NEAH BAY – Sharing song, dance, salmon and a culture of hunting whales of the North Pacific, the Makah Tribe and guests from the isolated Russian province of Chukotka gathered for what they hope will be many meetings to strengthen ties between the two native tribes.
“I think it’s great. It showed that two countries can come together like that. Natives coming together like that … that’s history in itself,” Makah Tribal Chairman Ben Johnson Jr. said Wednesday.
Normally separated by 2,000 miles, about 300 Makah and 20 Chukotka – a dance troupe called Ergyron – gathered Monday evening at the high school gym here in a cultural exchange that included honoring the gray whale.
Following a salmon feast, Makah and Chukotka dancers, singers and drummers told of the gray whales’ importance through songs and dances that included harpoon throwing and demonstrations of using nets to hunt.
The two tribes have been sharing whale populations for centuries. The gray whales winter in Mexican calving grounds, then head up the North American coast before crossing the Bering Strait to feed each summer in Chukotka coastal waters.
Makah whaling rights are guaranteed by their 1855 treaty with the United States. The tribe, at the tip of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, moved to resume whaling after gray whales were removed from the Endangered Species List in 1994.
The Chukotka natives helped the Makah’s whaling effort when they ceded a share of their gray-whale quota in 1997 at the Monte Carlo meeting of the International Whaling Commission.
“If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be where we are today with whaling,” Johnson told the Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles.
The agreement allows the Makahs to take as many as 20 gray whales over five years.
On May 17, 1999, the Makahs – using a high-powered rifle – killed their first gray whale in more than 70 years.
The hunt drew lawsuits from animal-rights advocates, eventually reaching the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The hunts are on hold pending an environmental assessment by the National Marine Fisheries Service. An exception to the Marine Mammal Protection Act also must be granted before whaling can resume.
The review likely will take several years, but tribal officials are determined to move forward.
“Whaling is an important part of our culture and our treaty rights, no different than when we started this whole effort,” Keith Johnson of the Makah Whaling Commission told The Seattle Times.
“We would like to be able to see the United States honor the treaty rights,” said Tom Eagle, a federal fisheries biologist. “But we have to do that with the conservation standards we now have in place. And we don’t see that as mutually exclusive.”
A group of Makahs – hunters, elders, and dancers – plans to travel to Russia next summer to observe the Chukotka hunts and learn more about whaling. Another Makah hunter may participate in a spring hunt for a bowhead whale with the Inupiat, an Alaska native group.
The Chukotka dance troupe, founded in 1968, represents several Russian native cultures, including the Cukchi, who largely dwell inland and herd reindeer, and the Yup’ik, who live in coastal villages and hunt whales, walrus and other sea life.
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