Tribe wins major step toward resuming whaling off Washington

[caraher]

13. Like it or not...

- The tribe has a long-established treaty right to hunt whales (not allowing this should result, at a minimum, in reverting ceded lands back to the tribe).

- Denying them this right will save zero whales (there is an international quota and indigenous people across the Pacific are already taking the full quota; if the Makah kill a whale that will simply reduce the available whales remaining in the quota for other whale hunters).

- Nobody from my culture (broadly, Americans of European ancestry) has much standing to decry this practice on grounds of environmentalism, given that the Makah have been far more sensitive to threats to the gray whale (voluntarily suspending whaling in the 1920s in the face of excessive kills by commercial whalers).

- Similarly, it's simply not the place of non-indigenous people to pass judgment on what does or does not pass muster as having spiritual or cultural significance to the Makah.

Like it or not - and I can see lots of reasons not to like it - the Makah have every legal and moral right (cultural preservation) to seek this, and what they wish to do is certainly not more barbaric or environmentally hazardous than any number of routine activities that are legal in this country. The Makah web site gives their account of whale hunting and all it means and entails.

There is a very thorough LA Times piece on this from a couple years ago that lays out the issues for both sides; it's well worth the read. Some excerpts:

a quota from the International Whaling Commission allows Russian and U.S. tribes to kill an average of 141 every year. The Russian Chukotka tribe has largely hunted the annual maximum quota. The two or three whales the Makah could claim would come from this quota — so their take would come from animals already targeted.

The last hunt is probably the model to expect for future hunts:

The tribe used a combination of modern and traditional techniques. The initial harpooning was done from a canoe. When the whale was struck, more harpoons were thrown — all attached to floats — to keep the whale from diving.

A rifleman on a nearby motorized boat then shot the whale in the head with a .50-caliber armor-piercing assault rifle — providing a large enough blast to break through skull and pierce the brain. The shot was followed by a second.

The use of a gun allows for a quick, humane death, according to Allen Ingling, a retired professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Maryland, who was hired by the Makah to study quick, efficient and humane methods of killing.