U.S. Indians Ask Permission at Global Meeting to Resume Whale Hunting

It has been more than 70 years since the men of the Makah tribe of Washington state last put to sea in their sleek, hand-hewn cedar canoes in search of what they know as chitapuk--the Pacific gray whale.

Now, bankrolled with $200,000 from the U.S. government, 15 members of the tribe and a lawyer have flown to this exclusive Mediterranean resort to petition the International Whaling Commission for permission to resume the hunts of yore.

The question--to whale or not to whale--has torn the 1,800-member tribe apart, alienated U.S. friends at the IWC and generated protests by environmentalists, who see the proposal as a thinly disguised attempt to resume commercial whaling.

The Makahs, who live on a 25-square-mile reservation at the northwestern tip of Washington, want to catch and kill up to five gray whales a year. The hunt, some Makahs say, is crucial to the cultural survival as well as the physical health of the tribe.

“It is a historical responsibility, a kind of a religious patriotism,” explained Micah McCarty, 26, who wore a traditional headdress, a woven garland of cedar bark.

Dave Sones, the tribe’s natural resources director, said the Makahs must resume their 1,500-year-old practice of whaling to supplement a catch of salmon and other marine resources devastated by urban sprawl, by clear-cutting of the reservation’s timberlands and by the weather disruptions wrought by El Nino.

Other, dissenting Makahs, who have been brought to Monaco by save-the-whales groups, call these arguments high-sounding hogwash.

“We’ve lived without it for over 70 years,” said a bespectacled Alberta “Binky” Thompson, 73. “If it were really necessary, would we be here today?”

“If you could know the smell of it, you’d really know why we are not eating it today,” said Jessie Ides, a retired fisherman in his 50s.

The opponents say they have been threatened with jail at home for their views. And they say many members of the tribe are afraid to speak out for fear of losing jobs filled by tribal leaders, who support whaling. Thompson said that her 10-year-old grandson was beaten up at school because of her views and that she has been vilified on the Internet.

Last year, the Makahs’ proposal stalled at the IWC conference in Aberdeen, Scotland, because they couldn’t prove they needed the marine mammals for “subsistence,” as required by commission rules. This year, the U.S. and Russian delegations combined the Makah request--20 whales over five years, with no more than five in a single year--with the hunting plans of Siberia’s Chukchis, whose food supply has been laid waste by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The package was presented to the IWC on Wednesday, with U.S. delegate Will Martin contending that “the gray whale will help meet very real nutritional needs” for the Makahs and provide an economic shot in the arm for a tribe with 50% unemployment.

Though the Clinton administration opposes ending an 11-year-old moratorium on commercial whaling, it is backing the Makahs’ proposal on both legal and environmental grounds, Martin said.

An 1855 treaty with the Makahs is the only federal compact with an Indian tribe that specifically gives the tribe the right to hunt whales, he said. Moreover, the species the tribe wishes to hunt, also known as the California gray whale, is now said to be flourishing, with a total population estimated at 22,000. In 1994, it was removed from the U.S. endangered species list.

The U.S. proposal, however, has run into deep trouble here, with even friendly nations expressing reservations or flat opposition.

Chris Puplick of Australia accused the Americans of trying to use parliamentary sleight-of-hand to compensate the Makahs for “the demolition of the U.S. welfare system” and the tribe’s “poor timber practices.” Mexico’s Santiago Onate was dubious about whether residents of the “richest country in the world” need to hunt whales to eat.

Opposition has also come from influential members of Congress. On Monday, U.S. Reps. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Committee on International Relations, and Tom Lantos of San Mateo, a ranking Democrat, sent the IWC a joint letter denying that the Makahs have an “essential nutritional or subsistence need” for whales. Grant the tribe’s petition, the congressmen warned, and there will be requests from other coastal communities and “a de facto lifting of the international moratorium on commercial whaling.”

Evidently stunned at the scale of the opposition in the 39-nation IWC, U.S. delegates met Wednesday night with some of their critics. David Kay of Australia said his country would insist on a sort of “needs test” that would authorize so-called aboriginal whaling only for peoples “whose traditional subsistence and cultural needs” are recognized by the conference. Many countries have made it clear that they don’t believe the Makahs meet the test.

U.S. officials said they hope for agreement on a compromise by today.

Sones acknowledged that no living Makah now knows how to whale, but he says the lore lives on in song and story and that tribal members have already started to practice rowing. The Makahs intend to whale in a pair of traditional hand-carved cedar canoes, as long as 36 feet and able to carry a crew of eight, that could range up to 100 miles offshore, he said.

After being hit by old-style harpoons, the grays, which weight 8 tons as adults, would be killed with a shot to the head from a high-powered rifle, he said.

Tribal foes of the whaling doubt the meat will find many takers, though the Makahs have a written agreement with the U.S. government in which they promise to consume all whale products locally. In 1995, a small chitapuk was caught in a fishing net and died. According to Binky Thompson, her tribe had to bring a woman down from Alaska to do the butchering. Some Makahs ate the meat, some stashed their share in their freezers, where it remains, and much of the animal ended up in the town dump, she said.

“Such a small whale, and we couldn’t finish it. Why are we asking for five?” the Makah woman asked.