WHEN YOU
LOOK
Western Bluebird
The Grizzly Bear
European Colonizers and the Grizzly Bear
When Europeans began to interface with the North American Brown Bear, a stark contrast began to develop between their perception of the grizzly bear and the Native American’s traditional beliefs. Lewis and Clark created several journal entries documenting their encounters with grizzly bears. In a journal entry, Merriwether Lewis shows his view of the grizzly bear, “We had no means of weighing this monster…” (Discovering Lewis and Clark). Lewis notes the size and attempts to guess the weight of the grizzly bear and instead of being filled with awe and wanting to respect this massive creature, he references it as a monster.
When you look at this taxidermied grizzly bear you see the death of the sacred. My specimen is not a representation of how the grizzly bear has always been viewed and does not even begin to encapsulate what the grizzly bear once was. At first, the grizzly bear species, Ursus Arctos Horbilus, lived alongside the indigenous people of North America. They chose to learn from this bear through observation and reverence. As the settling of the west began, white colonizers met the grizzly bear with fear. They felt threatened by the bear and quickly turned its death into a sport. The settlement of the western half of the United States perpetrated the grizzly bear’s tragic and painful death.
Native Americans and the Grizzly Bear
The grizzly bear, when seen through Native American beliefs, demands respect. Native Americans have long held traditions about almost every interaction of people with this bear. They have established rituals for eating bear meat, determining which parts can be eaten and by whom (McClellan,1). Some tribes also have traditions relating gender to the grizzly bear, only permitting men to take part in the eating of the bear (Traditional Animal Foods). Still more tribes have rituals about even speaking the name of the bear because of its great power. Through all the rituals there is a reverence of the bear interlaced in the culture of Native Americans. By exploring some of their oral stories and traditional beliefs, there is a greater understanding to be gained about what the grizzly bear was and subsequently is.
Conservation and the Grizzly Bear
While conservation has been a long-standing peripheral focus of U.S and Canadian governments over the past 50 years, grizzly bear deaths seem more linked to lack of understanding (McLellan). In a study conducted by Bruce McLellan he went into detail about what was actually causing the deaths of grizzly bears specifically in “British Columbia, Alberta, Montana, Washington and Idaho” (1).The following results were found in his study, humans caused 61.90% of all the grizzly bear deaths that occurred during his study. This number excludes and gives the benefit of the doubt to humans because unknown causes of death, suspected human causes of death and legal hunting were all excluded. Moreover, this study states “Minimizing grizzly bear mortality, particularly of adult females, is the key to grizzly bear conservation” (McLellan, 911). Most of these deaths were from management issues such as leaving trash out in the open and subsequently grizzly bears getting too close to human populations (McLellan, 916).
He continues to speak ill of the grizzly, something that in native culture would have been avenged with possible death. The entries detailing the settlers encounters with the grizzly bear become increasingly gruesome. Lewis seems to become fixated on killing grizzly bears and sees to it that his men track them down. He says, “we have seen two of them… we could not spare the time to hunt them, but will make a frolick of it when the party return and drive them from these islands” (Discovering Lewis and Clark). This entry was recorded on June 28th, 1805. It is one of the first records of the colonizers blatant disrespect towards the grizzly bear. Not only does Lewis seem indifferent to the grizzly bear, he enjoys seeing the death and injury of the grizzly. Starkly different from the Native American perception, the sacred grizzly bear has been shot with the words of the white colonizer. The once holy unspoken name was replaced by Lewis and Clark with the crude phrase of “monster”, no longer invoking any sense of reverence when spoken (Discovering Lewis and Clark).
You and the Grizzly Bear
This is so far from what the Natives desired for this incredibly sacred animal. They wanted people to be inspired to experience the natural world upon viewing this animal and ironically, my specimen is in a concrete basement. To honor the entirety of what the grizzly bear is, we need to stop focusing on manufacturing a palatable nature and instead go out and experience nature in its most natural form. If we wish to save this animal, we must look for the sacred beauty of the grizzly bear that the Native Americans revered.
My grizzly bear was taxidermied. This bear was killed in an intentional way for taxidermy. It was skinned and cut so its skin could be sewn onto a display created by a human artist. The front of its face tracing from both eyes to the nose, cracked open.
