Source: High North News, No.11, Nov. 1996, published by the High North Alliance

Aboriginal Subsistence Whalers Under Attack:

New Front in the War Against Whaling

The fight against whaling took a new turn at the IWC meeting in Aberdeen this June. When the US delegation was forced to withdraw its request for a quota of 4 grey whales for the Makah Indians, it became clear that the Save-the-Whale movement’s protection of aboriginal subsistence whalers had come to an end.

The signs of imminent at tack were already to be found in the columns of “the Scotsman” just prior to the meeting: “Continued hunting by aboriginals is becoming less acceptable in the modern world”, wrote Chris Stroud of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. Although the champions of the Save-the-Whale movement, Greenpeace, WWF and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, remained passive during the meeting - at least in front of the curtain -a large number of smaller and medium sized animal welfare and animal rights groups put in some aggressive lobbying. Two Makah women were flown in from the north-western corner of the US to give the impression that the tribe was split on the question of whaling. The hardcore anti-whaling nations, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the Netherlands, adopted these NGO’s arguments and standpoint. The US had to face the fact that these countries, who had been their closest allies in the fight against commercial whaling, were now on the opposite side, making it impossible to achieve the necessary 3/4 majority for the Makah quota request.

- avoiding the issue -
In his article, Stroud admits that the Save-the-Whale movement has so far avoided the issue of aboriginal subsistence whaling, keeping silent on the issue at all times, even when the Russians have their annual quotas of over 100 grey whales renewed, whales that everyone knows are fed to fur-farm foxes.

So what criteria are brought to bear when determining whether whalers belong to the aboriginal subsistence category - a category that was created to provide a possibility for exemption from the moratorium on commercial whaling? The IWC Convention is of little help here. All it has to say in its schedule is that the object of the hunt must be to “satisfy aboriginal subsistence need”, that it must be kept within 90% of the maximum sustainable yield, and that it is permitted “only when the meat and products ... are to be used exclusively for local consumption by the aborigines”.

The Makah quota request appears to satisfy all of these demands. An annual take of 4 grey whales from a stock of 21,000 is way within the limit of 90% of the maximum sustainable yield. There is no doubt that the Makah are aborigines, their whaling traditions go back over 1,500 years and have been a core element in their culture and social structures, they describe themselves as a “whaling people,” and furthermore, the meat and blubber from a whale hunt would be used for subsistence and ceremonial purposes and consumed within the tribe thus making it a non-commercial hunt.

- an ongoing need -
What arguments then, do the Save-the-Whale groups and anti-whaling nations employ? “The problem is that, under the terms of the convention, in order to get what’s called an aboriginal subsistence quota, you’ve got to demonstrate an ongoing nutritional need”, claimed the head of New Zealand IWC delegation, Jim McLay in a radio interview during the IWC meeting. His statement is a bit inaccurate, but he has got a point. It is seventy years since the Makah tribes last went on a grey whale hunt.

The demand for “an ongoing nutritional need” is, however, not to be found in the convention text. McLay’s statement is probably based on a definition developed by an IWC working group in 1979. It’s report was endorsed in the form of a non-binding resolution in 1982. The report declares that aboriginal subsistence whaling should be related to “a continuous traditional dependence on whaling and the use of whales”. Whether this “traditional dependence” might be of a cultural nature, or should be seen more narrowly as “nutritional need” - is not made clear. The latter of the two will also open for discussions on whether one can say that dependency on a source of nutrition ceases as soon as a situation arises where one is forced to live without it, or whether it still exists in so far as access to the source of nutrition involves a positive change in the nutritional situation. “When you think of it for a moment you realize that your nutritional need either exists or it doesn’t exist and you cannot really store it away for seventy years”, McLay claims.

While the criteria for the aboriginal subsistence category are rather obscure and open to interpretation, Jim McLay’s reasoning would definitely not go down well with the indigenous people of his own country, nor is it in line with the thinking of the international community. Today, a lot of effort is being put into giving back rights, land and resources once taken from indigenous peoples, and these peoples themselves are also putting a lot of effort into reviving their own cultures. The return of the rights to fisheries resources to the Maoris of New Zealand is just one example. Another example is the reintroduction of buffalo to the Hunkpapa tribe reservation in South-Dakota. “Cultural rebirth is an important objective for the project,” says Marck Heckert, director of the project known as the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative. One of the Hunkpapa Indians, Big Eagle, claims that the project is already well on its way towards attaining its goal, saying, “The buffalo are coming back to our tribe after being gone since the 1800’s. This means a lot for the general state of the tribe, particularly for the men. They have felt worthless and weak for a long time. Many say that a great deal of good things have happened in the tribe over the past three years since the buffalo returned.” (The Norwegian newspaper, Dagbladet, Nov. 16, 1996)

The fact that indigenous people have been deprived of their rights and resources, thus making it impossible for them to carry on their traditions for a period of time, should not be used against them when they are endeavouring to regain their rights and revive their traditions. And certainly not by the same people who were responsible for such deprivation in the first place.

