Made in Japan

[lsafi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Layla Safi)]

Since Jim Craven has spent so much time in fascist baiting and general
name calling, maybe it's time to go to the Sea Shepard site, and see
what these horrible "racists" are up to.     Of interest is to see the
alliance between the Japanese, the Clinton adminstration, and certain
reactionary elements within the Native American community.

What?     Marxists,  in their big cities, can't believe that there is
such a thing as backward elements amongst indigenous people?       Let
me just brefly recall an incident I remember well in Jim's home town.

It was the "victory" celebration after the end of The Gulf War.
Yellow ribbons were IN, and the smoldering vehicles and armored
equipment of the Iraqi army lay smoldering in the road of retreat, along
with the charred bodies of the fleeing and defeated Iraqi soldiers.

The Right Wing in Portland, Or. was aglow, that all had gone so well.
So a Grand Patriot's March was held.     Many of us, whom had
demonstrated against this war,  went to jeer and deride this very real,
fascist scum,  as they celebrated their kill.       But along came to
our dismay,  a Native American contingent from the nearby Warm Springs
Reservation, all wrapped in Purple Hearts and Red, White, and Blue.

This contingent of several hundred or so of Native Americans,  seemed a
little bit unraveled to see counter-protesters along the parade route to
show their mainstream "patriotism".        But they continued marching
along, as we appealed to them to leave the route.      It was more
important to them to show that they were true "loyal Americans", not
riff-raff "reductionists" (as Jim likes to call people).

So the moral of this true story is, that you are not always
automatically on the right side just by nature of being a Native
American, Jim.      It takes more than name calling and rudeness to
convince others of the correctness of your political position.
And it takes more than wrapping oneself in a flag.     Whether it be a
flag with 50 stars, or one that is red, and has a hammer and sickle on
it.

Below is an article from the Sea Shepard Web Site.

L. Safi
--------------------------------------------------------
INDIGENOUS WHALE HUNTING:
    MADE IN JAPAN!   

Money from Japan financing a major push towards a return to commercial
whaling.
Throughout the last decade, Japan has been combing the Third World in a
quest for inexpensively purchased allies in its war on the global ban on
non-subsistence whale hunting. Japan has sought to overturn the ban
since it came into effect in 1986.

To this end, most notoriously, Japan pays for the annual membership of
several poor Caribbean island states in the International Whaling
Commission, and also purchases their votes with generous development
aid.
In whale smuggling busts, seized shipments of meat  and blubber of
endangered whales, en route to Japan, have been traced back to natives
in Siberia, the Philippines, and western Pacific islands who got an
offer they couldn't refuse.

Lately, though still buying IWC memberships (now shopping in Africa) in
a steady attempt to stack the vote, Japan has gotten more sophisticated.
It has seized upon the global native sovereignty movement, and is
attempting to graft onto it aboriginal whale hunting. As there is
widespread sympathy for indigenous rights - much of it among in the
ranks of those who have long been allies in native struggles and
traditionally opposed industries such as whale hunting -this was an
inspired effort to split opposition and win the hearts and minds of the
people, and not just a vote in an IWC plenary session.

To that end, a two-pronged effort is also being made to destroy the IWC
category of "aboriginal subsistence whaling," both by creating a new
category of "cultural subsistence" -  as for the Makah tribe, the
southernmost band of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth - and also to promote the idea
that commercial whale hunting is simply an aspect of subsistence whaling
by another name. With an eye on a lucrative future trade with Japan, the
Maori of New Zealand declared in 1997: "We reject the position?that
aboriginal rights only allow subsistence use."

As an example of Japan's long-term strategy in action, the history of
the relationship of the Japan Whaling Association to the Nuu-Chah-nulth
native bands of Vancouver Island and Neah Bay, Washington, is
instructive.

*Close Ties*

When Japan's commercial whaling interests got around to approaching the
Makah, they saw the prospect of a double pay-off: One more tribe in the
"community whaling" family was secondary; the primary objective was a
crippling compromise of the whale conservation stance of the United
States, the primary governmental champion of the whales. As Ben Johnson,
chair of the Makah Tribal Council, recalled in 1997: "Japan wanted to
give us money, to help us buy boats, to show us how to kill the whales,
everything." After the National Marine Fisheries Service urgently
informed Johnson and the tribe that the Makah broadcasting  blatantly
illegal commercial whaling ambitions simply  wouldn't do, the Makah
went along with the Administration's coaching for a go-slow return to
commercial whaling - an "interim ceremonial hunt" - letting the U.S.
Administration  fudge IWC rules for them at the Commission's 1997
meeting and maintaining the essential appearance of a native tribe
getting in touch with its roots. Japan's primary objective was achieved.

