KEXP Presents Mind Over Matters; Sustainability Segments: Charlotte Cote

this is diane warren your host on the sustainability segment of mind over matters on k x p seattle ninety point three of them an online mail archie my guess this morning as you can take associate professor of american indian studies at the university of washington her research examines issues around native governments politics law and sovereignty in the united states and canada she is chair of the project to build along hostile facility on the university of washington campus and also serves as a member of the pot last month foundation board charlie cook is here today to discuss her book spirits of their whaling ancestors revitalizing the car a new trial now for tradition's published in two thousand and ten by the university of washington press welcome thank you for having me what led you to write your book spirit safire whaling ancestors was really important to me to write especially my first book to write something that was significant to who i was as a new tunnel of person i was born and raised in my native community and always understood the

importance of whaling and have that tradition and so when i went back to school and when i was going to grad school i started thinking about what i would write my dissertation on and that was roughly around the time that the macau are getting ready to start wailing and that really excited me about my research the research that i could do with my people and also the macaw in writing a history that was significant to who we were and writing it from a perspective of someone who was born and raised in that tradition and really wanting to tell a story that the people from within that culture was telling and that's really how i ended up having to write this book once arrested using writing about well the sources i use again growing up in my native community i was immersed in the culture and the traditions of the new channel specifically that the sharp which is the community that one community of the fourteen communities that make up new channels nation so a lot of the sources were just the people around

him made my elders the leaders of our nation's family members these wonderful stories that i was raised with and as well some very important written material that was left to us from field work that was done in my community in that that shot community in the early nineteen hundreds in this was field work done by edwards' appear who was an anthropologist linguist who the left very rich and detailed ethnographic accounts which he received from the words of my ancestors in particular my great great grandfather's i activists who i write about in this book who came from a whaling tradition who was raised to be a whale or raised to be a hunter i'm marine mammal hunter so it was a weaning of those kinds of oral and written texts that came together to make this book what is then the significance of whaling for them a carbon neutral milk people historically well historically whaling a hand economic

political social and spiritual significance and there are archaeological discoveries in our territories and the macaw and new channels are in the pacific northwest if people don't know where we actually are our territories are on the west coast of vancouver island in british columbia and also the most western coast of washington state and the keep flattery ariane the macaw people live in there we say that the border across the us and we have in our oral histories in our stories this great flood that eventually lead us to be on that vancouver island and i'm a card to be here in washington state the archeological discoveries provide material evidence that whaling have been central to our groups to our culture's for over two thousand years that is they found implements showing that we had wailed over two thousand years ago they found other evidence to show that whales themselves why there was wailing

or not but whales themselves had been significant to these cultures for over five thousand years so really showing how in ted rall their whales and go whaling tradition wise to our people we pursued mostly a humpback and gray whale their whales that swim close to the beaches even though we did down the hunts finn back whalen right whale as well wang held a great spiritual significance in fact the hunt revolved around spirituality the prayers the attention to ritual before the hunt in the preparation also during the hunt because in that much cotton newtown of culture we believe that the whale has this spirit that spirit that is captured are held in the large dorsal fin of the well and if those prayers and songs and ceremonies are done correctly the spirit brings the physical form of the whale to us this is very

significant to our culture so there's this reverence that we have for the whale and for the whales spirit and so was treated with utmost respect before the hunt during the hunt and after the hunt so it's a ritual based is a lighter rituals that go into the whaling tradition as for the economic aspects whale hunts were done during a period of time when the food source says were very low in our communities an early springtime when we are depleting our food sources so capturing a well meant bringing in a lot of food for that community to say sustain themselves before they started fishing and sea mammal hunting or ceiling during the next couple of months in late spring early summer so it was very important as well as an economic resource but i also was tied up in the spiritual and social rituals and functions as well i'm diane warren and my guest is charlotte

put a associate professor of american indian studies at the university of washington and author of the book spirits of our whaling ancestors revitalizing the carbon neutral melts traditions and you're tuned to the sustainability segment of mind over matters on k e x p ninety point we have them and on the web add k x p and orgy which you briefly go into what led you to no longer hunt whales well indeed met eighteen forty is here in washington state we started seeing an influx of non native people immigrants moving to the area being encouraged to move and settle this land because the boundary between canada our british land and you asked haven't being established yet it hadn't been finalize so there was this rush to get people in the west coast of the pacific northwest so presence would be here so we start seeing this movement here to the west coast in washington state are what was washington territory at that time and also in that colony of british columbia which is now the province of british columbia

