Court rebuffs Makah appeal over whaling

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Registered: 03-23-2003
Court rebuffs Makah appeal over whaling
14
Tue, 06-08-2004 - 6:00pm
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/176853_makah08.html

Court rebuffs Makah's appeal over whaling

Ruling may put tribe's next hunt off for years


Tuesday, June 8, 2004


By LEWIS KAMB
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER


For the third time, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday the Makah Tribe must comply with more stringent environmental procedures before seeking to hunt gray whales -- a decision likely to mean years of process before tribal whalers will know whether they can ever legally hunt again.


The decision from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals essentially echoed two previous rulings by the court:


The Makah Tribe cannot hunt gray whales until the U.S. government conducts a full-blown environmental analysis; and the tribe and the federal agency that sponsors its hunts also must win an exception to the Marine Mammal Protection Act before any tribal whaling can take place again.


Animal rights activists who took the U.S.-sponsored Makah hunts to court hailed yesterday's ruling as the latest sign that America's legal system doesn't support the killing of whales.


"The Court of Appeals has been emphatic on this point ... and it's obviously something the American public doesn't want," said Michael Markarian, director of the Fund for Animals, a group among a coalition that sued to stop the tribe's hunts off the Olympic Peninsula.


Reached by telephone yesterday, a tribal councilman at the Makah Indian Nation in Neah Bay was stunned by the ruling, saying tribal officials had not yet been made aware of it.


Councilman Micah McCarty, who also is on the tribe's Whaling Commission, added tribal officials have not had a chance to contemplate how to respond to the ruling.


After hearing the news, tribal member Wayne Johnson vowed yesterday that his tribe would whale again.


"It's another treaty broken by the United States, " said Johnson, who was the tribe's whaling captain during the tribe's successful whale hunt in 1999. "I am going whaling again."(me:  WHY?  Why do they need to hunt a sentient being just because of 'tradition'?  Don't whales already face enough manmade dangers in their quest to survive?)


John Arum, a Seattle lawyer who prepared the tribe's unsuccessful appeals to the court's rulings on the matter, called yesterday's opinion "obviously a bad decision for the tribe."


In order to pursue whaling, Arum said, the tribe -- the only Indian group in the United States with an explicit treaty right to hunt whales -- now essentially has two options:


It can petition to have the case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court -- an unlikely prospect given that the court accepts very few cases each year.


Or, the tribe can simply comply with the court's ruling -- a process that likely will take "several years, at least," Arum said.


The ruling requires the National Marine Fisheries Service to do an environmental impact study to ensure that the tribe's whale hunts would not hurt gray whale populations.


It also calls for the tribe to seek a waiver to the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, which generally outlaws anyone in the United States from harming or killing marine mammals.


Lawyers for both sides have said they know of no American Indian tribe ever to seek such a waiver, and few non-Indians who've applied for the exception to the law have ever won one.


Even if the tribe ultimately decides to appeal the case to the nation's highest court, Arum said, "no doubt, we'd also move forward in the MMPA process" as well.


"The tribe wants to get out whaling as soon as possible."


Even as the tribe has sought to appeal the three-judge panel's ruling on the issue -- twice unsuccessfully seeking to win a review by the full 9th Circuit -- federal marine officials have been conducting the environmental study called for by the court.


That upsets activists like Markarian, who yesterday again called the government's support of the Makah whale hunts a waste of tax dollars.


"We hope the Bush administration finally understands the meaning of the word 'No,' " Markarian said. (me:  Not likely, hasn't happened yet...  The OXe Writing The Message Is Winking )


Although the court panel previously said its ruling on the case in no way addresses abrogating -- or abolishing -- guarantees afforded to the tribe in its treaty, some Indian law experts say it essentially does just that.


Robert Anderson, director of the University of Washington's Native American Law Center, said yesterday that by tacking restrictions onto the tribe's treaty right to hunt whales, the court essentially is telling the Makah "you can exercise your right, but only if you have our preapproval."


"I would say that's an abrogation in my view," said Anderson, who fears the case could be used as a precedent to assail Indian treaty rights across the nation.


But Eric Glitzenstein, a Washington, D.C., lawyer for the anti-whaling opponents, yesterday called suggestions the case could have sweeping implications on treaty rights "a sky-is-falling type of argument."





P-I reporter Lewis Kamb can be reached at 206-448-8336 or lewiskamb@seattlepi.com


© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer


I just don't get it.  They don't need to kill any whales...why do it just for "tradition's" sake?  To me, it seems like some macho right-of-passage thing that should have been updated a century or so ago.  Oh, and it's not like they are hunting with 'traditional weapons'...no...they have power boats, 'power' harpoons (not the traditional hand thrown type), radios, etc.  I can see some of those items for safety's sake because just being out there is dangerous, but if they want to hunt whales because "it's traditional", then they should have to use the "traditional" weapons.





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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 12:01am

I realize that this is an anti-whaling site, but they brought a lot of the info together in one spot...rather than having to post several links.


http://www.anti-whaling.com/news_and_articles/february2003.htm







iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 9:08am
The gray whale evidently isn't as threatened as many people seem to believe. It's been removed from the Endangered Species list for some years now, and it's numbers are at an all-time high since we've been keeping records.

While not unbiased, here's an interesting link on the subject of the Makah and whale hunting.

http://www.alamut.com/subj/the_other/misc/makahWhaling.html

~mark~

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 9:12am
It leaves us with the government being on the sharp end of the stick, with it either respecting and honoring a treaty it made in good faith, or breaking the treaty and proving to the Makah that it's government cannot be trusted.

It's a bad situation all around, no doubt. And as I've already noted I feel they should hunt in a traditional manner if they're going to hunt at all... no powerboats, etc.

Here's another link if you're interested.

http://www.nwifc.wa.gov/whaling/whaleplan.html

~mark~

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 10:26am

Thanks for the links.


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