Post by tekmac on Feb 15, 2005 10:49:15 GMT -5
SEATTLE, Washington (14 Feb 2005) -- Nearly six years ago, a team of Makah Indian hunters sparked controversy worldwide with the harvest of a gray whale off Washington's Olympic coast -- the first successful whale hunt by the traditionally seafaring tribe in more than 70 years.
But almost ever since, the tribe's whale hunts have been put on hold, thwarted in the courts by a string of successful legal challenges from an international coalition of animal-protection activists.
With the filing of documents today with a federal agency, the Makah Indian Nation will begin anew its effort to re-establish tribal whale hunts -- an effort that, instead of fighting the court's rulings, will have the tribe trying to comply with them.
"You get tired of fighting after a while," Makah tribal chairman Ben Johnson Jr. said Friday. "So now we're going to try it their way for a while."
By filing an application today with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Makah tribe begins the long and almost unheard-of process of seeking a waiver to the Marine Mammal Protection Act -- a 1972 federal law that generally outlaws anyone in the United States from killing or harming gray whales and other marine mammals.
The move is one of at least two procedural steps the tribe and NOAA -- the agency that approved the tribe's most recent whale hunts -- previously fought against in court but with which both now say they'll comply.
"The bottom line is, we support the tribe's treaty right to hunt whales," said Brian Gorman, a NOAA spokesman in Seattle.
"It's going to be a long process," he added. "I don't think anyone is fooling themselves about that."
The tribe hopes that within two years, all necessary approvals and paperwork will be in place to allow Makah whalers to legally return to the Pacific's waters with a plan to harvest as many as 20 whales over five years, with no more than five whales taken in a single year.
The Makah tribe, which considers its centuries-old tradition of whaling as part of what defines the tribe's unique identity, says it is pursuing the hunts for cultural and subsistence purposes.
"We don't expect this to happen overnight," Johnson said. "We just want to go whaling again. Whaling is our treaty right, and we see it as our way of life."
But the tribe's quest to one day legally whale again will undoubtedly travel turbulent waters.
For one, never before has an individual or group won an exception to the federal marine mammal protection law, experts say. And longtime foes of the Makah's whaling pursuits say they'll continue to fight tribal hunts.
"This could absolutely be precedent-setting," said Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist with the Humane Society of the United States, one of several plaintiffs that succeeded in court in delaying the tribe's hunts.
"If they win (a waiver to the law), it's not just the Makah that will be impacted," Rose added. "This will lay the ground rules for anyone who tries to seek an exception to go whaling in the future. So yes, we'll definitely dog the process."
That process gets under way today with the tribe's filing of a 55-page application to NOAA that requests a waiver to the federal law's moratorium on the taking of whales.
Although the Makah tribe holds an express right to whale under its 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay -- the only explicit treaty right to whale reserved by an American Indian tribe -- the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has twice ruled the tribe must seek and win such an exception before being allowed to ever legally whale again.
Seeking such a waiver to the law is almost unheard of, and winning one would be unprecedented.
Only two applications for a waiver -- both in the 1970s -- are believed to have ever been submitted, Gorman said. The state of Alaska once applied for an exception on behalf of indigenous people there who wanted to harvest walruses; a North Carolina company that imported seal skins also sought a waiver, Gorman said.
Both applications were withdrawn before making it to the approval stage, Gorman said.
Through a process of public hearings and comment periods, NOAA has ultimate authority to decide whether the Makah tribe should be granted the exception. Although the agency has supported the tribe's most recent whaling pursuits, Gorman said, "we're certainly not going to rubber-stamp this waiver request."
"We have to take this very carefully," he added. "There's almost a certainty that we'll be sued."
Part of the tribe's waiver application appears at least to try to address one concern of the Makah's whaling opponents: a small group of gray whales that feeds within the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The tribe and NOAA consistently have argued the group is part of the larger stock of Eastern North Pacific gray whales that migrates between Mexico and the Arctic and now numbers as many as 26,000 worldwide. But anti-whaling activists have argued the group represents a subspecies of gray whales that could be harmed by tribal hunts. In its latest ruling, the court expressed similar concerns.
