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Storytelling becomes a primary means of articulating and giving content to an environmental ethic. George Copway, an Ojibwa writer declares:

The Ojibways have a great fund of legends, stories, and historical tales, the relating and hearing of which, form a vast fund of winter evening instruction and amusement. Some of these stories are most exciting and so intensely interesting, that I have seen children during their relating, whose tears would flow most plentifully, and their breasts heave with thoughts too big for utterance. Night after night for weeks have I sat and eagerly listened to these stories. The days following, the characters would haunt me at every step, and every moving leaf would seem to be the voice of a spirit. (Callicott, 127)

Yet here too we find an environmental ethic, that is, a moral vision of correct behaviour based on the ecology:

Other stories also set out an explicit environmental ethic. In the Ojibwa stories, the flora and fauna are not simply impersonal natural resources to be exploited. Rather, animals and plants are portrayed as nonhuman persons living in their own families and societies. The representation of the relations between human persons and animal and plant persons is modeled on intertribal exchange. Just as one tribe may commerce with another trading, say, obsidian arrowheads for copper ornaments, so animals are portrayed as enthusiastic trading partners with human beings. The animals willingly exchange their flesh and fur for the artifacts and cultivars that only human beings can produce. (Callicott, 127-8)

So one aspect of environmental law is the primary place given to animal-human exchange. The principle spells out a complicated ritual manner of killing and eating the animal, with the underlying assumption that a larger system of reciprocity and balance mediates the whole. We could call this an ethical exchange system between the two species. The larger system that encompasses this reality is Nature's Laws.

The hunter's virtue lies in respecting the souls of the animals necessarily killed, in treating their remains in prescribed manner, and in particular making as much use of the carcass as is possible. . . . The animals slain under the proper conditions and treated with the consideration due them return to life again and again. They furthermore indicate their whereabouts to the "good" hunter in dreams, resigning themselves to his weapons in a free spirit of self-sacrifice. (Frank Speck in Callicott, 127)

Another aspect of the exchange is reflected in animal-human marriage; using marriage as the model for closeness and importance, humans take animal spouses, change identities and go to live in the environment of the animal spouse. The result of this unique inter-marriage is a new and more intimate knowledge of the animal world and its willingness to participate in the exchange medium. The moral of a story called "The Woman Who Married a Beaver" is this:

Thereupon she plainly told the story of what happened to her while she lived with the beavers. She never ate a beaver. . . . And she was wont to say: "Never speak you ill of a beaver! Should you speak ill of a beaver, you will not be able to kill one."Therefore such was what the people always did; they never spoke ill of the beaver, especially when they intended hunting them. . . . just the same as the feelings of one who is disliked, so is the feeling of the beaver. And he who never speaks ill of a beaver is very much loved by it; in the same way as people often love one another, so is one held in the mind of the beaver; particularly lucky then is one at killing beavers.' (Callicott, 127)

A further motif is the child who was raised by the animals. These relationships set his destiny and made him a splendid hunter:

Somewhat more subtle are the Bear Boy myths of northeastern North America, in which the human child is nursed by a female bear and acquires bear language by playing with her cubs. In an Iroquois version the boy converses with the bear mother and learns that hunters can detect the presence of a den by watching for vapor traces. In addition, the bear points out mistakes being made by careless hunters who pass by in the forest. One of the hunters is inattentive; another has made the error of eating too much hot food, so that he himself spreads telltale vapor. But when a good hunter comes along, the mother is suddenly submissive, saying, "There's no help for it. We've got to go."

According to some but not all-variants, the boy, when at last he has been returned to human society, becomes a successful bear hunter, drawing upon the knowledge he has gained from his bear mentor.

In other instances, apparently, the knowledge is absorbed through mere contact. According to a Delaware version, the Bear Boy simply lived with the bears without receiving any explicit instructions. Yet, in some way, when the experience was over, "he now had the power to kill any game." (Bierhorst, 75)

Another key ingredient is the moral and spiritual value of respect. This value, fundamental in Nature's Laws, is here worked out in the context of food procurement:

…the pursuit of game and fish by the Cree and Ojibwa people who reside there is governed by a time-honoured law which insists that wildlife must be treated with the utmost respect. Along with spelling out the ritual activities that should be performed before, during, and after pursuing game and fish in order to ensure ongoing success, this law, which has been handed down through countless generations via oral tradition and which still functions today, contains at least three subsidiary prohibitions.

The first prohibits Cree and Ojibwa foragers from killing immature animals; the second prohibits them from killing mature females while they are rearing their young; and the third prohibits them from overkilling mature animals of either sex throughout the year, with overkilling understood to be killing beyond immediate needs. Save for taking animals for ceremonial purposes or to avoid starvation, these prohibitions have been in effect since what the Cree and Ojibwa say was the beginning of time. (Driben, Auger et. al 98)

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