Whaling from various perspectives -- An Eskimo's point of view

The following are profiles of people who have unique perspectives on the whaling issue. Some of the people are fictional and others, such as Dora Arey, are real people whose account has been creatively constructed. In the case of Dora Arey, I have written in her voice, and therefore her perspective, as the wife of a captain of a whaling boat.  I used factual information from this article:

Neher, Jake. "North slope residents joyous as whales are landed." Arctic Sounder. 3 May 2011:  Web. 5 May 2011. <http://www.thearcticsounder.com/article/1118north_slope_residents_joyous_as_whales_are>.

Yuyan, K. (2020, March 26). People of the Whale – a portrait of traditional hunting in Alaska. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/feb/04/people-of-the-whale-a-portrait-of-traditional-hunting-in-alaska

My name is Dora Arey. My husband and I are eskimos living in Barrow, Alaska. The day before yesterday I had some very good news. I found out that my husband, who is the captain of one of our local Eskimo whaling teams, caught the first whale of the season for us. That's important because we live in a cold, harsh environment and whale meat is an important part of our diet. We'd have trouble surviving without it.

You may imagine that whaling boats are huge ships, and the "whalers" shoot gigantic harpoons at the whales using canons. That's very different from the way we catch whales. The techniques we use are the same ones that our ancestors used thousands of years ago. Small crews set out in tiny seal-skin boats when they see whales come close to shore. The whales are harpooned by hand by strong men at close range. It's dangerous work, especially when the whales get angry. We are only given a certain number of "strikes" by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. If a whale gets away or we miss hitting it, that's counted as a strike.

When I heard that my husband's crew caught a whale, I said, "Thank you, Lord! We receive it. We receive the blessing." We hold a big celebration to commemorate the first whale of the season. The whale will feed our whole community for a long time. We use every part of it. We consider whales to be our brothers. We can't live without each other.

If you take a look at the whale hunt on the following YouTube video, you'll get an idea of how our whale hunt looks.

Echospaces (2009, February 25). Iñupiaq Whale Hunt. Retrieved May 31, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAqEK7K5oCQ

Japanese government's position on whaling

In the following posting, I’ve used my imagination to show the views of an imagined senior bureaucrat in Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Some of the information backing up the point of view was taken from an English website hosted by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

"The Position of the Japanese Government on Research Whaling." Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. N.p.. Web. 6 Jun 2013. <http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/q_a/faq6.html>.

Japan has a long tradition of whaling that goes back to the 12th century. Starting in the last century, we started to do commercial whaling. Many Western countries, such as the US, Britain, and Portugal--who now protest our whaling--were involved in commercial whaling long before we were. Japan didn’t get started in modern, commercial whaling (with exploding harpoons and power-driven ships) until we learned the craft from Norway during the Meiji Period.

Whales may be seen as cute and intelligent animals by Australians, British people, and Americans, but to Japanese they are a source of protein and we see them as part of our traditional sea-based diet. Much beef is eaten in the US and Australia. Would it be right for us Japanese to protest that cute cows are sacrificed needlessly for selfish purposes. Of course not, we respect that Americans and Australians eat whatever they want to eat and make their own decisions about what they consider to be suitable for food. Why aren’t our food preferences respected?

Some say that we should not kill whales because they’re becoming more and more rare. In fact, as you may know, there has been a moratorium on whaling since1986 by the International Whaling Commission. This means that whales cannot be hunted for commercial purposes. Japan strongly supports the international protection of endangered whale species such as blue whales.

However, our government has also supported, since 1988, the harvesting (that means killing) of whales for research purposes so that we can find out, scientifically, if a sufficient number of whales exist for commercial whaling to be reestablished. Each year, we send whaling ships to Antartica and to the North Pacific to kill a sample of hundreds of whales. They include Minke whales, Bryde's whales, Sei whales, and sperm whales.

It is true that whale meat from these research whaling expeditions ends up in our markets and restaurants, but the sale of the meat does not create a profit; the funds that are generated are used only to fund a portion of the research program.

Some of the money that was supposed to go to recovery efforts after the 3/11 tsunami and earthquake also went toward funding the research whaling in the Antarctic. More money is necessary to cover security because of the increasingly aggressive actions of Sea Shepherd. Although they call US eco terrorists, it is THEIR organization and members who are the true eco-terrorists.

Thank you for reading our side of the story.

Taro Kujiramoto (Assistant to the secretary of the vice minister of Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries)