Makah Indians Finally Get Their Whale

The Makah Indian Nation on Monday marked their return to whaling on the high seas after more than 70 years, harpooning and blasting a 34-ton gray whale that bled quietly and died in the misty waters around their hand-built wooden canoe.

The whaling crew, with a young fisherman at the bow, eluded protesters by slipping out of the harbor before dawn and launched three harpoons into one of three whales swimming in the area as part of the gray whale’s annual West Coast migration. A marksman fired three volleys from a .50-caliber rifle to finish off the wounded 30-foot whale.

Hundreds of people waited in a steady rain as a team of canoes hauled the lifeless carcass up on the beach. Cheers and whoops broke out as the crew climbed on the whale, raising their paddles in a victory salute. But anti-whaling protesters sounded a mournful siren and sailed silently into the bay before being driven out by the U.S. Coast Guard.

“They’re not Makah whales, they’re God’s whales,” said Rod King of the West Coast Anti-Whaling Society, who sailed from Vancouver Island, Canada, to join the protest. “They roam our oceans free, they cross every border. We’re devastated at what happened here today.”

While eight whale-watching boats marshaled for the protest sailed into Neah Bay Harbor, a chorus of war whoops rose up from scores of Makah. “We’re not protesting the beef that you eat!” one man shouted. “Go have a hamburger for lunch!”

“I’ll probably have a [whale] steak tonight,” said tribal chairman Ben Johnson. “We made history today. The Makahs are a proud people. They took a lot of harassment, but they just kept on going.”

The 2,300-member Makah gave up whale hunting in the 1920s when widespread international plundering left gray whales on the brink of extinction. But the tribe was one of the few that maintained an express treaty right to hunt whales, and when the population of gray whales on the West Coast rebounded to an estimated 26,000, they applied to the International Whaling Commission for an exemption from the international ban on whaling.

With backing from the U.S. government, the Makah won the right to take five gray whales a year out of a quota originally granted to Russian whalers. The Makah could not claim they needed the whales for subsistence, but instead applied for a cultural exemption. Whaling, the tribe says, may be the one thing that can restore pride to a tribe whose youth are forgetting its language and moving away from the reservation.

“Most of the songs we learned growing up, well over half of them include whaling, and it was always a part of the way we were addressed by other Indian tribes: ‘The Makah, those are the whalers,’ ” said tribe member Keith Ledford. “It’s as integral a part of who we are as automobiles are of America.”

But Paul Watson, who piloted the Venice-based Sea Shepherd Society’s protest ship, said shouts of joy were never part of the Makah whaling tradition.

“One of the most obscene parts of this situation is that the elders are reporting that the younger members are dancing and singing with glee in reaction to the news. Traditionally, the death of the whale would have been greeted with great sadness,” he said. “What we have here is a group of redneck hunters having a good time.”

Members of the whaling crew trained for more than a year, retreating to nearby islands to sing songs, say prayers and undergo endurance rituals. The crew included members from each of the tribe’s traditional whaling families, with older men assigned to support positions in several motorized boats.

The hunt began last fall, during the whale’s annual migration to Baja California for calving. It was quickly disrupted by protesters and bad weather, and didn’t get underway again in earnest until last week.

The U.S. Coast Guard, anxious to prevent a confrontation between hunters armed with guns and protesters, some of whom vowed they’d stop at nothing to protect the whales, established a 500-yard exclusionary zone around the whaling canoe.

The zone did not initially apply in waters well south of Neah Bay, however, and a 10-hour hunt on Saturday was interrupted repeatedly by large rafts, whale watching boats and jet skis darting between the canoe and the drifting whales. In one case, a large jet boat operated by the Sea Defense Alliance appeared to run directly over a gray whale.

At least three protest boats were escorted ashore by the Coast Guard and their operators cited, some for alleged violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which makes it a crime to harass whales.

Protesters said they were taken off guard Monday by the Makah crew’s 4:30 a.m. departure, and daunted, in part, by a Coast Guard warning that they would face a $50,000 fine and up to five years in prison if they violated the exclusion zone. Seizure of several protest boats and the need for many supporters to return to their jobs allowed the Makah to operate virtually unimpeded before striking the whale about 6:55 a.m.

The canoe was towed by a motor boat out to the hunting site a few miles south of Neah Bay and then was left to paddle freely, as crew members pursued three to four whales. Zeroing in on one of the whales, the crew paddled swiftly to where they expected the whale to surface, and as its great back rose to the surface, harpooner Theron Parker plunged his harpoon over the bow of the boat and squarely into the whale’s back.

The whale began swimming away, as evidenced by a floating buoy attached to the harpoon. The canoe crew followed with more harpoons, while a marksman from the motorized support boat fired blasts from a rifle.

Blood stained the water, and the stricken creature was stilled in less than five minutes. It sank quickly, however, and crew members appeared to have a hard time raising it and towing it back to shore.

By midmorning, hundreds of people lined the shore, including young people who had left their classrooms, members of nearby tribes and busloads of school children from around the state.

“It makes me prouder to be a Makah. When I saw it, there were chills going down my spine,” said 18-year-old tribe member Crystal Hall, who was waiting for her first taste of whale meat.

While aboriginal whaling goes on in Alaska and elsewhere virtually unnoticed, anti-whaling activists have focused on the Makah hunt because of concerns that the exemption for “cultural” whaling could open a loophole that would allow countries like Norway and Japan to resume large-scale commercial whaling. They said they plan to present documentation of the hunt to the infractions committee of the International Whaling Commission, which meets this week in Grenada.

“We are appalled that the U.S. government has tried so hard to get this whale killed. In doing so, they have created a new category of whaling called cultural whaling,” said Will Anderson of the Progressive Animal Welfare Society in Washington.

The Makah have argued repeatedly that their hunt has legal sanction, noting that a lawsuit challenging it was rejected in U.S. District Court. They also say there is no reason to believe their five-whale quota will open the door to other whaling ventures.

“The idea that this will change the behavior of people around the world is ludicrous. The folks that are commercially whaling are already doing it,” Ledford said. “If this were to precipitate any kind of worldwide whaling crisis and endanger the whales, we’d be the first to give it up again.”

Tribe members said a large number of recipes for whale meat have been distributed, and most were looking forward to giving it a try. Yet activists said much of a large whale that got caught in a fishing net near Neah Bay recently went to waste after tribe members declined to eat it.

“Getting this whale today proved that it is in our blood. A lot of people were saying we were inexperienced, we don’t know how to do it,” said tribal member Jim Cook. “Today proved it’s in our blood.”

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Researcher Lynn Marshall contributed to this story.

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First Kill for Makah Indians

The Makah Indians used harpoons and a rifle to kill a gray whale for the first time in more than 70 years. The tribe brought the whale ashore and planned to cut it up and divide the meat and oil.

The Gray Whale

Eschrichtius robustus

(Common names: Pacific Gray Whale, California Gray Whale.

* Length: Up to 45 feet, 15 feet at birth.

* Weight: 35 to 50 tons at maturity, about one ton at birth.

* Gestation: About 12 months. Females calve every other year.

* Life span: 30 to 40 years.

* Social behavior: During migration, whales travel in small groups called pods. Calving and mating season are spent among groups of as many as 20 whales.

* Migration: From January to July, whales travel north to Alaska from Baja California. They return south from October to February, mating and calving in Mexico’s warm lagoons.