Friday, March 18, 2005
The seal hunt
The seal hunt is a very divisive issue. I hope you will read to the end to understand my viewpoint before you judge me.
I think the seal hunt is a good idea and should be expanded. Everyone should eat seal meat at least once a week.
At the heart of the seal hunt are a tribe of indiginous Canadian people called the Innu. They were, untill recently, a self-sufficient group of people. They would follow the Caribou, killing some and moving their homes with the herds. There were no social problems.
The Canadian government decided the Innu had a right to education, health, and proper homes so they built homes for the Innu and gave them schools and a small hospital. Everyone would agree that this *sounds* like a good idea.
What the government failed to consider is that the Innu had a nomadic culture thousands of years old. Their education consisted of learning to hunt caribou, seals, and bears, to fish, and to find or build shelter. When they gave them "proper" education, they took this knowledge from them. The establishment of permanent houses prevented them from following the herds to hunt Caribou. The hospital is barely maintained as there is a shortage of doctors in Canada, let alone doctors who will work in Canada's north.
The Innu today are plagued by drug and alcohol abuse of epidemic proportions. Diabetes and obesity, once virtually unknown in Innu, are also epidemic. In case you are wondering, the drugs of choice are Pam, Airplane Glue and Gasoline, all of which are avaliable at the government run stores. Some Indian rights activists tried to get the sale of Pam and airplane glue banned, but civil rights lawyers decided it would be racist to do so. Unemployment is at or near 90 percent in some communities.
How do the seals enter into the Innu situation? The seals are there. There are millions of them. They are not endangered. The seal hunt is giving jobs to local Innu and providing a means of escaping the cycle of poverty, drug abuse and suicide.
For that reason alone, the seal hunt is needed. However, also consider that seals just aren't nice animals. They produce thousands of tonnes of acidic waste, which makes small islands uninhabitable for years, and consume tonnes of fish which helps to contribute to the decline of the fishing industry.
Some of you reading this are angry now and might be thinking something like "Too bad for the fisherman, the seals need to eat too". If you really believe that, give up all of your savings, move to newfoundland and be unemployed. Then you have a basis to say what the people of Newfoundland should do.
Further to that, i would like to say that any anti-seal hunt activist who is threatening a boycott of Canadian goods and tourism has no basis for following through on that threat. The tourism boycott was tried last time. Newfoundland had no upsurge in tourism for a period of ten years after the seal hunt was banned.
To sum up, the seal hunt is vital to the Innu and other tribes, and would help the people of newfoundland to improve their financial state.
I think the seal hunt is a good idea and should be expanded. Everyone should eat seal meat at least once a week.
At the heart of the seal hunt are a tribe of indiginous Canadian people called the Innu. They were, untill recently, a self-sufficient group of people. They would follow the Caribou, killing some and moving their homes with the herds. There were no social problems.
The Canadian government decided the Innu had a right to education, health, and proper homes so they built homes for the Innu and gave them schools and a small hospital. Everyone would agree that this *sounds* like a good idea.
What the government failed to consider is that the Innu had a nomadic culture thousands of years old. Their education consisted of learning to hunt caribou, seals, and bears, to fish, and to find or build shelter. When they gave them "proper" education, they took this knowledge from them. The establishment of permanent houses prevented them from following the herds to hunt Caribou. The hospital is barely maintained as there is a shortage of doctors in Canada, let alone doctors who will work in Canada's north.
The Innu today are plagued by drug and alcohol abuse of epidemic proportions. Diabetes and obesity, once virtually unknown in Innu, are also epidemic. In case you are wondering, the drugs of choice are Pam, Airplane Glue and Gasoline, all of which are avaliable at the government run stores. Some Indian rights activists tried to get the sale of Pam and airplane glue banned, but civil rights lawyers decided it would be racist to do so. Unemployment is at or near 90 percent in some communities.
How do the seals enter into the Innu situation? The seals are there. There are millions of them. They are not endangered. The seal hunt is giving jobs to local Innu and providing a means of escaping the cycle of poverty, drug abuse and suicide.
For that reason alone, the seal hunt is needed. However, also consider that seals just aren't nice animals. They produce thousands of tonnes of acidic waste, which makes small islands uninhabitable for years, and consume tonnes of fish which helps to contribute to the decline of the fishing industry.
Some of you reading this are angry now and might be thinking something like "Too bad for the fisherman, the seals need to eat too". If you really believe that, give up all of your savings, move to newfoundland and be unemployed. Then you have a basis to say what the people of Newfoundland should do.
Further to that, i would like to say that any anti-seal hunt activist who is threatening a boycott of Canadian goods and tourism has no basis for following through on that threat. The tourism boycott was tried last time. Newfoundland had no upsurge in tourism for a period of ten years after the seal hunt was banned.
To sum up, the seal hunt is vital to the Innu and other tribes, and would help the people of newfoundland to improve their financial state.
