Sea Shepherd responds to recent article on the Makah

[Guest guest]

Andrew Christie, Information Director for Sea Shepherd, writes thusly:

 

In the June 1 edition of the Peninsula Daily News, Deborah Moran claims the

Makah's need to

hunt whales has been recognized by the International Whaling Commission. To

that end, she quotes a letter from Ray Gambell, ex-Secretary of the IWC, who

engaged in a speculative interpretation of events two years after the

official IWC vote on the Makah whale hunt. Mr. Gambell mused thus in order

to interpret the official actions of the IWC as allowing the Makah a

subsistence whaling quota, which the IWC expressly did not do.

 

When Sea Shepherd offered to withdraw its opposition to the Makah hunt on

one condition -- produce evidence of the Makah's recognized aboriginal

subsistence need for whale hunting from the IWC -- much fury and invective

and expression of personal opinion ensued. But no evidence. A letter from

Ray Gambell is not recognition by the IWC. Nor is a challenge by Deborah

Moran to provide documentation of non-recognition - in other words, proof of

an event that did not occur. (The rules of evidence work the other way

'round, Ms. Moran.)

 

Mr. Gambell -- who is now an eager backer of the scheme to lift the global

moratorium on commercial whaling and re-legalize the hunting of whales for

money -- was expressing his personal opinion. But Mr. Gambell's opinion to

the contrary, the IWC does not traffic in " de facto acceptance. " It proceeds

on the basis of resolutions and majority votes.

 

What ex-Secretary Gambell mischaracterizes as " a degree of hesitation by

some of our members " to accept the Makah's aboriginal subsistence need to

hunt whales was in fact a denial that the Makah had proven any such need or

met the criteria for Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling. That denial came from

the majority of IWC delegations participating in the debate of record. That

 

is the reason why the subsequent 1997 resolution stipulates that gray whales

may only be hunted by those whose subsistence needs have been recognized -

i.e. the Inuit of Siberia, who have such recognition, and not the Makah of

Washington State, who don't.

 

The willful misinterpretation by the U.S. of that 1997 IWC vote on

subsistence gray whale quotas remains a dangerous threat to the global

moratorium on whaling and the necessary distinction between commercial

whaling and true subsistence need.

 

Andrew Christie, Information Director, Sea Shepherd Conservation

International,

Malibu CA

310-456-1141