Re: [Paddlewise] Greenland Paddles, Makah Hunt

On the historical side I believe I have read in several accounts that the baidarkas
that made it to Fort Ross and the San Francisco Bay were paddled all the way from
Alaska.  They were not transported on Russian vessels.  The Russian presence in
Alaska, though fierce and uncompromising, was not very large, nor was it very well
supplied from Russia.  Still the Russians and other westerners managed to wreak havoc
on the indigenous people they encountered pretty much the same as they had done in
every other frontier they had "conquered".

The irony of "Western" culture interfering with the actions of indigenous people is
inescapable.  But it is a different world now.  The Makah did not kill whales 150
years ago simply for the sake of ceremony.  They required the whales as a part of
their subsistence, their survival.  The ceremony was attached to that pragmatic
requirement.  To kill whales only for the sake of ceremony is not reasonable.

John Somers wrote:

>  Under penalty of death, they forced the indigenous coastal peoples
> of the region that is now Alaska, including the Aleutians, Alutiiq, and
> others, to hunt sea otters from their kayaks and umiaks as far south as San
> Francisco Bay, California!  Apparently this was done by transporting the
> native hunters and their paddlecraft on the foreigners' ships.

>         Now fast forward to 1998 and we have the deep irony of the Makah whale
> hunt.  An indigenous tribe, the Makah, propose to resume whale hunting.
> Their ancestors alone made a condition of their treaty with the U.S.
> government that they could do this.  According to their website, their
> purpose is to restore the underpinning of their traditional culture:
>         Enter now the suggested flotilla of kayaks on the water to interfere with
> the Makah hunt.  My mind is beginning to boggle at the great karmic cycle
> this would represent.  Get this:  Sincere and concerned descendants of
> invading and conquering peoples (or at least members of the resultant
> dominant cultures) now using highly adapted, modern-tech versions of
> traditional craft to inhibit an effort at cultural restoration by
> indigenous people who are using traditional/modern means to hunt their
> traditional prey, which itself has been decimated largely by the ancestral
> cultures of the protestors!
>

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