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Whale dies after shooting, harpooning by Makah
Seattle Post-Intelligencer ^ | September 9, 2007 | BRAD WONG, MIKE BARBER AND PAUL SHUKOVSKY

Posted on 09/09/2007 11:36:32 AM PDT by skeptoid

A gray whale died Saturday night, several hours after Makah tribal members harpooned and shot the animal. The men shot the whale without federal permission.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Kelly Parker confirmed the harpooning by five tribal members. The whale was one mile east of Neah Bay, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, about a half-mile off shore

The Coast Guard detained the five tribal members and questioned them, said Mark Oswell, a National Marine Fisheries Service spokesman. They later were released to the tribe, who placed them into custody at the tribal jail, according to the mother of one of the five.

"They are all in jail," said the mother.

(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; US: Washington
KEYWORDS: animalcruelty; civildisobedience; coastalenvironment; environment; governmentdelays; indiantreatyrights; makah; nativeamericans; treaty; whale; whaling
I heard they wasted the last one they killed.

I sincerely hope they are forced to completely utilize this one, and I mean they should be forced to eat EVERY SCRAP of red meat and if they don't want to eat the blubber, they should have to process it into refined oil. The ribs and other skeletal parts must be dried and eventually processed into structural or artistic items. The vertebrae can be carved into delightful sculptures. How about it, Makahs'??

Get to work.

1 posted on 09/09/2007 11:36:34 AM PDT by skeptoid
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To: skeptoid

A California gray whale floats injured after being harpooned Saturday in the Strait of Juan de Fuca about one mile off the shore of Neah Bay. The whale was harpooned and shot by five members of the Makah tribe, according to a U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson. The whale died later Saturday. (September 08, 2007) Credit: Barney Burke/Special to the P-I
2 posted on 09/09/2007 11:37:37 AM PDT by skeptoid (AA, UE, MBS (with clusters))
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To: skeptoid
I hope these jerks do at least a nickel in the Federal Penn.
3 posted on 09/09/2007 11:40:30 AM PDT by cmsgop (Hillary's Milkshake is better than Your's, She could teach you, but you would rather go blind.......)
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To: skeptoid

Was this a “protest” hunt, a flexing of sovereignty?

It’s not like they thought they could butcher it in one night and pack the meat in their garage, with no one the wiser.


4 posted on 09/09/2007 11:43:55 AM PDT by AngrySpud (Behold, I am The Anti-Chrust ... (I am Anti-Hillary))
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To: skeptoid
Shoulda used a bigger harpoon...

5 posted on 09/09/2007 11:45:46 AM PDT by rottndog (Government is a necessary evil, but as with all evils, the less of it the better.)
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To: skeptoid

Buncha Makah-kah if you ask me...sounds like freelancers...


6 posted on 09/09/2007 11:50:40 AM PDT by Bean Counter (Stout Hearts...)
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To: skeptoid

Is this the same tribe George Allen was talking about ?


7 posted on 09/09/2007 11:50:53 AM PDT by kbennkc (For those who have fought for it , freedom has a flavor the protected will never know. F Troop)
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To: skeptoid

They harpooned a gay whale?!? There should be a hate crime law against that!

Oh, wait. It’s a GRAY whale. Never mind.


8 posted on 09/09/2007 11:51:45 AM PDT by CitizenUSA
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To: skeptoid
Several tribal members who participated in the tribe's successful and legal 1999 hunt were involved in Saturday's hunt. The crew harpooned and shot the whale, but the Coast Guard took the crew into custody before it could finish the job, the source said. A high-powered .50-caliber rifle was involved, federal authorities said. When the tribe hunted a whale with authorization from the federal government in 1999, the tribe was instructed to carry a high-powered rifle to kill the whale quickly.

Sounds to me they didn't get to finish the kill. 5 Indians hunting whale isn't going to decimate whale populations worldwide, perhaps you should direct you anger towards Japan?

9 posted on 09/09/2007 11:52:14 AM PDT by ScreamingFist (Annihilation - The result of underestimating your enemies. NRA)
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To: skeptoid

“I heard they wasted the last one they killed.”

They did. It tasted horrible. I have family that are part of a related tribe and they went to the Makah reservation to try whale. Came back saying “now we know why our people stopped eating it.”


