Who the Makah choose to align themselves w/is a different issue from the troublesome alliances of Sea Shepherd, which is the point of this post, & it’s a pretty typical derailing tactic to use the old “but those POCs are colonialist/racist/homophobic/classist/etc. etc. etc. too!” argument in this kind of post.

http://www.livevideo.com/video/9A5CBC8D8F4449849AA681B79D80EACE/1999-makah-whale-kill-news-co.aspx

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=567915858

I’m always aghast that the first people to complain that other movements aren’t addressing the oppression of other animals are the same people who refuse to ally themselves with those other movements. The perfect example is when you claim American Indian activist and scholar Andrea Smith “doesn’t give a shit” about other animals while at the exact same time you marginalize the struggle of American Indians in resisting White supremacy, colonialism and genocide.

First, Andrea Smith is a vegetarian who advocates against the exploitation of nonhuman animals. I bring this up only because your assumption that Smith “doesn’t give a shit about how animals are treated” demonstrates your bias, not hers. So lets take that into consideration.

Second, you write, “I would always put animal rights before lesbian or gay rights.” Again, this is your bias, the subtext of which is an unacknowledged endorsement of homophobia and heterosexism. For instance, if it would prevent some cruelty to a nonhuman animal, would you uncritically endorse a political alliance that further institutionalized oppression of yourself and other lesbians and/or made you and other lesbians as a group more vulnerable to homophobic attacks? Because this is exactly what you’re suggesting, and it is a very real issue.

That is, since you believe lesbians’ rights are less important than animals’ rights, you must be supportive of the fact that the Humane Society of the United States endorsed the notoriously homophobic Republican Rick Santorum for the U.S. Senate. You must also support PETA vice-president Bruce Friedrich’s statement declaring the homophobic former Republican representative of California Bob Dornan — who, while campaigning against a female opponent, proudly proclaimed, “Every lesbian spear-chucker in this country is hoping I get defeated” — one of “the best advocates for animals.”

In contrast to what you’re framing of the issues suggests, I firmly believe we should never accept a situation were we have to choose between oppressions! Yet, whether you like it or not, these are exactly the sorts of situations you are suggesting we allow to be perpetuated when nonhuman animal advocacy organizations collaborate and ally with far-right, hate-mongering politicians.

When Sea Shepherd allied itself with Metcalf’s White supremacist agenda it worked to create and promote a situation where the survival of a nation of American Indians is wrongly placed in competition with the survival of a species of whales. This situation ought never have been created in the first place, and that is the point that Smith is making. Sea Shepherd made a political decision to work within the White supremacist logic of colonialism and genocide, “instead of,” as Smith wrote, “developing strategies to negotiate their differences with the Makah that respected Native sovereignty.”

It’s important to remember that the Makah are an oppressed sovereign nation with in the United States. Some apologists of Sea Shepherd have pointed out that some people of the Makah nation did not support the whale hunt, but this doesn’t excuse the colonialist actions of Sea Shepherd. (This is not unlike how some war apologist justify Bush’s, and now Obama’s, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by claiming some people in side Afghanistan oppose the Taliban, an issue Smith also addresses in her book Conquest.) If anything, it only proves that Sea Shepherd in fact had the alternative option of a strategy that respected Native sovereignty and should have worked to negotiate with the Makah people. However, instead of taking that option, Sea Shepherd made a political pact with the longstanding tradition of federally administered colonial genocide against American Indians.

In sum, your argument proposing that Smith “doesn’t give a shit” about nonhuman animals because she dares to questions the alliance of an nonhuman animal advocacy organization with the continuing genocide of American Indians does little more than perpetuate White supremacy, colonialism, and ultimately genocide. Your logic would similarly claim a lesbian doesn’t give a shit about nonhuman animals if she expresses criticism of nonhuman animal advocates collaborating with homophobic politicians, thus demanding that she willingly accept the continued institutionalization of her oppression and therefore further perpetuate anti-lesbian heterosexism and homophobia. In both these cases your argument is just plain fucked up!

Preventing cruelty to other animals is not an excuse for genocide or homophobia! The false framing of differing oppressions as somehow in competition with each other only works to further oppression as a whole.

Here’s my suggestion: when quoting comments that express your idea yet contain elements that you disagree with, omit the parts that you disagree with. They are distracting. For example, instead of what you wrote, write this:

“These groups, instead of developing strategies to negotiate their differences with the Makah that respected Native sovereignty, advocated for the U.S. to abrogate its 1855 treaty with the Makah [...] What these ‘environmentalists’ did not consider is that if they had been successful in legitimizing the abrogation of one treaty, it would have the effect of delegitimizing all treaties.”

See, with just a few ellipses you can emphasize the broken treaty/ broken promises/ assertion of power and de-emphasize Smith’s anti-whale sentiment.

Hart444 is right: if the Makah are a sovereign nation like all others, then it has to be just as wrong when they whale as when the Norwegians or Japanese whale. Any argument that supports their right to whale but still maintains that it is wrong for other nations to do it has to appeal to something special about the Makah that makes them exempt from whaling standards *simply because they are the Makah.*

You have referenced several times that your blog’s tagline somehow indicates that this is a present issue for you, and that it is only an intellectual and theoretical one for others.

I would really like to know in what is the way that this issue affects you more than another person who is not a member of the Makah tribe.

Are you suggesting that only those people who are directly immediately affected by an issue (in a “tangible, non-theoretical, non-intellectual” manner) have the right to have a position on it? That’s very interesting.

“Our clients are whales and marine life, show me a whale who disagrees with our tactics.”

In this regard, he resembles the pre-Mecca Malcom X who called for change “by any means necessary.” That is effectively what he is saying: Damn the consequences, save the whales.

Now, if you disagree with his tactics and his allies, that’s fine, there’s plenty to be upset about. CJM has a point though: you are committing the association fallacy. SCCS is not guilty of racism by seeking the support of a racist. They are opportunistic and short-sighted but that shouldn’t be surprising given the statements of Cpt. Watson.

Now, if you could articulate how exactly you are impacted by this in a tangible, non-theoretical, non-intellectual manner that would shed a lot of light on where you are coming from — more so than referring people to the tagline of your blog.

I am a person of color and I don’t feel a strong desire to defend the integrity of the treaty of 1855 in this case. I don’t feel that it would be an act of oppression to ask the Makah to be bound by international whaling laws. Tradition is not a compelling argument to me.

Where I will agree with you is that partnering with sympathetic Makah is a much more effective tactic in the long run.