Some of my Scottish ancestors immigrated as setters in the “wild west” in what is today the USA. The husband died of natural causes, leaving a widow and her children to face the oncoming winter. She didn’t have enough supplies in store to feed her children and herself through the approaching winter, and they lived too far from the nearest neighbour to survive the journey at that season. They survived because native peoples shared their provisions with them, anonymously, by leaving baskets of food and game, which she discovered every morning when she opened the cabin door. My grandmother told me this family story when I was about 11 years old. I was deeply touched to tears, by the humane generosity of these unknown people who helped others in distress, despite their different race and culture, even though my culture mostly regarded these noble souls as “savages”. Forty-nine years later I am appalled by reading the experience of Simon Moya-Smith, “a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation”. In killing and abusing our fellow human beings, like the native American peoples, we simultaneously murder and deform the noblest part of ourselves: our humanity.