10 posted on 09/09/2007 11:53:34 AM PDT by Grunthor (The most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive. M. Romney)
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To: skeptoid

It’s disgraceful seeing rare and endangered animals getting killed because some tribe wants to exercise some contrived cultural right instead of ordering from a grocery store, or because some Chinese guy thinks they can be turned into a medicine that can restore his sex drive, or because somebody just has to have an ashtray made from a gorilla’s paw. The world will be an emptier and less interesting place when these animals have departed forever - our grandchildren and their grandchildren shouldn’t lose the ability to see and marvel at these creatures due to the selfishness of a few idiots.


11 posted on 09/09/2007 11:57:07 AM PDT by AnotherUnixGeek
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To: skeptoid

I’ll send ‘em my Star Trek IV dvd to watch in jail.


12 posted on 09/09/2007 11:59:31 AM PDT by isom35
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To: ScreamingFist
As you say. This seems to be an instance of misplaced political correctness.

Here's an extract from a web page on the Gray Whale:

The gray whale's range formerly included the coasts of both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Atlantic population had been hunted to extinction by the 1700s and in the early 1900s it seemed that the two Pacific populations (eastern and western) would follow.

However, in the 1940s the species became protected by international agreement, and today the eastern Pacific population has recovered so much that it is no longer considered endangered (although it is still protected). Population estimates indicate that there are more than 20,000 gray whales in the eastern Pacific, approximately equal to estimates of the historic population.

The eastern Pacific population of gray whales was removed from the endangered species list in 1995, but the western Pacific (Korean) population, which has not recovered at all, remains listed. The status of the western Pacific population is relatively unknown, but it is believed to be highly endangered and close to extinction. The gray whale is an interesting case study because one population is extinct, one is endangered, and one is recovered.

13 posted on 09/09/2007 11:59:36 AM PDT by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: skeptoid
Didn’t they shoot it with a machine gun?
14 posted on 09/09/2007 11:59:55 AM PDT by kinoxi
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To: CitizenUSA

hav ta call dat lakotaguy

I tought the indian marketed himself as the great keeper of the earth...in tune with mrs goodearth

wow, victimized again


15 posted on 09/09/2007 12:00:05 PM PDT by himno hero
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To: ScreamingFist
..... perhaps you should direct you anger towards Japan?

You have completely missed the point.
Listen up.

It is the waste of a huge animal that is the crime here.
Makahs wanna kill whale......Makahs gotta eat whale.
No killing whales and wasting them.

That is soomething the Japanese do NOT do.

I hope you can understand this.

16 posted on 09/09/2007 12:06:44 PM PDT by skeptoid (AA, UE, MBS (with clusters))
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To: Grunthor

My daughter spent June in Barrow ,Alaska working on Eskimos’ teeth. She helped butcher a whale. They ferment the meat and blubber in big buckets in the ground for months. She tried it and said she liked it. She said they pretty much use whole whale for different things.


17 posted on 09/09/2007 12:07:30 PM PDT by katykelly
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To: AnotherUnixGeek

“It’s disgraceful seeing rare and endangered animals getting killed because some tribe wants to exercise some contrived cultural right instead of ordering from a grocery store, or because some Chinese guy thinks they can be turned into a medicine that can restore his sex drive, or because somebody just has to have an ashtray made from a gorilla’s paw.”

It’s certainly different than california losing 1/4 of their water to protect the ‘delta smelt,’ a tiny fish closely related to other fish that are plentiful.


18 posted on 09/09/2007 12:08:44 PM PDT by GovernmentIsTheProblem (The GOP is "Whig"ing out.)
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To: AngrySpud
The Marine Mammal Protection Act conflicts with the treaty, but was passed at a later date and as law supersedes the treaty. However, the Makah could go on the warpath.

Congressional Repeal of Treaties .--It is in respect to his contention that, when it is asked to carry a treaty into effect, Congress has the constitutional right, and indeed the duty, to determine the matter according to its own ideas of what is expedient, that Madison has been most completely vindicated by developments. This is seen in the answer which the Court has returned to the question: What happens when a treaty provision and an act of Congress conflict? The answer is, that neither has any intrinsic superiority over the other and that therefore the one of later date will prevail leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant. In short, the treaty commitments of the United States do not diminish Congress' constitutional powers. To be sure, legislative repeal of a treaty as law of the land may amount to a violation of it as an international contract in the judgment of the other party to it. In such case, as the Court has said: ''Its infraction becomes the subject of international negotiations and reclamations, so far as the injured party chooses to seek redress, which may in the end be enforced by actual war. It is obvious that with all this the judicial courts have nothing to do and can give no redress.''