- a treaty right -
The Makah have no need to regain their right to whaling. It is safeguarded through a treaty signed by the US government back in 1854. The Makah did not give up whaling voluntarily. The white settler also started to exploit the grey whale stock, and by the beginning of this century it was seriously depleted. When the US government finally implemented conservation measures, the Makah were also forced to stop their hunt. Now, the stock is back at what is considered a historically high level, and two years ago it was removed from the US endangered species list. Even today, seventy years after the last hunt, many of the ceremonies and much of the knowledge attached to whaling is kept alive through oral tradition. The Makah people are now in the process of restoring their culture, a culture that was systematically devastated during the last century by the government Indian Agency. The Makah see the revival of their whaling tradition as part of this process. As far as they are concerned, there should now be no obstacles to prevent them from exercising their treaty rights as granted under the US constitution.

- public opinion -
New Zealand, Australia and the UK have chosen to base their whaling policy on “public opinion,” claiming that their citizens are opposed to commercial whaling. However, many, if not most people, in the urban western world do not distinguish between aboriginal subsistence whaling and commercial whaling. After years of listening to cries demanding that whales be saved, they are of the impression that whales in general are endangered. They also tend to believe that whales are different from, and superior to, ordinary animals, and should therefore not be exploited by mankind. But even among those able to make the distinction between the two categories, there is a common school of thought characterised by the notion that aboriginals must stick to a primitive lifestyle, distant from modern economics and void of modern technology , if they are to maintain their right to subsistence whaling.

In his article, Chris Stroud points out that oil exploitation has brought “an enormous amount of money” to the Alaskan North Slope Inuit. He writes: “To the casual observer, the continued hunting of these leviathans from modern skidoos and helicopters is straining the definition of what is aboriginal.” He stresses that “it has to be recognized that the Alaskans do not need whales any more for food,” but admits that the hunt can be of some cultural importance: “... 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”.

- quite prosperous -
Jim McClay joins in with Stroud. The Makah have “moved on” from the situation where they hunted whales, he told New Zealand radio: “They now have their own fishing industry. They’re comparatively speaking quite prosperous”. It is difficult to know on what criteria McLay bases his standards, but according to the material the US government presented to the IWC, 49 percent of Makah Indians are currently living below the poverty line and the unemployment rate is high.

- sacred whales -
Chris Stroud’s organisation, the “Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society,” is only one of 300 animal rights and whale rights organisations that have signed an “open letter to the Makah nation” asking them to refrain from the resumption of whaling. The letter claims that “people from many cultures worldwide hold whales to be sacred and consider each species a sovereign nation unto itself, worthy of respect and protection”.

These NGO’s are, of course, well within their rights to advocate such conceptions. More questionable is the use of the International Whaling Commission by some member nations as a forum for preventing Makah whaling. There is absolutely nothing in the Whaling Convention that might serve as a basis for denying indigenous peoples their right to revive a traditional subsistence activity as long as it can be granted to be sustainable. On the contrary, there is every reason to claim that New Zealand’s interpretation of the term aboriginal subsistence whaling is unreasonable and in conflict with the spirit of the Convention and its express objectives.

The aboriginal subsistence category was established to give aboriginal non-commercial whalers the possibility of exemption when the moratorium on commercial whaling was put into force. A commonly accepted interpretation of “non-commercial” within the IWC has been that no money should be involved in the distribution of the whale products. Makah whaling would meet this criteria, while the Greeland hunt of minke whales and fin whales (that is also accepted by the IWC under the aboriginal subsistence category) clearly would not. A lot of the meat from the latter hunt is distributed through normal commercial channels. This is by no means secret and has been presented to the IWC by Greenland itself. Even so, Greenland is paid no attention in Stroud’s article and the UK, Australia and New Zealand will probably continue to vote in favour of Greenland quotas in the future. In modern Greenland it is not possible to supply all the communities with nationally produced foodstuffs without making use of the commercial distribution network. The anti-whaling nations realise that if they deny the Grennlanders the right to utilise an important local and traditional food source and an appropriate and timely distribution system, Greenland would probably leave the IWC.

“The United States and the Makah will continue to work together on the request, which we fully expect will be accepted by the Commission next year,” wrote James Baker, head of the US IWC delegation in Aberdeen, in the press release announcing the withdrawal of their quota request. But the anti-whaling nations know that the US will stay in the IWC even when their renewed request for a quota of four grey whales is turned down next year, too.

The following relevant documents can be found on the High North Web:

• The letter from the animal rights groups to the Makah nation
• Chris Stroud’s article
  
• Transcript of interview, New Zealand Whaling Commissioner, Jim McLay
  
• Collection of documents/articles on the aboriginal subsistence category and Makah Whaling

See also the article in the 1996 International Harpoon Extracts entitled "The Dirty Laundry".

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