so as those people are moving and they started bringing in these various industries and here in the pacific northwest a ceiling industry began as well as the fishing industry but what was the most destructive to the macaw and newtown of whaling tradition was the commercial whaling industry which began at this time really taking for many eighteen fifties working from a land based whaling station spent a potentially learning new techniques so that they could go out and that process wales right out on their ships and so that was growing at this period of time by the nineteen hundreds the commercial whaling industry grew to such levels that when the sensors were being taken on these whale populations some of them they couldn't even do census that's how depleted the whales wear their whales that they focused on were gray and humpback whales because as i mentioned those are the whales to swim close to shore and as a result as those

whales were being depleted it were it's harder and harder for the macondo channels to go out and whale by the nineteen hundreds even though these whale stocks had being hunted to near extinction by the commercial whaling industry the macondo ton of their whole system was tied up in whaling so it wasn't a matter of okay we don't have any whales were gonna stop whaling they continued to wail an attempted to wail but there are other things happening as well simultaneously the us and canadian governments for initiating policies that effectively weekend and de stabilize our entire social system so that these policies that were undermining our cultures are languages are traditions we also had new subsistence pursuits at this time we were being brought him partially into the whaling industry that into the ceiling industry into the fishing industry and to the logging industry the introduction of this european cash economy really

created a shift in emphasis away from whaling all of this was happening that was starting to impact our communities and so many levels so if you could go out and whale and as i mentioned that the people will take years and years to prepare it was something you were raised into something you knew as a child that you'd be raises a whaler if you now are dependent on a cash economy or a dependent on providing your labor for money and whaling is and a part of that that whaling tradition isn't a part of that you know that if you're going to wail it's gonna take you away from that so if you're going out and spending years preparing for welling knowing that there's a possibility or not going to get away you know there isn't a psychological element to that many people started looking at these other pursuits knowing they're going to have to eventually give up that wailing or at least the whaling would be done a lot less because of those changes to their social

systems the changes to the economies in these communities so these major economic social and spiritual transformations took place and as a result it was a weakening that connection to their tradition so you start seeing these major changes in their early nineteen hundreds leading up to the last whale hunts in the nineteen twenties and then resumption of whaling come about was very interesting three main factors and this was with the macaw in looking at this notion of cultural destruction and i talk about this in my book as i mentioned a lot of things are happening at this time it is causing the change is a major changes to happen in these cultures but rather than focusing on that disruption in the breaking down of society's i focus on cultural continuity ok all of that was happening well why are we still hearing today and why are we still talking about a tradition that aspect of the tradition we hadn't practiced since the late nineteen twenties well that tradition was kept alive in our songs and her dancers in our ceremonies in our oral histories

even though we weren't whaling we still were wearing as i was raise understanding we come from or wailing tradition and you see it everywhere in our homes and our communities through the artistic expression which if you understand the chant of art which you can see on the front cover of my book for example whaling is tied directly tied to those expressions of art in our communities with the whale the thunderbird in the lightning serpent being very important to the stories that are passed down to us so the line has been stretched it has never been broken that cultural continuity remains well what happened then we see various things going on in the macaw communities and a lot of people don't realize this in the eighteen fifties when gov stevens in the washington territory was signing treaties with the local people here a treaty was signed with the macaw of any of that with the chiefs and india bay which became their central reservation they're sent

over allege the macaw insisted that they were going to sign a treaty that whaling have to be included in a poll gov stevens we're not signing this until you guarantee that so the macaw have in their treaty of eighteen fifty five the right to hunt whales and so that's a treaty protected right but even though they have that right protected they along with a new channel and canada's a whaling nation they along with the new channel decided that they were going to hunt whales they could see that the whales were being threatened at that time by the nineteen seventies there were moving up through this period by the nineteen seventies when the federal government here in in the united states established the endangered species act the gray whale was one of the first feces to be placed on that act because their stocks were still being threatened at this time we also see the development of the international whaling commission which is

the global whaling body overseas whaling throat the world so we have these continued restrictions on whaling at that time the whale population at least the gray whale population that aggregation that goes up from the baja peninsula up north to alaska that population was fifteen hundred in the nineteen seventies by the early nineteen nineties that we have the fbi debut cd international whaling commission continually monitoring that we'll stop by the mid nineteen nineties that whale star grew to twenty two thousand the scientific committee of the international whaling commission looks at that population and they say the population is healthy and it's growing at a healthy rate there's no environmental issue with taking some whales out of the population and in fact it'll help the continued growth and at that time in the nineteen nineties they said you could take up to a bully three to four hundred and fifty account of the exact numbers but a healthy number of