19 posted on 09/09/2007 12:08:46 PM PDT by seowulf
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To: skeptoid
It is the waste of a huge animal that is the crime here.

It's a huge waste NOW, because the animal was left flopping while the indians were arrested. Whether the indians were going to use it all is a moot point now....

20 posted on 09/09/2007 12:13:16 PM PDT by ScreamingFist (Annihilation - The result of underestimating your enemies. NRA)
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To: skeptoid
Makah Tribal Members Participate in Green House Gas Reduction Whale Cull - The Makah Tribe is environmental conscious to a fault. "We follow the motto Think Globally, Act Locally. This was a local whale exhaling carbon dioxide globally; it had to go." In other news, Caribou declared an Endangering-the-Enviroment species for consuming too many plants and exhaling too much carbon dioxide in the fragile Arctic environment. The EPA has declared the Caribou Public Global Warming Enemy #1. "It may seem counter intuitive but we must destroy the Caribou to preserve the environment for the Caribou." The Caribou hunting season has been extended indefinitely. /sarc
21 posted on 09/09/2007 12:19:06 PM PDT by ricks_place
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To: kinoxi

Fox News is incorrectly reporting that a .50 cal machine gun was used, but they actually use a .50 cal Barrett rifle. Most of them are single shots. Fox News is getting as bad as the rest of the main stream media for such crummy reporting.


22 posted on 09/09/2007 12:21:41 PM PDT by Concho (IRS--Americas real terrorist organization.)
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To: skeptoid

The Makah tribe has treaty rights to harvest whales and the cretinous enviros sued to force them to give up their centuries-old cultural heritage.

If the original hunt had been allowed to continue these guys wouldn’t have felt the need to defy the bvlack-robed tyrant who forced them to stop their harvest a few years back.

Ed


23 posted on 09/09/2007 12:35:49 PM PDT by Sir_Ed
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To: ScreamingFist

You forgot to point out that it’s Bush’s fault.


24 posted on 09/09/2007 12:40:18 PM PDT by skeptoid (AA, UE, MBS (with clusters))
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To: cmsgop
I hope these jerks do at least a nickel in the Federal Penn.

You must not be aware of the protection and the hands off the Indians that Washington State affords the Indians. They rule the roost up here and therefore these harpooners will probably be the honored guests at a native salmon bake.

25 posted on 09/09/2007 12:47:08 PM PDT by taxesareforever (Never forget Matt Maupin)
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To: cmsgop
I hope these jerks do at least a nickel in the Federal Penn.

You must not be aware of the protection and the hands off the Indians that Washington State affords the Indians. They rule the roost up here and therefore these harpooners will probably be the honored guests at a native salmon bake. It is almost as if the muslims have taken pages out of the Indians handbook in taking it to the American public.

26 posted on 09/09/2007 12:48:18 PM PDT by taxesareforever (Never forget Matt Maupin)
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To: Concho
Fox News is incorrectly reporting that a .50 cal machine gun was used, but they actually use a .50 cal Barrett rifle.

LOL. I thought that was obvious, but the sheer stupidity of the MSM should never be taken for granted.....

Indians floating around the Pacific with a .50 cal Ma Deuce would be pirates, not whale hunters.......LOL

27 posted on 09/09/2007 12:48:53 PM PDT by ScreamingFist (Annihilation - The result of underestimating your enemies. NRA)
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To: Grunthor; skeptoid
It tasted horrible. I have family that are part of a related tribe and they went to the Makah reservation to try whale. Came back saying “now we know why our people stopped eating it.”

Well, if you only get to prepare one every eight to ten years, it's not surprising they may not have cooked it correctly. I had a friend who invited me over for dinner, roast goose. It tasted nothing like the way my Mom did them -- he didn't parboil it first. That pulls most of the grease out of the carcass and it then tastes just a little gamier than dark-meat chicken or turkey. His was pretty much inedible too.

28 posted on 09/09/2007 12:58:33 PM PDT by brityank (The more I learn about the Constitution, the more I realise this Government is UNconstitutional !!)
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To: taxesareforever
. .....these harpooners will probably be the honored guests at a native salmon bake.

