in our world along with both.

If we are going to kill foxes or muskrats, I think that creating a full mask sporran more respectful to the fox than dumping the head in the trash and just using part of its pelt. In fact, it serves as a visual reminder to people that we live only because another species died.

It doesn't mean that I want baby seals clubbed so I can have a sealskin sporran (sealskin sporrans are illegal in the U.S.). They are endangered; that is not balanced. Since we don't eat their meat and they don't present a harm to our livestock or farms, then the need to cull them at all seems specious.

Just like the Makah tribe ceased culling whales while they were endangered, I don't think we should be hunting or farming while an animal is on the brink of extinction.

When the whales came off the endangered species list, the Makah resumed culling whales as an important part of their religion and culture. I trust them to do it with respect and balance. Animal rights activists didn't like that either.

What I suggested to the Scots in our conversation was that they shouldn't let outside groups force them to quit something if it is culturally important to them. American Indians had to take their religions and cultural practices underground for a century or more as the U.S. wouldn't grant them freedom of religion or culture.

The Scots told me that I didn't understand what was going on over there. They didn't feel that it was important to their culture. I don't live there and don't understand all the issues, but I also silently suspected that they didn't realize what they were doing to themselves either.

Doubtless, foxes and muskrats will continue to be killed in Scotland. Their carcasses will now just be destroyed or left to rot. It seems to demean their existence more to me than to make use of their pelts. The Scots moved further away from balance and respect, I suspect.

Likewise, I think that those of us in developed cultures have become so separated from nature that we no longer can handle being confronted with the reality behind our supermarket purchases.

Let's not lie to ourselves and pretend that cows didn't die to provide us hamburger or chickens for our children's nuggets. Let's find balance that it takes food to survive and that we have the right to exist. The animals also have a right to exist, so we have to be balanced and humane in culling them.

I think that the reaction to the Abdessemed exhibit was a bit hysterical. He wanted us to face that our consumption of meat had meaning for which we've ducked, evaded and sought to ignore.

Instead, those reacting affirmed the need for his art piece. They felt that the blow to the animals' heads was cruel and inhumane. Shooting the animals seems to me to be just as bad by their measure. I'm not sure that asphyxiation would be less inhumane.

I don't think there is any method that will meet their approval. Their position strikes me as very unbalanced and they are in denial of their own humanity.

For example, the groups behind the backlash against the exhibit are suspected of a systematic campaign of credible threats of rape, violence and murder against the SFAI staff, according to SFAI's press release concerning its closing of the exhibit and the planned public forum to discuss the matter.

Threatening violence against humans because of violence against animals only highlights the lack of balance and reason in the persons who make up these groups. It completely undermines their self-perceived moral superiority. They have placed animals above both plants and humans destroying the harmony and natural balance.

For example, why don't they flinch when they see a video of a combine killing the corn plant and stealing its seeds? Why is it okay to steal all the fruit of a watermelon plant denying its right to reproduce? On the face of it, it seems like gross prejudice against plants, to me. Vegetarians have no moral high ground in the Indian world.

There is both good and bad sides to being human. The need to eat, wear and make shelter from animals and plants is not, perhaps, the most pleasant aspect of who we are. But denying that aspect of ourselves is not healthy nor desirable either.

We should be brave enough to watch Abdessemed's art pieces, feel how uncomfortable it makes us, and understand a little bit more what it means to be human. It helps us respect nature and ourselves in a far better way than by furthering our denial.

If you are guilt-stricken with this aspect of life, take a page from us Indians: You should feel guilty. That's entirely human and respectful. Instead of being cowards, we should be man or woman enough to acknowledge our dependence on other life to survive.

Say a little prayer of thanks to the animals and plants who gave up their lives so that we might live, be warm and protected. Acknowledge their sacrifice by being respectful. Downplaying the sacrifice by hiding our heads as to how it came to be only cheapens us all.