Marine Mammals and Northern Cultures Arne Kalland and Frank Sejersen With contributions from Harald Beyer Broch and Mats Ris August 2005 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Kalland, Arne Marine mammals and northern cultures / Arne Kalland and Frank Sejersen, with contributions from Harald Beyer Broch and Mats Ris (Studies in whaling; no. 7) (Circumpolar Research Series, ISSN 0838-133X; no. 9) Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 1-896445-26-8 1. Arctic peoples – Hunting. 2. Whaling – Arctic regions. 3. Sealing – Arctic regions. 4. Human ecology – Arctic regions. 5. Conservation of natural resources – Arctic regions. I. Sejersen, Frank. II. Canadian Circumpolar Institute. III. Title. IV. Series. V. Series: Circumpolar research series; no. 9 GN673.K34 2005 306.3’49 C2003-910955-0 ISBN 1-896445-26-8 ISSN 0838-133X © 2005 Canadian Circumpolar Institute (CCI) Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy*, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. * CCI Press is a registered member of access© copyright, the Canadian copyright licensing agency (Publisher Number 3524), a clearinghouse for photocopy and digital copyright permission requests. Front Cover Photo: In Greenland, the cooperation between hunters in skiffs and the use of hand-thrown harpoons make minke whale hunting highly successful. Photo courtesy F. Sejersen. Cover design by art design printing inc. Printed in Edmonton by art design printing inc. This publication was made possible, in part, with support from the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) in the form of a grant from the NAMMCO Fund to the authors. Marine Mammals and Northern Cultures Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Marine Mammal Hunting in the North Atlantic 7 Chapter Three: Marine Mammals in Economic Perspective 57 Chapter Four: Hunting, Selfhood and National Identity 91 (With Harald Beyer Broch) Chapter Five: Perceptions of Nature 131 (With Harald Beyer Broch) Chapter Six: Management of Marine Mammal Hunting 173 (With Mats Ris) Chapter Seven: Local Responses to Global Issues 223 Chapter Eight: Conclusion 263 References 275 Index 333 List of Acronyms 347 ii Acknowledgements This volume is the outcome of the research project Hunting of Marine Mammals: Cultural Aspects of Resource Management in the Circumpolar Regions. The project, which was made possible by a generous grant from the Joint Committee of the Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities (NOS-H), brought together seven ethnologists and anthropologists from Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, taking with them research experiences from Canada in the West to Norway in the East. For various reasons, not all the participants in the project could contribute to this volume, as originally intended. But we will at this juncture like to thank Niels Einarsson (Iceland), Joan Pauli Joensen (the Faroe Islands), and Elisabeth Vestergaard (Denmark) for valuable contributions along the way and for constructive ideas and comments during our several meetings. This book is based on a multitude of sources. Fieldwork has been conducted by the authors among sealers and whalers in Greenland and Norway (beside Japan), as well as in international fora such as the International Whaling Commission (IWC), and the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Many discussions over the years have been held with environmental and animal rights advocates, and publications and activities of their organizations have been scrutinized. The same applies to individuals and organizations working for the interests of sealers and whalers. The participants have each received invaluable assistance from a wide number of people to their individual research projects: e.g., sealers, whalers, activists, local authorities, scientists, and politicians. A great many people have thus contributed one way or another to this book; it would be impossible to mention them all here. However, we are particularly indebted to sealers and whalers and their families in Greenland and Norway who shared their trime, thoughts, and anxieties with us. In preparing this book, we also appreciate the assistance we, in various ways, have recieved from Georg Blichfeldt, Rune Frøvik, Kate Sanderson, and not least Milton M.R. Freeman who has helped us in myriad ways during the years it has taken us to complete this project. We are also indebted to Elaine Maloney at CCI iii Press and anonymous referees for their numerous constructive suggestions on the manuscript. In addition to the original grant from NOS-H and financial assistance participants have received for their individual projects, the publication of this book has been made possible by a grant from the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) Fund. Finally, we will stress that the views expressed on the following pages are not necessarily shared by any of the individuals, organizations, or institutions mentioned above. The alert reader will, nonetheless, undoubtedly discover that our sympathy is on the side of the hunters. Harald Beyer Broch Arne Kalland Frank Sejersen Mats Ris Copenhagen/Oslo/Gothenburg iv Polar Projection showing the North Atlantic region. v vi Chapter 1 _____________________________________________ Introduction At its annual meeting in 1982, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) imposed a moratorium (or ‘zero-catch quotas’) on all commercial whaling. The following year, the European Economic Community (EEC), now the European Union (EU), decided to ban all imports of whitecoat sealskins. The two decisions brought success to processes that began 10– 20 years earlier. The international campaign against sealing commenced in earnest in the 1960s, whereas the U.N. Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972 marked the start of the anti-whaling campaign. That year also saw the introduction of the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), a law that, according to Laura Manning (1989:220), offers marine mammals better protection than any other species. The purpose of this book is not so much to explore and analyse the processes leading to decisions made in the early 1980s, but rather to see how the introduction of this new environmental philosophy constitutes a serious challenge to those who base their livelihood on the hunting of marine mammals in the ‘North Atlantic’ region, here defined as eastern Canada (including Baffin Island, Hudson Bay, Quebec, Labrador, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia), Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Scandinavia (Norway, Denmark, Sweden). They are the ones to pay the price, witnessing an attack on their fundamental way of life. Hunters previously experienced the effects of campaigns initiated by environmental and animal rights organizations; their markets for fur and meat have been depressed from time to time as a result. However, the two political decisions marked the permanent and pervading influence of the new environmental philosophy at the highest political levels, which also affected the markets to a significant degree. The IWC moratorium and the EU ban were major political milestones in the history of the environmental and animal rights movements. Their ideas were not new, being originally a part of counter-culture, but the ideas had now reached and had been Marine Mammals and Northern Cultures accepted in high-level political arenas. The success of their campaigns also marked the beginning of a redirection of the environmental debate as it challenged the basic idea of sustainable development. Although the notion of the sustainable use of living resources still provided a foundation for most environmental policies, anti-hunting advocates and organizations had successfully made marine mammals into symbols of threatened nature generally, and turned the protection of marine mammals into major icons for the environmental and animal rights movements. Even organizations that regard themselves as strong advocates of sustainable use of natural resources make exceptions for marine mammals, regardless of their abundance. Saving marine mammals has become a metonym for saving nature. The powerful public symbolic significance of marine mammals and hunting activities can be observed in existing management regimes and the increasing politicisation of management at the expense of science. The environmental movement has challenged the existing pillars of management and democracy and forced us to rethink the direction of our common future. Campaigns against sealing and whaling are intimately related to the recent history of the environmental and animal rights movements and can be regarded as their early flagships, attracting millions of people to the cause. Within this region, the environmental battle over whales and seals involves a variety of stakeholders, each with strong and normative positions. Many of the stakeholders are located south of the region, e.g., in the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands and Germany where the general public and government authorities wholeheartedly engage in the discourse of the new environmental ethics widely embraced in Europe and North America in general. The arguments advanced by their advocates, which basically stress that marine mammals should be left alone, were a powerful mover of public sentiment and they became part of the school curriculum and consciousness