The National Marine Fisheries Service is weighing a request by a northwestern Indian tribe to hunt gray whales as part of its religious and cultural practices.
The last time the Makah tribe of Neah Bay, Wash., conducted a legal whale hunt was in 1999, and additional hunts have been held up since 2000 by lawsuits from environmental groups and government bureaucracy.
Hint: Click in map to explore connectionsStory continues below interactive map 
(requires Java)
The tribe has enlisted the services of a handful of lobbying organizations, including Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh; Denny Miller Associates; and Holland & Knight, according to public records.
Holland & Knight has a specialty practice in Indian law. The firm employs four former members of Congress versed in Indian issues, including former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., who at one time chaired the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
The new leader of the Makah said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the tribe will win federal approval to resume hunting next year or early 2010.
Micah McCarty, who assumed the senior tribal post in January, said the tribe is committed to seeking federal approval to hunt whales. But McCarty, 37, added that some tribal members are increasingly frustrated by the lengthy legal process and the possibility that environmental groups or animal rights organizations could take new steps to further delay federal approval.
“The system has been abused to deprive us of our treaty rights,” said McCarty, referring to an 1855 Makah treaty with the U.S. government that allows the tribe to hunt whales. The tribe views whaling as central to its history and culture, according to its Web site. The tribe says it has whaled for more than 1,500 years.
That tradition came to a halt in the 1920s after worldwide hunting had reduced the gray whale population to near-extinction. The tribe briefly renewed whaling in 1999 after the whale population had recovered and the gray whale was removed from the list of endangered species.
Whaling was then halted again in 2000 after environmental groups, including the Fund for Animals, Australians for Animals and Beach Marine Protection, obtained a court order barring hunts on the basis that the federal government had not adequately considered the environmental impact of whaling by the tribe.
The court order required the tribe to obtain a waiver from the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 before it could hunt again. That law bars importing products from marine mammals, such as whales. The tribe first applied for a waiver in 2004, but the process has moved at a glacial pace, even by government standards.
“The process that the law set up for obtaining a waiver is not expeditious, to say the least,” said Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service. “It is pretty slow and deliberate with lots of steps along the way for public comment.”
Gorman said the government recognizes and supports the Makah treaty right to hunt whales. “We have supported that treaty right from the very beginning,” he said.
The next step in the tribes waiver request is a draft environmental impact statement by the Fisheries Service. This report - expected no sooner than spring - then will be followed by a final impact report. Next will be a hearing by an administrative law judge. Public comments will be collected along the way.
Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist with the Humane Society of the United States, which opposes the whaling, said environmental groups are closely monitoring the Makahs’ waiver request.
“If the government doesn’t go through all the motions properly, there is going to be somebody who will bring a legal action,” said Rose.
McCarty said that Native American leaders around the country “are amazed to see the patience that the Makah has demonstrated with very frustrating circumstances.”
That frustration at times has bubbled over. Last fall, five Makah tribe members were arrested for killing a 40-foot gray whale by shooting it more than 20 times off Neah Bay. The whale took 10 hours to die.
They were charged in the tribal court system with conducting an unauthorized whale hunt, while the federal government has charged them with violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Even if the Makah wins a waiver, the International Whaling Commission has limited the tribe to killing 20 whales over a five-year period. Gorman said that limit means there would be only a minimal environmental impact from tribal hunting.
Meanwhile, the federal government is operating on the assumption that the tribe likely will gain its waiver and eventually be able to renew the hunts. The National Marine Fisheries Service is examining rules that should be put in place to ensure that the hunts comply with tribal traditions and that the mammal be killed in the most humane way possible.
The agency believes that any future hunts should be structured like the 1999 hunt. “I would think it would be modeled at least on the 1999 hunt because that went, from a logistical point of view, very, very well,” said Gorman.
Gorman said that the 1999 hunt had tight restrictions, such as a requirement that the hunt be conducted from a traditional canoe. There also had to be a harpooner on board and a federal observer in a chase boat. The whale had to be harpooned, but also it had to be killed with an approved high-caliber rifle by a trained marksman. The whale had to be used for its meat and artifact value, and could not be sold or distributed outside of the reservation.
Contact: eric@muckety.com
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
2 Comments
#1. Sharon McPhail 02.01.2008
Dear sir,
I cannot believe you are contemplating killing more gray whales. One of the great things about growing and changing with the times is being able to see how old traditions were wrong. The whales you seek to kill have much larger brains than humans and apparently use them!!!! The white man used to kill Indians for sport and I’m sure you are gratefull they learned that the practice was inhumane and just plain wrong. You don’t need the whale meat to eat, in fact when you killed the gray whale a few years ago it was left on the beach for the government to clean up. I suggest you find some other way to appease your forefathers. Sincerely, Sharon McPhail, Sooke B.C.
#2. Native 02.01.2008
I to am Native American and I still hunt even though the white man thinks I don’t need to. Hunting for me is spiritual and natural. Our elders tell us not to stop our traditional way but to walk with our traditional way in one hand and the white man world in the other. Hunting for those whales is part of thier belief which was here long before the white man and in a time when Native Americans were harmonious with mother nature. If it weren’t for the white man’s greed it wouldn’t be a question that those indians would be able to hunt whales.
Leave a Comment