When Cultures Clash with International Pressure.
Continued Hunting by Aboriginals is Becoming Less Acceptable in the Modern World

- Chris Stroud, Director of Campaigns, Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society -

While the International Whaling Commission (IWC) continues to debate the emotive issue of the resumption of commercial whaling, hundreds of whales, and their cousins, the smaller dolphins and porpoises, are dying every year, almost unnoticed, in aboriginal hunts.

Most of the people who fulfil the commission's strict definitions for aboriginal whaling inhabit the inhospitable Arctic where food is scarce and, historically, nearly all their food came from the sea.

Many environmental and animal welfare groups have avoided the issue on the grounds that commercial whaling has, to date, been the dominant issue at the IWC meetings. However, some are beginning to address the issue with the detail it deserves. In walking the tightrope of trying to respect people's historical right to carry on long-standing traditional ways of collecting necessary food and yet balance the interests of conserving and protecting whales, environmental groups and governments are attempting to understand the changing world of indigenous peoples.

The hunts can no longer go un-noticed. Indeed, in 1995 there was criticism of the Russian grey whale hunt when it was alleged that whale meat was not being given to indigenous peoples but was actually being fed to foxes in fox fur farms.

Anthropologists have pointed to the fact that the Alaskan North Slope Eskimos are now economically very different to the peoples who hunted whales a century ago. Oil exploitation has brought pollution, disruption and a host of new people to Alaska. It has also brought an enormous amount of money to the local people. To the casual observer, the continued hunting of these leviathans from modern skidoos and helicopters is straining the definition of what is aboriginal. It has even been recognised that the Alaskans do not need whales any more for food, but it is still claimed that if they lost the hunt they would also lose something essential to their concept of what defines them as Eskimos.

This question is beginning to open up the debate about how much culture and tradition are the dominant issues in relation to hunting marine mammals. Many commentators are wary of this debate as it takes them into the grey world of questions of identity and what actually constitutes a people.

The Faroese hunt of pilot whales is not regarded by the majority of IWC members as aboriginal, even though it has been practised for centuries, mainly because there is no longer a need to consume the products of what is a well-documented and bloody hunt. However, to the Faroese people, who have given up many aspects of their traditional way of life to embrace a developed, affluent lifestyle, whaling remains one of the only links to a Viking past which once helped define them.

The US-sponsored application for the Makah tribe of Washington State to hunt grey whales has brought this issue to the forefront of IWC discussions this year. The Makah people who once hunted from canoes with hand-held harpoons have asked to revive the hunt after a break of 70 years. The application has sparked talk of applications from other tribes in Canada and the US, who see the opportunity to further their fight for self- determination through exercising the right to whaling.

Anyone who thought the debate over commercial whaling was emotive has not seen anything yet.