Culture vs. Conservation over seals?
01 June 2009
by Emily Hunter, Contributing Writer for AnaiRhoads.org
AnaiRhoads.org -- By now, many of you have heard about the Queen's representative eating the raw heart of a dead seal this week. However, in this bloody venture, there is more than heating up an old debate of the Canadian seal hunt – but a continuation of misguiding the public.
General Michaëlle Jean's legitimized the Canadian seal hunt this week by participating in gutting and eating the artery of a seal with Inuit groups while in a visit in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. Jean claims this culinary experience showcased in front of national media was to assert the Inuit's right to cultural heritage. But is this really about fostering our multiculturalism or more jockeying native groups for political stratagem?
"It's like Sushi," said Jean to the Times.
But unlike eating a piece of raw fish at your local Japanese restaurant, there is more at stake here than a cultural experience. But stirring a boiling pot in an inferno.
In a month when the European Union has recently banned Canadian commercial seal hunt products, it seems like more than coincidental timing for Jean’s 'good-will' gesture. If anything, this act was a political maneuver, legitimizing the Canadian seal hunt on the grounds of cultural autonomy for suffering Inuit groups.
However, there is significant blurring of the lines between two starkly different industries: the commercial seal hunt in the east coast of Canada and traditional Inuit hunts in the far north.
The east-coast hunt consists of targeting 300,000 baby Harp seals in Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence Gulf annually for seal products of furs, pelts and substances for Omega-3 pills. It is a commercial industry that hires 6,000 off-season fishermen and earns $5.5 million. While the Inuit hunt that has been practiced for over four thousand years kills 10,000 Ring seals (3 percent of the Canadian seal hunt) in the Northern territories. It is an industry practiced mainly for substance and local economy needs.
"There is a difference in an indigenous cultures right to hunt for food and economic survival, and the non-indigenous Newfoundlander's massive slaughter of defenceless animals for profit and vanity," says Patrick Doyle, CEO of NativeRadio.com.
Furthermore, the Inuit have been exempt from the EU ban while the east-coast hunt hasn't. However, Inuit were exempt in the ban by European countries in the 1980's, yet they were still negatively effected. Which is something surely to be taken into consideration, more so by Canada than Europe. Nevertheless, there are important differences to be made in the Canadian seal hunt.
Almost no animals-rights groups are condemning the Inuit hunt, but focus their campaigns on the east-coast commercial hunt. And to suggest so, as Jean has in defending the Canadian seal hunt by promoting Inuit rights, masks these important distinctions.
But few feel anyways GG's political feast will have any affect in swaying European opinion in changing its pace to Canada's banning.
"The fact that the Governor General in public is slashing and eating a seal, I don't think really helps the cause and I'm convinced this will not change the minds of European citizens and politicians," says Barbara Slee, an activist with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, to the Toronto Star.
But what this gesture does do is continue a kind of 'seal dark-ages' for Canadians. Duping the public on one of Canada's great shames in the international sphere (next to the Alberta tar sands). By mixing the largest mammal mass slaughter with a cultural-cheery-card in the same bowl. A bowl that becomes slim-pickings as few can argue against that infusion. But it is a false alchemy.
Yet this story is the same old story; Japan too claims culture in their annual Southern Ocean whale hunt of nearly a thousand whales including endangered. As discussed in my article Culture Wars for THIS, a thousand year old tradition by native groups is not the same as a needless large-scale commercial killing by governments.
Governments cannot hide behind culture in the face of their own eco-injustice.
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