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The long-running controversy over the Makah's efforts to restore tribal traditions by Hunting a whale ended recently when the tribe finally managed to get its whale. The Makah had voluntarily abandoned whale hunting earlier this century, but reserved the right to resume the practice under provisions of a treaty with the United States.
The fascinating thing about the controversy was how quickly environmentalist and animal rights activists devolved to threats and racist slurs against the Makah. Usually environmentalists extol the virtues of indigenous cultures, contrasting them with the evil patterns of consumption and exploitation supposedly unique to Western culture. But once the Makah deviated from this New Age fantasy, they were shown little mercy from activists.
There were the death threats against individuals as well as bomb threats called in to the Makah reservation school. T-shirts were sold with the slogan "Save a whale, kill a Makah." At protests against the hunt, activists were heard calling the Makah "savages."
The Seattle Times published a lengthy story printing about a dozen of the more-racist anti-hunting letters it received. One letter concluded, "these people want to rekindle their traditional way of life by killing an animals that has probably twice the mental capacity they have." Another suggested that, "we should also be able to take their land if they can take our whales." Or consider this gem of a letter that complained, "Natives were often referred to as 'savages,' and it seems little has changed."
As Alexandra Harmon, an assistant professor at the University of Washington American Indian Studies Center put it, "Again and again in American history, non-Indian Americans have demanded that Indians act or live in some way other than Indians have chosen. The current Makah story is a lesson about how had it is to recognize and resist that same ethnocentric impulse today."
Source:
E-mails, phone messages full of threats, invective. Alex Tizon, Seattle Times, May 23, 1999.