wells six and it would still retain that healthy growth the macaw see this and they sit down and they start looking at this idea that resuming the whale hunts something happened in the nineteen seventies is well an amazing archeological discovery with end the macaw territory and the abandoned village of it was that after a major mudslides it opened up a village that was approximately five hundred years ago and what they found when they were doing the excavation of that village was over fifty five thousand artifacts many of those artifacts were artifacts linked to their whaling tradition harpoons objects that were used during whale hunts very very important tangible objects that connected them to that tradition and really sparked a growing interest by today elders who were working with the people on the excavation and also the eu with these young people who were understand that they came from that tradition but didn't have those

tangible items to see that would link them so it started this revitalize asian of that understanding about tradition and it's community also what happened in the nineteen seventies was the end of nineteen seventy four a bold decision when judge georgia bolt said here in washington state treaties are still important weekend not undermine treaties and what's written in these treaties must be protected and must be upheld when the macaw heard that they said well we have that treaty right to well so we have these three factors them a camo ford in the nineteen nineties and so we are going to revive that hunt and so they move forward with preparing for their hand made and nineteen ninety nine they go out and whale and they capture a thirty foot california grey whale oh which to them it becomes of a historic event to alter channel and the card becomes a historic event because they have brought our tradition full

circle you are listening to the sustainability segment of mind over matter is on k e x p seattle it pointed me a phone and on the web at expedia georgie i'm dianne harman my guest is charlotte po tay associate professor of american indian studies at the university of washington and author of the book spirits are whaling ancestors be finalizing the park in newtown health conditions let's touch now on some of the objections to resuming wailing from non native groups and individuals would you like to give an overview of those so what happened when the book are made the announcement in the early nineteen nineties that they were going to revive their hunts this anti whaling coalition came together of various groups some environmental groups and some anti indian treaty groups which many the people who were part of those were politicians who continually blocked treaty rights and try to find ways of developing policy that would undermine those rights so you see this

coalition this very kind of odd coalition developing because on the one hand we have environmentalists and animal rights people and then we have these politicians who are notorious for continually fighting treaty rights and undermining treaty rights but who if you look at their political records are also people who have a bad record when it comes to environmental policies so we have this very strange alliance of people coming together to fight the macaw whale hunts interesting enough some of the reasoning air around wailing was that the us should not allow whaling for one because the us supported them upon fact when the mccall went to the eye w seed for a whale quarter which it did even though it has the treaty right to wail the macaw still wanted to work with in the international community and secure a quota for me i double you see their anti whaling coalition thought that they tried to stop that well the i w c

also provides quote as for other groups here in the united states gay and didn't for canada as well even a candidate doesn't belong to that wailing body anymore but the people in the northern united states well ask and eight as well and so the macabre very surprised it as a group that came together to oppose their whale hunts so some of the objections that were being raised at this time we're well they didn't need to well whales were no longer significant to their cultures the whaling could harm the whale populations so as these issues were being razed them a cause that well ok we've got a look at these issues and we've gotta let people no you know how we feel about these and when they were working with the eye wc and the scientific body of the i don't know you see the word is proving a lot it is in fact one of the arguments was that it would hurt the whale population there were studies done by the international whaling commission on the whale populations and people remember a while back and i believe it was in the early

nineteen nineties in the baja peninsula for some reason we also were beating themselves they were beating themselves on their shores and not just one or two wells i can get one point we had nineteen whales that had beached themselves in one summer so people started looking at these going out there and looking at these whales and try to find out what was happening to them well what some people were saying was well you know we got changes in the climate the ocean climate that could be a factor the environment could be a factor the oceans are getting very dirty well summer is biologist who are working to in the pacific northwest at the time and working with international whaling communities said well there's in fact we go to look at and this is the fact that this whale population which was now twenty six thousand which grew again continue that increased drought the nineties there were so many whales that they reach their carrying capacity that is

they could not find that food needed to sustain themselves because the whales that were beaching themselves what they were noticing they were very low in fat and they were very thin and so it proved them at least to our eyes that if you pull some of those wails over the population it can allow the rest of the population to grow in a healthy way so that we were trying to explain this yet the people who were opposing whaling wouldn't believe that there was also this argument that moving back to wales for subsistence could mean that they could open the door to commercial whaling and japan was at that time talking about this possibility of working with people in this area and looking at some kind of commercial venture the macabre and the new channel have said from the beginning even though we didn't look at that idea was that we're not looking at for any commercial venture we just want to bring back that tradition revive that aspect of her tradition and bring it back into our

