It has been 25 years since the Makah tribe last harpooned a gray whale, a practice its members consider a sacred tradition but was restricted by federal regulation. But on Thursday, the tribe was granted a long-sought waiver that allows them to hunt up to 25 whales in the next decade.
The waiver from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a major victory for the northwest Washington tribe. Whaling is central to Makah culture and treaty rights explicitly protect the tribe’s right to hunt whales, leaders said.
“There is now a defined path for us to exercise our reserved treaty right,” Timothy Greene, chairman of the Makah Tribal Council told The Washington Post. “Our community has always been dependent on the ocean. It’s not for sport. The hunt is to provide for our people.”
The decades-long wait was painful for the Makah, a community of about 1,500, he added, and it took far too long.
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Whale hunting is a thousands-years-old practice in Makah culture. It’s depicted in songs, dances and basketry, and is intertwined with rituals and ceremonies. The tribe says it uses nearly every part of the whales it hunts, including the meat, blubber, bone and sinew.
“It provided us a means to meet our nutritional needs and provided for the exchange of goods throughout the region,” Greene said. “Our community and societal structure is better off for it.”
Animal rights advocates, who have for years opposed the Makah’s pursuit of whaling, said they’re disappointed with Thursday’s decision. However limited, any whaling jeopardizes gray whale populations, and places the endangered Western North Pacific gray whales at risk of being harpooned, according to the Animal Welfare Institute.
After a sharp decline in gray whales, the tribe voluntarily halted whaling in the 1920s. The United States later restricted whaling in the 1970s as many species hit the brink of extinction. After the Eastern North Pacific gray whale population recovered, and was no longer considered an endangered species, the Makah notified the federal government of its interest in resuming whaling. The 1999 hunt was the first since the 1920s. By 2000, a federal appeals court said that regulators failed to take a “hard look” at the hunt’s environmental impacts and ordered a halt.
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Twenty-one years later, an administrative law judge argued the tribe should be granted a waiver under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, a 1972 law that prohibits the killing of whales and other sea life.
“Today is a monumental day in the efforts to allow the Makah tribe to exercise their treaty right to subsistence and cultural whaling,” Chris Yates, an assistant regional administrator with NOAA Fisheries, told The Post. “It’s been a real long time coming for the Makah tribe.”
The waiver allows the Makah to hunt up to 25 Eastern North Pacific gray whales over a 10-year period. As of this spring, there were about 17,000 to 21,000 of the gray whales along the West Coast, Yates said.
Western North Pacific gray whales, which remain on the Endangered Species List with an estimated population of 300, will not be included in the waiver, Yates said.
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“There are multiple safeguards built into this,” he said, adding that the hunts will take into account when the endangered whales migrate.
D.J. Schubert, senior wildlife biologist with the Animal Welfare Institute, told The Post that allowing hunting only adds to factors threatening gray whales. The sea creatures face a host of dangers, Schubert said, including entanglement, ship strikes, pollutants, contaminants and ocean noise. The climate crisis further endangers gray whales.
“The population is at risk,” he said.
While NOAA’s restrictions state that only Eastern North Pacific gray whales may be hunted by the Makah tribe, it could be difficult to distinguish between the eastern stock of whales and the western while out on the water, Schubert added. “We’re not convinced that the restrictions are sufficiently protective of these other groups of gray whales.”
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Greene pointed back to the Makah tribe’s decision to stop hunting whales when their population was at risk. Members of the tribe are responsible stewards of the land and its creatures, he said.
“As important whaling was and still is to our people, we chose to lay down the harpoon when the resource was at a point where it wasn’t healthy,” Greene said.
The first Makah whale hunt in decades could happen as soon as the fall, though it will probably occur next year, Greene said.
The tribe and federal regulators need to enter an agreement, and the Makah must obtain a hunting permit. There will be restrictions on when and where hunts can occur, which would also be subject to change based on whale population sizes.
The Makah must also finalize their own tribal regulations and organize a whaling crew. About 10 people who were on the last whale hunt in 1999 are still alive, according to Greene.
Greene, 52, has never participated in a whale hunt. Decades of legal battles caused him and hundreds of other members of the tribe to miss out, he said.
News of the waiver energized the community, which Greene said will prepare its canoes, paddles and harpoons for the Makah tribe’s sacred tradition.
“It’s going to be life changing,” he said.
