Some thoughts on seals

From an article on seal hunting by Inuit in Greenland, in the New York Times: "For a people who have survived for generations on the forbidding fringes of this landmass covered with ice and snow, the lectures from environmental groups about seal hunting are often taken as intrusive — yet another example of meddling from a long line of outsiders. This colonialist history, they say, began with 18th century Danish missionaries and merchants, continued with European and North American whalers who almost wiped out seal and whale populations and appeared most recently in the form of American military officers dotting this island with cold war bases. The talk is particularly galling given that, according to the Greenland National Museum, Greenlanders have hunted seals as their primary food supply for roughly 4,400 years, and hunting seals is deeply imbedded in their culture. In Nuuk, the capital, the premier's waiting room is decorated with four harpoons on a wall. In an interview in his office, Premier Motzfeldt noted that he had been seal hunting several days earlier. "I got three seals — enough for me and my three friends to have enough meat for 14 days," he said through a Danish interpreter. Mr. Motzfeldt, who has been premier for most of the years since Greenland won home rule from Denmark in 1979, said that selling furs was one of a few economic activities that would anchor people like Mr. Ringsted to small villages like Kapisillit as Greenland's urbanization rate has soared, from 25 percent in 1950 to 81 percent today. "Twenty years ago, a lot of people in small settlements made a good living, partly by hunting seals, partly by fishing," said Jorge Waever Johansen, minister of social welfare and employment. "Now one of those legs has collapsed." The collapse in economic value of hunting has debilitated native societies across the Arctic, according to Aqqaluk Lynge, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, an international group that represents 150,000 Inuit in Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Russia. Noting high native suicide rates in Greenland and northern Canada, Mr. Lynge said: "If a man doesn't hunt, he isn't man enough to be husband to anyone. It has a devastating impact." In recent years, some American critics of the seal hunt have suggested that Greenlanders try cattle ranching instead. But, Greenland's climate and geography do not allow much animal husbandry beyond a few sheep farms near the island's southern tip. "I suppose we could play the indigenous card," Ms. Engel, the diplomat, mused sardonically. "People will want to watch us row up and strangle animals with our bare hands. Then, they will pay us with mirrors and shiny beads." Mr. Lynge, who once had his sealskin vest confiscated by American customs agents as he entered the United States to attend an Inuit congress in Alaska, put it another way. "Save the seals, O.K.," he said. "But how about saving the Eskimos?"