(This version corrects name throughout from Mary Owens to Margaret Owens)
JOYCE — Margaret and Chuck Owens said last week they remain strongly convinced that their cause is just.
The co-founders of Peninsula Citizens for the Protection of Whales said they are more certain than ever that the Makah tribe does not need to, and should not, hunt whales.
“I never did think we were right and they were wrong,” Margaret Owens said.
“I do feel we have strong and deeply felt positions that haven’t changed.”
Their efforts helped draw the political weight and monetary muscle of international animal groups, including the Humane Society of the United States, helping stall the tribe’s effort to hunt gray whales after a tribal whaling crew harpooned and killed their quarry 10 years ago today.
“For us, this is about the whales,” Chuck Owens said. “We feel someone needs to speak for the whales.”
Like the Makah, the Owenses aren’t celebrating 10 years after the last legal Makah whale hunt on May 17, 1999, although their reasons differ.
“What’s to celebrate?” asked Margaret Owens, sitting at her kitchen table with her husband in their Joyce home. “There’s nothing to celebrate.
“They had 10 years of no whaling,” she said. “We are not celebrating. We are not happy about anything. We’ve got nothing to crow about.”
Their home is filled with Margaret Owens’ artwork, including whale sculptures and dozens of boxes of whaling-related documents jammed up against a 7-foot tall cabinet stuffed with binders and boxes of more papers.
Margaret Owens has been more dedicated to her anti-whaling efforts over the last 10 years than her artwork, she said.
It’s helped her become more involved in the community, spurring her to join the area Scenic Byways Committee and other groups.
Whales a passion
But whales remain her passion, now more than ever.
She said new scientific studies by Stanford marine sciences Professor Stephen Palumbi suggests that gray whales should be put back on the endangered species list, an act she said would protect the Makah’s 1855 treaty right, though render it unusable.
Brian Gorman, spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said there is no congressional effort to re-list gray whales.
The Makah decided not to exercise their treaty right to whale — gained in exchange for giving a large portion of their land to federal government — when gray whales were placed on the national endangered species list in 1970.
After the whales’ removal from that list in 1994, the Makah pursued the right to whale on a subsistence basis, up to five whales per year.
Margaret Owens had just turned 50 when the tribe killed its first whale in several decades, and her 60th birthday was just three days ago.
‘Going on emotions’
“We were naive,” she said. “We were shooting from the hip, going on emotions.
“We kind of thought if we appealed to the tribe as neighbors and as friends, as peers, to please not kill the whale, that we could possibly change their plans,” she added.
The Owenses said they can’t think of any circumstance that would lead them to change their minds about the Makah hunting whales.
They said they don’t trust that the tribe — which has been approved by the International Whaling Commission for only subsistence whaling — won’t hunt commercially.
If the Makah receive a waiver from the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act to whale again, the Owenses are certain the tribe will be challenged in court, they said.
If the tribe ever does hunt and kill a whale again, “it will be like a wound,” Margaret Owens said. “It’s not going to be good.”
Naomi Rose, senior scientist for the The Humane Society of the United States, which successfully sued to compel the tribe to apply for a waiver from the Marine Mammal Protection Act, said if the waiver is granted, opponents will have a tough fight ahead of them, at least in the courts.
“If the final position is to allow the hunt to proceed, we are going to be in a difficult position,” Rose said.
“It just becomes a matter of public opinion, and I’m hoping the Makah would not go through with this, knowing how public opinion is.”
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
