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From: "Steven Bissell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Discussion forum for environmental ethics." <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: Animal Rights and Civil Rights: Makah whaling
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 12:34:27 -0700
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This sort of brings to mind an issue that came up while I was doing my
research on animal rights. All other issues were seen in relation to the
issue of animal rights. For example, in the case of Santa Rei religion, the
issue of freedom of religion was not seen as important, or even important,
as compared to the issue of animal sacrifice. The issue was *not* the ill
treatment of animals, just animal sacrifice as "they don't *need* to do
that" (the emphasis as I've checked my notes was that of animal rights
people, not moi).
As much as I admire the work of Paul Watson, you can see where this goes.
The effort to protect whales *for the protection of whales alone* trumps all
other issues. It becomes easy to dismiss all other issues as irrelevant and
not to see any depth or richness in the issue; it's just "us versus them."
The animal rights movement has taken this, IMHO, an extreme. We see all
activities harm animals in anyway as unethical *by definition* regardless of
other content. Therefore it is not necessary to even consider alternative
approaches to understanding the issue. In the case of civil rights and
animal rights, we see that even the inference of wrong doing on the part of
an animal rights person was dismissed by someone on this list as "media
distortion." And, the discussion on the possibility that animal rights and
the abolitionist movement were not connected didn't seem to go anywhere
other than to invoke an animal rights "authority" as having said it,
therefore it must be so.
A lot of this has to do with my on-going suspicion that animal rights has
not as yet established itself as a legitimate branch of environmental
ethics. It remains, IMHO, a cultural movement whose time has yet to come. I
find it interesting that two "big time" TV shows have addressed animal
rights as environmental issues and questioned that conclusion in recent
weeks. "Law and Order" and "West Wing" both had plots around the issue and
concluded that animal rights were suspect as environmental issues. Now, I'm
not citing TV shows as authority, I'm making this point to indicate that the
discussion has at least reached the level of a cultural issue.
Steven
. . .in the last days he lost his appetite
and fed only on vegetables. He soon acquired
the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians.
His skin became covered with a thin moss,
similar to that which flourished on the
antique vest that he never took off,
and his breath exhaled the odor of a
sleeping animal.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967
One Hundred Years of Solitude
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion forum for environmental ethics.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Jim Tantillo
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 9:12 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Animal Rights and Civil Rights: Makah whaling
Hi everyone,
A year or so ago we had a discussion on the list about the ethics and
politics of whaling. (Steve Bissell originally posted a link to an article
that can be found in the list archives; another excellent starting point is
Alx Dark's article at <http://conbio.rice.edu/nae/cases/makah/index.html>.
I bring this topic up again partly to follow up on our discussions about
animal rights and human civil rights a couple of weeks ago, but also because
there is a new book out about the Makah whaling controversy that list
members may be interested in. Written by Robert Sullivan, _A Whale Hunt_ is
the author's first-person account of accompanying the Makah whalers for two
years during the height of the controversy.
I haven't made my way very far into the book, but from what I can gather
so far, certain environmentalists and animals rights protestors do not come
out looking very good. For example, Sullivan's book likely reinforces some
of the points made by Alx Dark above, particularly Dark's claims that the
"eco-colonialist" rhetoric of anti-hunt activists constituted a form of
racist opposition to the Makah's efforts to reinstate the hunt (see
especially http://conbio.rice.edu/nae/cases/makah/m6.html at above).
In particular, Paul Watson of the Sea Shepard Society doesn't come out
looking so good (at least not so far). Watson is quoted early in the book as
saying: "The real reason for this initiative by the Makah is because they
know very well that whale meat goes for $80 per kilo in Japan, and that one
of those whales is worth close to one million dollars. . . . what they have
their mind set on here is a commercial whaling operation" . . . a point
repeatedly denied by the Makah. Apparently, Watson was concerned enough
about how he and his organization are treated in the book that he chose to
review the book himself on the amazon.com web page for the book, which is
kind of interesting in and of itself (at:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684864339/qid=980436642/sr=2-1/ref=
sc_b_1/104-3074238-0018345>) ..
Anyway, I bring the subject up again because I'm not convinced that Steve
B.'s point about animal rights and civil rights stemming from the Colorado
Wildlife Commission incident was effectively explored here on the list--we
seem to have gotten a bit sidetracked onto the topic of Roderick Nash's
book. But I also think the Sullivan book looks interesting and that it can
contribute to our understanding of the Makah whaling controversy.
Jim T.
ps. that full cite is: Sullivan, Robert. _A Whale Hunt: 2 Years on the
Olympic Peninsula with the Makah and Their Canoe_. New York: Scribner, 2000.
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