In its application, the tribe says it plans to hunt only at times when that group isn't typically feeding, and then only in the open waters of the Pacific during peak migration periods of the full gray whale stock. The Makah's stated intentions to avoid the smaller group "appears to be trying to appease that issue," Gorman said.
The court also has ruled that NOAA, along with granting the waiver, must prepare an environmental impact statement that says tribal hunts will not hurt overall gray whale populations.
Although the federal agency and the tribe have said the Makah's limited hunts will have no major impact, such a full-blown study will be conducted simultaneously over the next several months while the tribe moves through the waiver application process, Gorman said.
Still, some opponents have argued the killing of even one whale is an atrocious act against one of the world's great treasures that should not be supported in any way by the U.S. government.
To whale again, the Makah tribe also needs an extension from the International Whaling Commission on the tribe's current whaling quota, which expires in 2007. NOAA and the tribe likely will seek such an extension next year, Gorman said.
Although the federal appeals court has never ruled the tribe's treaty right to whale has been abrogated, or abolished, some Indian law experts saw the court's calling for additional processes before such hunts could continue as having a chilling effect on the tribe that could amount to abrogation.
The tribe, which twice tried unsuccessfully to appeal the court's rulings, contemplated taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. But tribal attorney John Arum and others feared that if the Makah tribe lost before the nation's highest court, the resulting precedent could open the door to attacks on tribal treaty rights nationwide.
Although the Makah's whaling tradition dates back at least 1,500 years, the tribe suspended its whale hunts in the 1920s, in part because the commercial whaling industry had hunted gray whales to near extinction.
After the United States delisted the gray whale as an endangered species in 1994, the Makah sought to hunt again. That effort culminated in May 1999, when tribal whalers harpooned and shot a 2-year-old gray off Washington's Olympic Coast.
The successful hunt touched off days of celebration by the Makah and other tribes and brought condemnation from animal protection activists and other whaling opponents.
SOURCE - Seattle PI
But almost ever since, the tribe's whale hunts have been put on hold, thwarted in the courts by a string of successful legal challenges from an international coalition of animal-protection activists.
With the filing of documents today with a federal agency, the Makah Indian Nation will begin anew its effort to re-establish tribal whale hunts -- an effort that, instead of fighting the court's rulings, will have the tribe trying to comply with them.
"You get tired of fighting after a while," Makah tribal chairman Ben Johnson Jr. said Friday. "So now we're going to try it their way for a while."
By filing an application today with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Makah tribe begins the long and almost unheard-of process of seeking a waiver to the Marine Mammal Protection Act -- a 1972 federal law that generally outlaws anyone in the United States from killing or harming gray whales and other marine mammals.
The move is one of at least two procedural steps the tribe and NOAA -- the agency that approved the tribe's most recent whale hunts -- previously fought against in court but with which both now say they'll comply.
"The bottom line is, we support the tribe's treaty right to hunt whales," said Brian Gorman, a NOAA spokesman in Seattle.
"It's going to be a long process," he added. "I don't think anyone is fooling themselves about that."
The tribe hopes that within two years, all necessary approvals and paperwork will be in place to allow Makah whalers to legally return to the Pacific's waters with a plan to harvest as many as 20 whales over five years, with no more than five whales taken in a single year.
The Makah tribe, which considers its centuries-old tradition of whaling as part of what defines the tribe's unique identity, says it is pursuing the hunts for cultural and subsistence purposes.
"We don't expect this to happen overnight," Johnson said. "We just want to go whaling again. Whaling is our treaty right, and we see it as our way of life."
But the tribe's quest to one day legally whale again will undoubtedly travel turbulent waters.
For one, never before has an individual or group won an exception to the federal marine mammal protection law, experts say. And longtime foes of the Makah's whaling pursuits say they'll continue to fight tribal hunts.
