The Harpoon met the two elderly ladies at the reception in the Town Hall on Tues- day. Our objective was to try to find out who they represented and why they had chosen to try to prevent the wish of a majority of their people from being fulfilled by protesting in an international forum. But this proved a difficult task.
The Makah Tribal Council consists of five members. They are elected by all voting members of the tribe, which is about 530 people. The Council is given the power to decide on issues such as the resumption of whaling, but if a certain number of signatures are gathered, then a referendum must be held. There has been no known attempt to pursue this option on the whaling issue, the official tribal spokesperson on the US delegation, Marcy Parker told the press yesterday. But the Council arranged a poll nevertheless in December 1995. 73 voted in favour of the resumption of whaling and 26 against.
- underhanded -
Chamblin and Thompson say that the process had already gone a long way before the Council asked tribal members for their opinion. “They have not informed the tribe”, they told the Harpoon. “The whole thing has been done underhanded”.
“That is not the case”, comments David Sones, assistant fisheries manager with the Makah Tribal Council, on the phone to the Harpoon from Neah Bay. “The issue has been openly discussed in our community for a long time, and it has also been up both in the local and national press. All information on the Council’s moves has been accessible.”
- who will eat the whale meat? -
“A general Council meeting attended by 200 people held before the vote also showed support for the hunt”, says Sones. Alberta Thompson was the only one who spoke against the whale hunt at this meeting, according to Sones. As she asked the assembly “who will eat the whale meat?”, almost everyone raised their hands, says Sones.
He explains that whaling is assured as a treaty right and that the Council has an obligation to see to it that these rights are pursued. It’s nothing to put out for a vote. “But when it comes to the question of the choice to exercise these rights and how that should be done, these are obviously questions that are to be subject to a debate within our democratic system. We do not have the possibility to give away any of our treaty rights; even if we don’t exercise them, our children should have the possibility to choose if they will do so”, says Sones.
Thompson comes out with the same kind of opinion on this issue: “What really shut my mouth on the whaling issue was they took this question outside the community and askedWashington and the Whaling Commission for permission”. She would not have protested the resumption of whaling if it had been the result of a decision process kept entirely within the community. “Then I could not say anything, because they would have exercised their treaty right”, she said.
Some of the reason for the low participation in the poll was confusion on what the opinion poll was really about, Sones explains. “Many people were mad”, Parker told the press, “because they did not think it was right to put a treaty right up for a vote. Many of them refused to vote.”
- corrupt -
Dotty Chamblin has tried for a position on the Tribal Council several times, most recently this year, but was far from successful.
Asked whether it would not rather be the right thing to respect the result of the democratic process and work to gain support within their community and get people elected to the Tribal Council to share their views, Thompson responded: “What you say we should be doing is correct. But our political system is corrupt - and the politicians buy votes.” But what she meant by buying votes was not bribery . “They are buying people with promises. The chairman, Herbert Markishtum, promised many things, but after the election he forgot”. Among the promises was providing lots of jobs, says Thompson.
“That could be applied to any political process, and to the US government in particular,” comments Dave Sones to the Harpoon. He says that Markishtum is doing his second 3-year turn on the Council and has been reelected 3-4 times as chairman for one year at a time.
- afraid of losing jobs-
“Do you know how many relatives they (the Council members) have?”, says Dotty Chamblin. “Families are loyal. Friends are loyal. They are all related to them that makes them all the more loyal”, adds Thompson.
She also claims that people are afraid of voting against Council members because they are afraid of losing their jobs. The Council is by far the largest employer in the community, with 200 people on their staff.
Although the voting is done secretly, Thompson believes that in such a small community it is known who people vote for. Sones agrees that people tend to vote for family members. “But not all family groups work that way. It is not like that in my family he says”. That political standpoints are not always uniform within family boundaries is demonstrated by the fact that Dotty Chamblin’s brother, Clifford Johnson, is on the official Makah delegation in Aberdeen, and is in favour of whaling.
“Chamblin and Thompson are not official spokesmen”, Parker told the press. “But we believe in the freedom of speech, so we do not object to them giving their opinions.”
We don’t know how to catch it, prepare or eat it,” Thompson says, and uses the incident of the entangled grey whale that was brought ashore in July last year as proof for her claim . “ It was the worst meat they ever had,” she says to the Harpoon.
“It tasted like something between beef and venison,” Marcy Parker told the press. “Most people were really surprised how good it tasted,” claims Dave Sones. He has not had the opportunity of tasting it yet, as he was away during the event and when he came back all the meat was gone. He will probably have a chance to do so later on because some of the meat has been stored away in a freezer for a communal feast. “The smoked meat was delicious,” says Dan Green, who brought the entangled whale ashore. “We boiled some blubber at the beach and the kids eat it like candy. The texture is just like the boiled octopus which is common in our diet.”
“Most of the meat went into the dump,” says Thompson. She claims that the garbage collectors had a hard week after the whale was butchered. “I don’t believe so,” says Sones. “ I am at the dump once a week,” says Green. “I didn’t see any meat there.”
The Makahs have a tradition of rendering oil from the blubber of marine mammals. They use it to dip their dried fish, meat and potatoes in. These days they use the oil from harbour seals, but this is not enough to satisfy the need. “We will make oil from some of the whale blubber,” says Green. “We will never take more whales than we could eat. Why should we?” asks Sones.
Thompson and Chamblin do not believe that the support from the US government proves that the Makah have a good case. They say that the background for the support is that it is an election year and the President needs their vote. But wouldn’t support of whaling mean a loss of votes for Clinton? After all, the majority of the US public is against whaling and known for their affinity to whales. “Indians pull a lot of votes,” says Thompson.
The US regional newspaper Peninsula Daily News reported last week that “critics say the tribe intends to sell the whale meat to Japan where the market is extremely profitable.”
“Ridiculous,” responded Sones. “We want everybody to see what we are doing. We will adhere to the criteria attached to a hunting quota given by the IWC under the Aboriginal Subsistence category. This is nothing but smearing tactics aimed at creating suspicion and mistrust.”