In the past 300 years, if the pioneers of our country wanted something that was on other people’s land, they just took it. That is the history of white expansion. We wouldn’t hesitate to push native Americans off their ancestral lands, then make a treaty guaranteeing them certain lands and rights, and then, when we found something of interest on those lands, we would take that land too.
Land, culture, customs and livelihoods are intertwined in defining a people, and we still seem intent on undermining these foundations of native American existence. Just last week the United States was one of four countries to vote against a U.N. declaration affirming the rights of native peoples to maintain their own institutions, cultures and spiritual traditions. In the past five years, we in Washington state have been witness to our own prevarications about and violations of tribal treaty obligations.
The Makah people have lived on the Olympic peninsula for several hundred years. For the Makahs, whaling had been an economic necessity and a foundation of their indigenous culture, so much so that their rights to whale were written into the Treaty of Neah Bay, signed in 1855: “The right of taking fish and of whaling or sealing at usual and accustomed grounds and stations is further secured to said Indians …” In exchange for this preservation of their ancestral rights and customs, the United States took 300,000 acres from the Makahs, almost the entire northwest portion of the Olympic Peninsula, and pushed them into a small reservation by Neah Bay.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, white hunters decimated the whale population. So, in the 1920s, the Makahs suspended their whale hunting. It took more than 20 years before the grey whale was given international protection in 1947, when the population of greys had fallen to just several hundred.
Over the past half-century the greys rebounded and in 1994 they were taken off the endangered species list. The Makahs hunted and killed their first whale in 1999. The International Whaling Commission permitted them to take 20 whales over five years, a quota of whales shared with the Chukotka native people in Russia.
That would have been a good resolution. The quota is one-tenth of one percent of the estimated population of Northern Pacific grey whales. It is sustainable and honors the Makah’s treaty rights. But environmental organizations and animal rights activists pursued a legal challenge to the right of the Makahs to hunt whales. In Anderson vs. Evans, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court insisted that the tribe gain an exemption from the Marine Mammal Protection Act before it proceeded with hunting. And so the Makahs have patiently been pursuing this exemption and agreeing to an environmental impact statement, even though they are actually a sovereign nation and people. It is a patience born out of living within the shadow of the United States, knowing that the word and deed of our government toward native tribes can be quite different.
The delays to whale hunting thrown up by the court fueled the impatience and rogue actions of five tribal members in hunting a whale earlier this month. The Makahs have responded with good conscience to this whale kill, promising to prosecute the five hunters and reminding them and the world that any whale hunts are to be pursued by and for the tribe as a people, not by and for individual tribal members. This one whale kill should not be used as an excuse to deny the Makah their sovereign rights. Does the United States have the legal right to abrogate its treaty with the Makah tribe and prevent the tribe from a whale hunt?
No. Is the grey whale threatened by Makah hunting? No.
Ten days ago marine scientists announced new evidence that the population of grey whales may not be as robust as has been thought. The ocean is becoming incapable of sustaining marine life at the levels of the past centuries. Global warming, chemical pollution and the increase in hydrocarbons in the water are contributing factors. So who is to blame? How about all of us who insist on bigger and more powerful cars, bring home our groceries in plastic bags, go boating in Puget Sound in motor cruisers and on whale watching tours, zoom around the water on jet skis, and in general live lives that are not environmentally sustainable? Who are the culprits? It is not the Makahs. It is us.
John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org ), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.
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