"This could absolutely be precedent-setting," said Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist with the Humane Society of the United States, one of several plaintiffs that succeeded in court in delaying the tribe's hunts.
"If they win (a waiver to the law), it's not just the Makah that will be impacted," Rose added. "This will lay the ground rules for anyone who tries to seek an exception to go whaling in the future. So yes, we'll definitely dog the process."
That process gets under way today with the tribe's filing of a 55-page application to NOAA that requests a waiver to the federal law's moratorium on the taking of whales.
Although the Makah tribe holds an express right to whale under its 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay -- the only explicit treaty right to whale reserved by an American Indian tribe -- the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has twice ruled the tribe must seek and win such an exception before being allowed to ever legally whale again.
Seeking such a waiver to the law is almost unheard of, and winning one would be unprecedented.
Only two applications for a waiver -- both in the 1970s -- are believed to have ever been submitted, Gorman said. The state of Alaska once applied for an exception on behalf of indigenous people there who wanted to harvest walruses; a North Carolina company that imported seal skins also sought a waiver, Gorman said.
Both applications were withdrawn before making it to the approval stage, Gorman said.
Through a process of public hearings and comment periods, NOAA has ultimate authority to decide whether the Makah tribe should be granted the exception. Although the agency has supported the tribe's most recent whaling pursuits, Gorman said, "we're certainly not going to rubber-stamp this waiver request."
"We have to take this very carefully," he added. "There's almost a certainty that we'll be sued."
Part of the tribe's waiver application appears at least to try to address one concern of the Makah's whaling opponents: a small group of gray whales that feeds within the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The tribe and NOAA consistently have argued the group is part of the larger stock of Eastern North Pacific gray whales that migrates between Mexico and the Arctic and now numbers as many as 26,000 worldwide. But anti-whaling activists have argued the group represents a subspecies of gray whales that could be harmed by tribal hunts. In its latest ruling, the court expressed similar concerns.
In its application, the tribe says it plans to hunt only at times when that group isn't typically feeding, and then only in the open waters of the Pacific during peak migration periods of the full gray whale stock. The Makah's stated intentions to avoid the smaller group "appears to be trying to appease that issue," Gorman said.
The court also has ruled that NOAA, along with granting the waiver, must prepare an environmental impact statement that says tribal hunts will not hurt overall gray whale populations.
Although the federal agency and the tribe have said the Makah's limited hunts will have no major impact, such a full-blown study will be conducted simultaneously over the next several months while the tribe moves through the waiver application process, Gorman said.
Still, some opponents have argued the killing of even one whale is an atrocious act against one of the world's great treasures that should not be supported in any way by the U.S. government.
To whale again, the Makah tribe also needs an extension from the International Whaling Commission on the tribe's current whaling quota, which expires in 2007. NOAA and the tribe likely will seek such an extension next year, Gorman said.
Although the federal appeals court has never ruled the tribe's treaty right to whale has been abrogated, or abolished, some Indian law experts saw the court's calling for additional processes before such hunts could continue as having a chilling effect on the tribe that could amount to abrogation.
The tribe, which twice tried unsuccessfully to appeal the court's rulings, contemplated taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. But tribal attorney John Arum and others feared that if the Makah tribe lost before the nation's highest court, the resulting precedent could open the door to attacks on tribal treaty rights nationwide.
Although the Makah's whaling tradition dates back at least 1,500 years, the tribe suspended its whale hunts in the 1920s, in part because the commercial whaling industry had hunted gray whales to near extinction.
After the United States delisted the gray whale as an endangered species in 1994, the Makah sought to hunt again. That effort culminated in May 1999, when tribal whalers harpooned and shot a 2-year-old gray off Washington's Olympic Coast.
The successful hunt touched off days of celebration by the Makah and other tribes and brought condemnation from animal protection activists and other whaling opponents.
SOURCE - Seattle PI