Hi Steven, I am with you! There's no doubt that we must meet our basic needs to survive, without which nothing else much matters. What I found compelling in learning about the Blackfoot model is the idea that the community sees it as its role to make sure basic needs are met for each member of the community, rather than that responsibility lying with each individual. In American culture, when we are children, we possibly experience something similar - where our families care for us and provide for our basic needs in many, not all, cases. Blackfoot culture appears to have expanded the idea of family to the whole village / tribe, whereas to be an adult in American culture is to provde for your own basic needs. So the point is not that meeting basic needs is not essential, but rather who does that work of meeting basic needs and what we build by way of systems based on whose role we see it as being. In a culture that sees community as responsible for caring for each member of the tribe, indeed, valuing each life by seeing it as self-actualized and believing that life belongs to the tribe would come first. But those beliefs are in place when a baby is born, so that the tribe can immediately provide for its basic needs of food, water, shelter, etc.