By Mathhew Daly
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government could allow a Washington state Indian tribe to “hunt” whales on a purely ceremonial basis, without killing them.
Or, it could re-list the gray whale as an endangered species.
Or, maybe the government could renegotiate an 1855 treaty that allows the Makah Tribe to continue whaling as it has done for centuries.
Those were among the options offered Tuesday by whaling opponents as the National Marine Fisheries Service held the fourth in a series of public meetings on the tribe’s request to resume whale hunting off the Washington coast after a six-year hiatus.
Makah leaders took the suggestions in stride, saying they are confident their request for a waiver of whaling restrictions imposed by the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act ultimately will be approved.
The tribe asked for the waiver in February, following a ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that it must comply with the marine mammal law and obtain a waiver from the fisheries agency before proceeding with a hunt.
Tuesday’s meeting — held at the agency’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Md. — was part of a process that will lead to publication of an environmental impact statement late next year. If the request is granted and there are no delays, the tribe could resume whale hunting as soon as 2008.
“It’s a little time-consuming, but it’s an important part of the education process for both sides — particularly those who are ignorant of Indian issues,” said Micah McCarty, a member of the Makah Tribal Council, who traveled to the East Coast to attend the meeting.
McCarty and other supporters said they were offended by one critic’s suggestion that the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay be renegotiated, but said otherwise the two-hour meeting went as expected.
“We have to go through this process, as frustrating as it is,” said Dave Sones, vice chairman of the Tribal Council.
“In the end, we hope to secure our future,” Sones said. “I hope the public will be comfortable with the fact we’re just doing what we’ve done for thousands of years.”
While the 1855 treaty allows whaling, Makah leaders voluntarily stopped the practice in the 1920s after the commercial whaling industry had hunted gray whales nearly to extinction.
After the federal government removed the gray whale from the endangered species list in 1994, the tribe began taking steps to hunt again in waters off its reservation at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula.
In 1999, tribal members killed their first whale in more than 70 years. Animal welfare activists soon sued the tribe and its federal backers, leading to the court order that resulted in the February request for a waiver.
The tribe’s efforts received a boost this week when Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., chairman of the House Resources Committees, introduced a resolution supporting the waiver request.
The nonbinding resolution calls the waiver process “burdensome, costly … and tantamount to a denial of the tribe’s treaty rights.” The committee is slated to vote on the measure on Wednesday.
“The chairman believes, and many members of Congress believe, that the United States has failed to uphold our promises to Indian tribes, and we should stand behind the treaty we signed,” said Matthew Streit, a spokesman for Pombo.
But Naomi Rose, a biologist for the Humane Society of the United States, said whale hunting should be banned — period.
“There is no humane way to kill a whale,” she said, noting that it took eight minutes for a gray whale killed by the tribe in 1999 to die. The whale was killed under an aboriginal subsistence quota granted to the United States by the International Whaling Commission.
The Makah has done no hunting in recent years, due in part to ongoing litigation.
The tribe is proposing to harvest as many as 20 gray whales during a five-year period, with a maximum of five whales killed in any one year.