Foxhunting in the UK as witnessed by a Cree Indian from Canada

Foxhunting in the UK has an extraordinary ability to inflame passions.

In my novel,  Eaglechild, I make several references to the Heythrop Hunt. ( http://tinyurl.com/olpnd2z )

Prime Minster, David Cameron, is alleged to have ridden with that particular hunt which is close to his home in Chipping Norton.  It has existed in its present form since 1835 although foxhunting, in general, had been going on in that region since at least the 1600’s.   The Heythrop Hunt takes its name from the fact that some of its main events happen on the former country estate of the 1st Earl of Leicester at Heythrop – although the hunt has always ranged far and wide throughout the counties of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Foxhunting was made illegal in Britain in 2005, but there has been a concerted campaign to legalise it again.  However, that campaign was recently defeated. ( http://tinyurl.com/p3ouvoo )
In my novel,  Joe-Bear is a young Cree recently arrived back in Canada from the UK.   In one scene, he playfully describes the peculiarities – or absurdities – of the Heythrop Hunt to an audience of Blackfoot children in Alberta who can hardly believe what they are hearing.

“He built up the expectations of his audience.  What would justify such an enormous and elaborate hunt? He listed the possibilities. Was it a grizzly standing eight feet tall on its back legs baring its teeth and roaring? No! Was it a cunning black bear with a taste for human flesh? No! How about a moose or caribou bull in heat? No! Could it have been a swift elk? No! Then it must have been a cougar or a wolf or a pack of crazy coyotes? No! What then, he asked, rhetorically, what kind of prey would justify so large and powerful a hunting party, so many dogs and horses, so numerous a tribe of followers and such ornate ceremony? It was a mahkêsîsi, he said – a young red fox! “