communities so those were some of the issues that were being raised some people said well it's not culturally authentic i mean this was an argument that was brought forward and which i heard throughout the years because i've done quite a bit of presenting and i talked quite a bit on this that i'd have people say well it's not part of your culture will what is part of our culture this is what i would respond because you can look at a culture in various ways and the ways that people were looking at our culture was they were seeing culture as something that was fixed and something that was static culture isn't fixed it isn't static it's dynamic it changes in it transitions it evolves and so if other cultures can do that i mean you think how people who moved here who immigrated here to this country do they still have the same way that they lived when they moved here hundreds of years ago or did their cultures change interesting when people look at cultures they don't think about when they look at other cultures

and this change in the culture for native people they always fix us at that time up contact because that's when people started really studying us and that's when the written record was developed so they try to keep us stuck in the past and one of the main arguments about this cultural off their intensity of our whale hunts was the use of a fire arm during the macaw whale hunt and anne mccart had looked at all of these options how are we going to revive that hunt keeping it in sync really holding onto their qualities of that hyundai within that tradition but also bringing it up into present day because we also our culture that adapts and if you can adapt to technologies that are gonna make you more successful he'll do that's i mean you can see this throughout the archaeological record are people changing in adapting throughout time and so the main reason why they decided to use a fire weapon i've done was because it would provide i say for hunt for the man

and would also be more humane to the whale because sometimes when we hunted in the past we view hunted mr cooder well it could take a while for that whale to die so it was the international whaling commission and these scientists to ask them a card to use their gun they said we're going to do it because it'll make a more humane hunt and people overlook that rather than looking at the fact that we adapted something that made this hunt a more humane high and they looked at being as not culturally authentic so we had those kind of objections being raised as well as we were pursuing the hunt and trying to figure out how we move forward with the tradition and i really want people to understand this culture is dying now make any changes we adapt we've been very successful in adapting but what i want people to understand that and adapting and adopting of various other cultural forms or

practices is done by all cultures as a way to move forward as a way to make your lives much easier and also in many respects to be a you know to live with in those societies that have changed as well you know our societies are and still back in the eighteen hundreds or their seventeen hundreds or sixteen hundreds before contact we understand that we have to move into present day but to hold on to those aspects of our cultures that still make us unique and that means keeping alive those conditions that make us who we are as a people and this is what we were attempting to do as for revitalizing these hunts what you hope your book will accomplish i really hope that it provides a history that people can read and that it will given that a better understanding of who we are and why we're doing what we're doing why we want to revive these hunts why hunting means more to was just within the physical act of going

out and wailing about it something that is integrity who we are as a people it is important oh i'm meant to our identities and it has spiritual ties it has emotional ties physical ties it's who we are is that people and i also want people understand that the writing of this history it's from the perspective of someone who lived within that culture and i think that's what i hope to bring to this block that reading about my story and i can only say and i want to make this perfectly clear i don't speak for the macaw i don't speak for the new channel people what i'm trying to do is provide a history that i heard also using data that i've collected throughout the last ten years as i formulated ideas around this book but that i was able to work with those and with the perspective of a person raised in that culture and answer some of those questions that people have about the whaling tradition and i also want to

say we're not going to please everybody there will be people who will not agree with whaling no matter what people such as the people who are or part of a group people for the ethical treatment of animals peta the animal rights organization that opposes killing of animals for any reason and i understand that we understand that but we also understand that were part of the natural world predation is also part of life in a tech world to the world we live in and so we exist humans and animals plants in their shared environment and there's that reciprocity with in that as well and we look at that relationship with animals with whales with the utmost respect which is why we revere them which is why we provide prayers and songs and ceremonies to the spirits of these animals and the spirits of the whale but we also understand that with him this symbiotic relationship is the understanding that death is ultimately integrated into life we

understand that so i want people as they're reading to understand that to see that within the words within this book and also to understand that whaling is more than just this physical and that there's a lot more behind that you're someone who still ethically cannot understand oh you don't believe in a hunting or hunting whales at least you can understand why we do and i really hope that's what people take away from this book will thanks so much for being here thank you for having me i appreciate you inviting me in today you had just been listening to shortcut a associate professor of american indian studies at the university of washington and author of the book spirits of her whaling ancestors revitalizing mcconnell john health conditions published in two thousand and ten by the university of washington press the sustainability segment of mind over matters program you just heard will be on the streaming archives section of katie excuse website at atx feed an orgy for the next fourteen days i'm diane horn thanks for listening and be sure to turn into the sustainability segment

again next week on any point the fm in k x p battle it