How is Veganism Anticolonial?

  • 2026/05/22 10:17


From back cover:

The colonizer and the animal agriculture industry use the same logic. They identify difference, assert inferiority, and use the asserted inferiority to justify domination.

Animal agriculture is colonialism applied to animals. Hunting is organized warfare applied to animals. It is the assertion that animals exist for human use, that their bodies and lives are resources to be extracted, that their interests do not matter because they lack the characteristics that would grant them consideration. This is the same assertion that colonialism makes about colonized peoples: they exist for the use of the colonizer, their land and labor are resources to be extracted, their interests do not matter because they are not fully human, not fully civilized, not fully deserving of sovereignty.

The logic is identical. And the recognition of this identity is what the system cannot allow. Because if it were recognized that animal agriculture operates through the same logic as colonialism, then the refusal of animal agriculture would be recognizable as an anticolonial resistance. It would be understood not as a distraction from anticolonial struggle but as part of it. It would reveal that the logic of domination is unified, that rebellion requires setting ablaze the entire structure.

How is Veganism Anticolonial pdf

“Veganism” Through the Lens of Decolonization

  • 2026/03/06 23:58


From back cover:

“On a personal note, and speaking as someone who lives a “vegan” lifestyle, many people ask me why did I suddenly decide to change such a big facet of my life. Modernization, industrialization, and colonization aside, the most honest answer I can give is because it allowed the most authentic expression of myself. I could not advocate for life and protecting the environment while I clearly turned a blind eye to the suffering of sentient creatures and the systematic destruction of our environment. My bottom line is and always will be: due to our history, colonization will always have remnants in Africa, our responsibility is our choices and actions.”

Veganism Through the Lens of Decolonization pdf

Veganism and Mi’kmaw Legends

  • 2023/07/11 22:53

From back cover:

“This text proposes a postcolonial ecofeminist reading of Mi’kmaw legends as the basis for a vegan diet rooted in Indigenous culture. I refer primarily to veganism throughout this work because unlike vegetarianism, it is not only a diet but a lifestyle that, for ethical reasons, eschews the use of animal products. Constructing an Indigenous veganism faces two significant barriers—the first being the association of veganism with whiteness…

…A second barrier to Indigenous veganism is the portrayal of veganism as a product of class privilege. Opponents claim that a vegan diet is an indulgence since the poor (among whom Indigenous people are disproportionately represented) must eat whatever is available, and cannot afford to be so picky. This argument assumes that highly processed specialty products make up the bulk of a vegan diet. Such an argument also overlooks the economic and environmental cost of meat, and assumes that the subsidized meat and dairy industries in North America are representative of the world.”

Veganism and Mi’kmaw Legends pdf

Veganism as Anti-Colonial Praxis: A Collection of Indigenous Vegan Perspectives

  • 2023/07/11 20:48

From back cover:

“Despite the absorption of veganism by the capitalist market – a process that admittingly reinforces pre-existing divisions across class and racial lines – a vegan lifestyle taken to its logical conclusion is fundamentally anti-capitalist and anti-colonial. By (re)acknowledging sentience and personalities within the bodies of colonized (animal) subjects, a vegan lifestyle rejects authoritarian relationships based on disrespect for the bodily autonomy of those whose lives have been re-purposed for human supremacist consumption.

This small collection of shared experiences, while reflective of a larger anti-colonial struggle, highlights the inclusion of an anti-speciesist, animal liberation.”

Veganism as Anti-Colonial Praxis_A Collection of Indigenous Vegan Perspectives pdf

Kaimangatanga: Māori Perspectives on Veganism and Plant-based Kai

  • 2023/07/11 20:19

From back cover:

““To adopt a form of veganism – a plant-based lifestyle and ethics – that acknowledges, is based upon, and celebrates Te Ao Māori, is a break from the dominant and from the status quo and but also an act of decolonialism. It is a way to reclaim sovereignty and exercise individual choice.

And finally, it is a means by which collective power and community may be built; this is evident in the existence of online forums and comment threads on Māori-based vegan and plant- based social media accounts.

Discussions regarding the intersections of vegan ethics, Indigeneity and Māoritanga and ideas about plant-based kai, and kaimangatanga are already occurring within Māori families and communities and the outcomes and possiblities that arise from this kōrero are potent and unique. There are karakia or prayers that refer to the sustenance provided by plant-based kai, and waiata (songs) which are based upon the care and protection of animal species and the environment. There are also resources and recipes for ‘veganizing’ traditional foods such as hangi (food cooked in the earth), and boil-up (a popular meat-based dish which usually includes plants such as pūha [sowthistle], potatoes, and watercress).”

Kaimangatanga_ Maori Perspectives on Veganism and Plant-based Kai pdf

An Obituary for Identity Politics

  • 2017/09/07 21:08

From back cover:

“Rather than taking aim at identity itself and the apparatus maintaining this paradigm, energy is spent tearing one another down, ignoring the complexity of individual uniqueness, and playing the State’s role of defining each other based on membership to identity categories. Embracing a particular identity only reaffirms that identity’s existence as a ‘universal truth’ – and therefore, by the colonial intentions of assigned identity, the servitude and enslavement of some to others as a universal truth as well…

…I refuse to participate in upholding enslavement as a condition of my existence, and therefore these ‘truths’ are nothing more than political works of fiction…

…These ‘truths’ are the social constructs of control, keeping the life of rebellion shackled in a cold well of reform.”

An Obituary for Identity Politics pdf