Anthropologists have long puzzled over the origins of traditional hunting practices and their persistence into modern times even when they may no longer be consistent with modern realities. The hunting of the Makahs is just one good example. Because whales have no written history much of what we know we have deduced from whole cloth. As an aside Professor Letta presents useful insights into why the whales abandoned writing although I, for one, do not subscribe to his theory. Anyone who has heard the plaintive and blatantly sexual whale mating songs can ever think the whales would abandon writing as a reaction to excessive pornography in their books. I have spent many hours combing the sea bottom and have yet to find one pornographic book written by whales. So, Prof. Letta's theory is interesting but hardly rigorous. getting back to the point, we cannot know why the whales first started hunting the Makahs but we do have hints as to why the practice persisted. Whales, of course, are more than just another sentient species that refused to come ashore when the life guards blew the whistle. They built the great inverted pyramids of the sea and rank among the greatest engineers of the pre-industrialised world. The most famous of the pyramids is the Marianas Trench that geologists so carelessly attribute to plate tectonics. I confess that at one time I believed the trenches to be great oceanic freeways where the whales could ride concentrated currents in their annual migrations but the complete absence of any road signs or comfort stations puts the lie to that theory. How could whales that have no arms blast out these great trenches? Well the key is in the word "Blast". It is well known by cannibals around the world that the native North Americans cause flatulence when cooked with a liberal dose of chili powder. That, of course brings us to the Makahs and the whale hunt. As you can imagine it is difficult to catch a Makah when they spend so much of their time ashore. The whales got around this problem by baiting the Makah fishermen with great whale lures (predating the Trojan horse by many centuries). The Makah, much like any other game took the bait and built a religion around it (fly fisherman should be familiar with this). Even today many Makah think they are hunting the whales when in fact it is the whales hunting the Makah. Regrettably the Makah have been armed by unscrupulous arms dealers and the balance of power is now out of balance. There is no partiality in this. The symbol of the modern arms dealer is a short fat blindfolded man with Uzi balanced on a set of scales. The arms dealer sells arms not ideology. Arms dealer, though they profit from politics take no real interest in which side is right or wrong. Yesterday I was talking with a representative from the Colt firearms Company and he says they will soon have weapons that can be used by wildlife. The mind boggles at the thought of deer armed to the teeth with repeating weapons. Lends a whole new perspective to the hunting season. How long before before whales are armed with torpedoes? Keep in mind that whales have not signed any treaties and natives will be fair game. Why then, you rightly ask, do we only hear about the whales that are killed in this battle? Why indeed? The whales haven't access to Time magazine or even Newsweek and you don't expect the Makahs to advertise their losses do you? No, this is nothing more that a PR game on the part of Makah elders who hope to kill off the youngers who are itching for tribal power. Like everything else, this is a political battle and the whales are but pawns. Big pawns but pawns nonetheless. .Dr. Peregrine Inverbon, Ph.d., DD, LL.d, Ph.G Transcribed by his humble servant John Winters *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sun Aug 09 1998 - 05:24:33 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:29:58 PDT