And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 09:48:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Shafer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
X-Sender: wy430@vtn1
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Rex Murphy's POINT OF VIEW
The Makah, the Whale and Eco-Salvation
May 20, 1999
REX MURPHY: This week was the scene of an interesting,
even rare collision. It is not often the armies of environmental
purity and protection -- the friends of the Earth -- run up against
their spiritual mentors; those who have been with the land longer
than anyone else, the aboriginals. However the killing of a grey
whale by the Makah tribe in what the Makah claimed was an act of
profound meaning, very clearly incensed and horrified some
environmental groups. It was quite a spectacle. On that, all will
agree. The great animal pursued, harpooned, then dispatched by very
contemporary .50 calibre bullets; blood in the roiling water and
towed to shore where the carcass was cut -- some of it eaten with a
chaser of diet Coke -- and some of it given away.
MURPHY: If this was a ritual, a grand traditional ceremony, it
clearly lost in the sublimity scales; veered more to an episode of
"Flipper" than "Moby Dick." However, the whale is environmental
royalty, and saving the whales is the Eucharist sacrament of
environmentalism. The rainforest, the panda, the dolphin and the
whale; and of these four, the greatest is the whale. (Gunshot)
MURPHY: Not even Newfoundland's poor, battered and supine seal hunt
has the PR propulsion of the whale as a symbol. The seal has only
cute; the whale has grandeur. The whale is everywhere. It is the
darling of the world. It is petted and patted; watched, videotaped,
bannered and postered. It is the 'eco' in eco-tourism. There are
whale songs, whale books, whale watchers and whale movies. Who can
-- try as hard as we may -- forget Hollywood's blubbering
sentimentalities "Free Willey 1" and "Free Willy 2"?
MURPHY: But in the great chain of being, when it comes to who
watches the Earth, who is more sensitized, by history and practice,
to preservation and protection; to a reverence of the natural and a
wholesome relation with the world's creatures; who may claim
superior moral rank to First Peoples? They are the people whose
very identity is a fusion with Earth, air and water in a way that
we, who came later, can only guess at.
MURPHY: This is a truth long respected by environmentalists
themselves. Indeed, what is environmentalism but a pale, latter day
homage to what the aboriginal peoples have lived for all their
history? The Makah say the revival of a whale hunt is necessary for
their spiritual well-being. Well who are we, or the
environmentalists, to say any differently? To call it an outrage or
a sham or a deep cruelty is to import late 20th-century attitudes
of a very sophisticated and largely urban character. Earth first is
very second cup: an attempt to impose them on people who clearly
think very differently. It's condescending, and it's arrogant in a
way that is very out of tune with the benign respectful posture
that is supposedly characteristic of environmentalism. And it is
too, very much a very up-to-date return to the grand missionary
style of interaction with native peoples. Only this time, the
message is not religion; it's eco-salvation. The pictures may have
been ugly; the spectacle did have its contradictions. But neither
we, nor the environmentalists, have earned the moral ground on
which to lecture the Makah on going about their business with the
Earth or its creatures. I'm Rex Murphy.
0. http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/rex/pov990520.html
Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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