Presented by Tiffany Wright

• The Makah are a Native American tribe of about 2000 members living on Neah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state.
• They have enjoyed a 2000 year tradition of whaling activities. They are members of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth band of Indians.
• The tribe entered into a treaty, the Treaty of Neah Bay, with the US in 1855 that secured their rights to whaling and sealing activities, and, in return, the tribe would cede their lands to the US government(www.whales.magna.com/au).

• By the 1920s, commercial whaling worldwide had decimated populations of whales. Populations that were declining include that of the gray whale, the prime target of Makah whale hunts.
• In 1946, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) established the International Whaling Commission. Its purpose was to provide proper conservation of whale stocks thereby allowing orderly development of the whaling industry. Its goal was to allow commercial whaling at levels that would accommodate both whalers and whales.
• During the 1970s, it became obvious to the international community that just regulating commercial whaling would be insufficient in preventing the extinction of whales.
• In 1986, the IWC enacts a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling effective against all nations. To prevent hardship to aboriginal communities that traditionally depended on whale meat for cultural, nutritional and subsistence purposes, the IWC allowed a narrow exception to this moratorium. To that end, aboriginal communities can request an annual whale catch known as an Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling (ASW) quota.

• At the 49^th Annual IWC meeting held in Monaco in October 1997, the United States requested an ASW quota on behalf of the Makah tribe.
• The ASW quota consists of a stringent two-pronged test that must be satisfied in order to obtain the quota. The following needs must be met:
• A true cultural need to whale based on a continuing traditional dependence upon whaling activities and
• A nutritional subsistence need to whale for the purpose of local aborigine consumption.

• This is more than a simple cultural heritage; it means that whaling must be an absolute cultural necessity.
• The aborigines must prove a continuing traditional dependence on whale meat and whaling activities.

• This implies that whale meat must be a dietary staple.
• Subsistence requirements for whale meat means that the lifestyle and livelihood of the aborigines be inextricably dependent upon the whale.

• An ASW quota was granted to the Alaskan Eskimos in their request to hunt bowhead whales from the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas stock. An IWC panel of experts was convened to determine if the Eskimos met the requirements of the ASW quota. Their conclusion was that "the complex of whaling and associated activities is perhaps the most important single element in the culture and society of north Alaskan whale hunting communities. It provides a focus for the ordering of social integration, political leadership, ceremonial activity, traditional education, personality values, and Eskimo identity (Leesteffy 1998)."¹
• This finding shows that the Alaskan Eskimos possess an absolute necessity for the whale as it is the central focus of their community, culture and lifestyle.
• This case is the standard against which all other ASW quota requests have been and will be compared.

• At the October 1997 meeting in Monaco, the IWC adopted a new amendment to the ICRW regulating the global take of gray whales during the years 1998-2002. This includes gray whales of the Eastern stock in the North Pacific and is not to exceed 620, and no more than 140 can be taken in any given year from 1998-2002.
• The aborigines that can take advantage of this quota include the Makah. The decision made by the IWC was not that the Makah would have their own quota, but that their annual catch would be part of the North Pacific stock from which other aborigine groups, including the Chukotki Indians of Russia, currently take gray whales (http://www.makah.com).

• Precedent Others will Use
• Gray whale populations are currently estimated at more than 25,000 and are increasing at a rate of about 2.5% per year. By these estimates, gray whale populations increase by more than 600 individuals per year. Since IWC regulations restrict the total 1998-2002 catch to 140 per year, this alone would not have any significant ecological impact on the gray whale populations. Therefore, opposition to the Makah whaling quota is primarily concerned with what may happen in the future as a result of this decision.

• As one might expect, several animal-rights groups have taken an interest in this case, and, in fact, several of these groups in conjunction with some whale-watching groups and marine conservation groups, being led by Republican U.S. House of Representative member Jack Metcalf, filed a lawsuit to block the Makah whale hunt. This lawsuit does not challenge the treaty rights of the Makah, but it focuses on the federal review process of the hunt under the National Environmental Policy Act (http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com).
• On June 9^th, the Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco suspended federal approval of the Makah hunt and ordered a new study into the environmental risks posed by Makah whaling. In their 2-1 ruling, the three-member panel said federal officials rejected environmental laws by agreeing to the hunt before the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) had done its environmental review. The court found that "the government clearly committed itself to supporting the hunt before looking at what its impact would be. It was essentially a forgone conclusion, while they were simultaneously pretending to study the hunt in an environmental assessment (http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com)."
• Due to the high scrutiny that is likely to be placed on this particular study which normally takes only a few months, officials with the Northwest regional office of the NMFS say they are unsure how long it will take, but it may be from a few months to as long as a year. It will be conducted under the supervision of the US District Court in Tacoma.
• This lawsuit does not dispute the Makah’s treaty right to whale. It only charges that the environmental risks weren’t adequately studied. This lawsuit is not likely to stop the Makah hunt. If animal-rights groups have their way, the new environmental impact study will, at the very least, postpone the hunt until after the whales’ migration have taken them past Makah hunting grounds.
• The Makah resumed whaling in October 1998 after Metcalf lost his suit in a lower court. In May 1999, a whaling crew in a dugout harpooned a whale, which was killed quickly with a .50-caliber gun (http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com). This is surely only one of many chapters to come in the controversy surrounding Makah Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling.

Barber, Mike, et al. Makah whaling decision reversed--but court ruling may not stop hunting. Online. http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/maka10.shtml. 10 November 2000.

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