Death Of A Whale The Challenge Of Anti Whaling Activists And Indigenous Rights PDF Download

This dissertation examines the ethics of human-animal interaction at work in the continued conflict over Makah indigenous whaling. The Makah are a small Native American tribe in Washington state that sparked controversy when they revived their centuries-old whaling tradition in the late 1990s. Lawsuits filed by anti-whaling activists shut down Makah whaling shortly after it was resumed, and today the Makah Tribe continues to seek legal permission from the U.S. federal government to hunt whales. Attending to Makah claims that "whaling is who we are," I argue that contemporary Makah whaling is driven as much by tribal members' refusal to back down in the face of outside resistance as it is an affirmation of tribal identity and sovereignty. In the U.S. Pacific Northwest, Native American tribal identities as such were formed in the course of legal battles for fishing rights throughout the twentieth century. When new battles over marine resource rights arise, those identities becomes part of the stakes. The dissertation also takes anti-whaling activists seriously in their suggestion that Makah whaling is an environmental issue and an animal issue as much as it is a Native American sovereignty issue. I argue that while most Makahs view whales primarily in terms of relationships of use, and activists are motivated by ethical and aesthetic objections to killing whales, both groups are strongly influenced by the implicit moral assumptions of the U.S. federal government's marine mammal management paradigm. There is little conceptual space within that paradigm for the consideration of whales as anything other than exploitable marine resources. Thus, by adjusting their tactics and objectives to fit within the federal model out of practical necessity, activists collaborate in shifting the debate away from a discussion of the ethics of whaling and toward a space where the killing of whales is tacitly acceptable.