A whale of an excuse
September 9, 2007 | 9:35
pm
Now that's some true Native American warrior skills. It must take generations of ancient lore, tribal wisdom and manly virtues to be able to kill a whale -- with a .50 caliber machine gun.
Don't be surprised if someone trots out a cultural defense argument, along the lines that if machine guns had been around 200 years ago, the Makah would have killed whales with them, so why not now?
People tried some to mount a sort of cultural defense for Michael Vick's repugnant hobby, as if torturing and killing dogs has some anthropological value. Whoopi Goldberg recently came to Vick's defense, claiming that where he comes from -- the South -- "There are certain things that are indicative to certain parts of the country." That sounds especially creepy when you remember that about 150 years ago, the same part of the country -- the South -- was passionately defending its "peculiar institution" ... that little cultural quirk known as slavery.
Members of the Makah tribe are allowed to hunt California gray whales for cultural purposes. But as the man with the National Marine Fisheries said, the recent machine gunning and harpooning of this whale off Washington State, apparently by tribal members, " ... does not appear to be of that nature ... "
"That sounds especially creepy when you remember that about 150 years ago, the same part of the country -- the South -- was passionately defending its "peculiar institution" ... that little cultural quirk known as slavery."
No, its worse than that, Patt. Its like that little cultural quirk known as the KKK and lynching.
We should not be surprised this happened, though, we have seen much the same locally with the guy who stabbed a sea lion for stealing his bait, or the people killing the large sea birds. The fact that there are nine guns for every ten Americans in inventory in this country, and we have a current culture where it seems our youth are forgetting how to read in place of listening to their iPods, and watching violent and demeaning music videos, and seeing violence glorified on TV and in the movies, and seeing our president dispatch our youth to Iraq to wage an illegitimate war and cause the destruction of Iraqi society, are all what have caused some fools among Native Americans to machine gun a whale.
Posted by: Big Fella | September 10, 2007 at 01:01 PM
This tribe is no different than those Southern state yahoos who go around shooting anything that moves under the ''gun-owner rights'' banner. These Makah tribe Indian's so-called ''rituals and traditions'' are nothing but a bunch of B.S.
If you go to their web site, they claim that their suberb hunting skills are honed from hundreds of years of tradition, ''listening for the breathing patterns'' of the whales after having had a ''spiritual cleansing'' and other mumbo jumbo. Sure must be pretty difficult listening for whale breaths over the sound of a machine gun.
Lowlifes. These Makahs are a disgrace to ANY culture.
Posted by: OA | September 09, 2007 at 11:07 PM