Canada, however, is not a member of the IWC, and there Japan has been
able to take a more direct approach. In 1997, the World Council of
Whalers set up shop in Port Alberni, British Columbia. From the start,
the WCW has been forthright in its agenda: To bring about the return of
commercial whaling world-wide via aboriginal "community-based whaling."
With $20,000 in start-up fees coming from Norwegian and Japanese whaling
interests, the WCW set about appointing a figurehead drawn from the
local ranks of the Nuu-Cha-Nulth. They found one in chairman Tom Mexis
Happynook, a hereditary whaling chief.

The Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council provided a secretariat and
coordination of the new global organization. Whaling organizations in
Europe and Asia keep Happynook's lobbying efforts, general meetings, and
website funded by kicking in $1,000 each in annual membership fees.

For the Makah, as far as Happynook and the World Council of Whalers were
concerned, "We were told to stay away from those guys," as Johnson put
it, when the Administration  agreed to go to bat for the tribe at the
IWC so long as the Makah played their commercial whaling aspirations way
down. Less than successful in heeding that directive, the Makah sent
representatives to the first general assembly of the WCW, a secret
five-day meeting  held in Victoria, B.C., in March 1998.  Despite
the international boundary between the Canadian Nuu-Chah-Nulth and the
Makah of Washington State, "We are still very closely related and still
consider each other family," says Happynook.

On Nov. 1, 1999, a Makah tribal delegation returned from a "cultural
exchange" visit to Japan. The delegation was led by Hubert Markishtum,
Makah Tribal Council vice chair and author of the Makah's 1995 whaling
proposal and request for assistance from the U.S. State Department. At
the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, the delegation met with Tom Foley, U.S.
Ambassador to Japan, for a discussion of trade issues. (Jim Salisbury,
former attaché for oceans and fisheries at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo,
is the founder and president of the Makah's major trading partner,
Supreme Alaska Seafoods, co-owned with Maruha/Taiyo corporation, which
is also a one-third owner of the Japanese whaling fleet and generally
considered to be the world's most notorious pirate whaling and smuggling
operation.) The members of the Makah delegation pronounced themselves
"inspired by the way Japanese society values history."

The Canadian bands of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth are likewise comfortable with
their close ties to Japan's commercial whaling industry. Happynook
authored an article for the December 1998 edition of Isana, the
publication of the Japan Whaling Association ("?whaling chiefs hunted
the Humpback whale, Gray whale, Sperm whale, Right whale, Blue whale and
the Bairds Beaked whale?. The resources were put there?to sustain
our economies. Without the resource we would become extinct which is
what the eco-terrorists want.") One month previously, Happynook flew to
Tokyo to perform a Nuu-Chah-Nulth Whaling Dance to celebrate the maiden
voyage of the Yushin Maru, "a new state-of-the-art research/enforcement
vessel," and send off the Japanese whaling fleet to their Antarctic
killing grounds.

Nevertheless, Happynook no longer discusses the hoped-for prospect of
the commercial sale of whale meat with the media, having learned to
confine his comments to Native diet, spirituality,  the resumption of
family tradition, and the recipes in his copy of Mrs. Ohnishi's Whale
Cuisine, a Japanese/English cook book.
But for all his public relations savvy and the strategic smarts of his
Japanese paymasters, Happynook has his work cut out for him. Japan's
grand plan and novel twist on the activist axiom "think globally, act
locally" is starting to incur backlash.

Ojibway artist Linda Gawaundukquay Fisher wondered in 1999: "As I hear
about some of today's Indians and their slaughter of whales in the name
of tradition?I wonder what has happened.? Where does a culture draw
the line when it comes to regaining its traditional ways in a modern,
ecologically minded society? Is our desire to retain tradition sometimes
not only selfish and unwise but destructive too? Reflecting on the whale
hunt by our northern tribes?perhaps it is sometimes better to protect
and cherish what we still have left, so that our children's children can
also experience its beauty and splendor."

The First Nations Environmental Network, founded in order to aid First
Nations people in North America in the struggle to protect the land,
animals, water and forests, urged the Makah not to go whale hunting as
"too much was at risk." They also noted pointedly that Geronimo's
great-granddaughter, an elder from the East, brought a message to a
gathering on Orcas Island in the summer of 1998, saying that "there is
an ancient prophecy that states 'Peace will come to humans when we make
peace with the whales and hear their song.' "

Among the Nuu-Chah-Nulth themselves, Happynook's vision of a golden
future of whale hunting and lucrative trade is not universally shared.
Q'aamina of Ahousaht said in an April 1997 interview with the Victoria
Times-Colonist, "If anyone goes out there to hunt whales I'll make sure
my boat is out there to stop them and I believe I would get a lot of
support."

Copyright ã 1999 Sea Shepherd Conservation Society . All rights
reserved.