yes, a happy day

[Mike Cleven]

At 09:21 PM 5/20/99 -0700, terry glavin wrote:
>some months back, i corresponded briefly with a young makah guy on this
>list, who asked for some translation help. i was useless to him. i can't
>even recall his name.
>
> i write a column for the toronto globe and mail, and i wrote a piece about
>the makah whale hunt some months back. i've written another column on the
>subject for tomorrow's paper. it's attached.
>
> it's for that young makah guy.

I actually saw your article when it came out, thanks to the Globe's
"national edition".  I've made a separate reply to one person (Nadja) who
wrote me privately rather than continue this discussion in the CHINOOK
list, but for the moment it's "out in the open".

My reaction about how the whale felt remains on point; it's not an issue of
whether or not the grey whale is still officially "endangered" (a "white"
designation, in fact) nor whether or not a return to whaling is what Neah
Bay needs to feel good about itself again.  From what I've heard both
verbally and in the non-mainstream press, the return to whaling has sharply
divided Neah Bay, but that, too, is another matter.  My reaction was to the
"it feels so good....as it should be" sentiment.  As if only people
mattered!  Native or not.  Whales don't have to be endangered for their
killing to be wrong, whether "culturally mandated" or not.

It is now known that whales are extraordinarily intelligent, with
complicated family structures and advanced learning behaviour, and obvious
emotions and sentience - and a language and musical lore so complicated it
has yet to be deciphered, if it can be deciphered and as if "whale
consciousness" were accessible to human understanding.  This is why my
comment "I'm sure that's how the whale felt" is relevant - because whales
_feel_, whales _think_.  Worse yet, since the worldwide ban (more or less)
on whaling, whales in some areas (especially ours) have come to
_trust_humans_ (of all the stupid things another intelligent species might
do!).  That poor whale (yummy!) was probably accustomed to being cruised by
whale-watching boats.  Some hunt; like killing a puppy.  And hopefully you
don't have to "be white" to understand that.

That the reinstitution of Makah whaling will be used (and it will) by
Norwegian and Japanese whaling interests to lift the ban on grey whales
worldwide is a further issue; why else would they have supported the Makah
cause?  It's certainly not because they are interested in native culture,
that's for sure!  And once full-scale whaling resumes (as it may), the
number of grey whales will again dwindle to "officially endangered" levels,
as if the numbers back in the sea after several decades of moratorium were
anything like what had existed before.  It's like saying - "OK, we've got
elephant poaching under control again, so let's open up the ivory trade"
(and elephants turn out to be similarly intelligent and socially complex).

But this isn't alt.whaling or alt.native or SUSHI-L, it's CHINOOK-L, isn't
it?  I know this topic is a political hot potato just as much as (for some)
it appears to be a sacred cow; there were a few posts on this subject which
I'd ignored as off-topic, but since it kept on being said it seemed
necessary to remind people that "quanice tumtum, quanice kumtux.  Kahta
mamook memaloose yaka?"