To the Journal editor:

The wolf is a sacred figure to the Ojibway of our state, if you knew the tribe’s creation story you’d know that the wolf was created as a companion for the first man on earth and that the two share the strongest bond of brotherhood.

If you knew the creation story, you’d know the death sentence that killing wolves for sport will also place on our fellow citizens. The Ojibway creation story tells of how the fates of the Ojibway people and Ma’iingan (Ojibway for wolf/brother) are intertwined: what happens to one will happen to the other.

You don’t have to look far back in history to see that a coinciding mass extermination at the hands of our European ancestors caused the near extinction of Native Americans and wolves.

The severity of again legalizing a wolf hunt for sport may not be realized by citizens without knowledge of the sacred relationship between the Ojibway and the wolf. Killing wolves for sport is equivalent in the Christian worldview to burning down every cross in every church in the state and desecrating each and every image of Jesus.

Both Jesus and Ma’inngan serve as sacred symbols to their people, as brothers on whom the people’s fate depends. To destroy another man’s Jesus would be an atrocity, a defilement, and a transgression against America’s most fundamental principles of tolerance and freedom.

Yet here we are in 2014, the descendants of Lincoln and King morality: here we are voting on whether or not it shall be legal to oppress another man’s faith, to mock his Muhammad or defile his Dhamma.

Imagine being powerless and forced to watch as your religion is violated and your brother killed in what no one else seems to realize is a great hypocrisy and an act equivalent to those of the religious oppressors Hussein, al-Assad and ISIS.

The Native America worldview is drastically different than ours and the Native American people who hold these views are a small minority with little power. This does not mean that we have the right to persecute and oppress them.

I’m not asking you to vote no on Proposals 1 and 2 to save Michigan wolves. What I’m asking you to do is go beyond the vote to save this nation’s integrity and recognize a long forgotten people. What I’m asking for is humanity.

Kaitlyn Richmond

Eben Junction