I don't think so.
Check this out.

.SNIP ".....John McCarty, a former tribal whaling commission member who has been an advocate of the Makah's right to resume whaling, said the tribe had been close to obtaining the waiver. "I don't know why they did this. It's terrible," McCarty told The Times. "I think the anti-whalers will be after us in full force, and we look ridiculous. Like we can't manage our own people, we can't manage our own whale."

29 posted on 09/09/2007 1:05:43 PM PDT by skeptoid (AA, UE, MBS (with clusters))
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To: skeptoid

The federal government removed the gray whale from the endangered species list in 1994. Five years later, with a permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service, Makah tribal members killed their first whale in seven decades.

Animal welfare activists sued, leading to a court order that the tribe must obtain a waiver under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act to continue hunting whales.

John McCarty, a former tribal whaling commission member who has been an advocate of the Makah’s right to resume whaling, said the tribe had been close to obtaining the waiver.


30 posted on 09/09/2007 1:10:34 PM PDT by ScreamingFist (Annihilation - The result of underestimating your enemies. NRA)
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To: ScreamingFist
i.e, some tribe members got tired of pissing around with the federal bureaucracy and decided to go kill a whale....
31 posted on 09/09/2007 1:14:00 PM PDT by ScreamingFist (Annihilation - The result of underestimating your enemies. NRA)
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To: ScreamingFist
AND THEN HE SAID----:

...."I don't know why they did this. It's terrible," ....

32 posted on 09/09/2007 1:16:19 PM PDT by skeptoid (AA, UE, MBS (with clusters))
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To: skeptoid
Yep....awful. Hunting without the expressed consent of 10,000 lawyers, bureaucrats and animal rights activist. What's next, a ban on making bread......oh wait, that's been done as well. Wonderbread already left california.
33 posted on 09/09/2007 1:23:39 PM PDT by ScreamingFist (Annihilation - The result of underestimating your enemies. NRA)
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To: skeptoid
Anyone who thinks people who kill an animal should spend time in jail are off their rockers. These people have a treaty with the US and have been blocked from exorcising their rights under the treaty. Of course this isn't the first time we have screwed over the Indians, one tribe or another, but failing to honor a treaty is it? We, the US, have a great track record when it comes to treaties with Indians, we have broken most of them when it was convenient to us.

Yep, they should ultilize it all, however that is not for you to say and if they don't use all of it, that is their perogative also. However, they won't be ultilizing this one because the local authorities have made sure the complete carcess will go to waste, not to mention they stopped the hunt and forced the whale to die a slow lingering death when the hunters would have most likely killed it quickly.

The animal nuts on this forum are not to be believed at times, ready to jail people for killing, in this case as was their right, an animal. Some conservatives, more like liberal sob sisters.

34 posted on 09/09/2007 1:57:59 PM PDT by calex59
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To: calex59
Please read the SNIP at #29, and if you still don't understand, click the 'Check it out' link and read it in context. You will find an apparently responsible and legitimate Makah saying:
(SNIP)" ... we look ridiculous. Like we can't manage our own people, we can't manage our own whale."

In fact, for your convenience, here's the relevant quote: (not the whole article, but a selected quote) ...
Animal welfare activists sued, leading to a court order that the tribe must obtain a waiver under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act to continue hunting whales. John McCarty, a former tribal whaling commission member who has been an advocate of the Makah's right to resume whaling, said the tribe had been close to obtaining the waiver. "I don't know why they did this. It's terrible," McCarty told The Times. "I think the anti-whalers will be after us in full force, and we look ridiculous. Like we can't manage our own people, we can't manage our own whale."

35 posted on 09/09/2007 2:29:15 PM PDT by skeptoid (AA, UE, MBS (with clusters))
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To: skeptoid

The Makah would have no problems with this if your people had stayed home and fouled only their own nests.


36 posted on 09/09/2007 7:39:08 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Grunthor

I’ve heard it’s an “acquired taste” and best that you grow up eating the stuff rather than arrive to it as an adult.


37 posted on 09/09/2007 7:41:58 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: skeptoid

Yeah, just like they don’t okay the stripping of eggs from salmon and tossing the carcass. Nothing came as that fiasco either. All talk and no bite.


38 posted on 09/09/2007 8:59:29 PM PDT by taxesareforever (Never forget Matt Maupin)
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