Propaganda: The Seal Hunt

The first time I ever heard someone express disapproval of the seal hunt was in 1970. I was visiting London England for a week during the first summer vacation from teaching in Sierra Leone. I had met up with a woman from Manhattan and we were talking and looking at the tourist sights. Somehow we got into this argument about whether the seal hunt was moral or not. I knew absolutely nothing about the seal hunt but I defended the right for people to hunt seals, partly because my father came from Anticosti Island, a remote place in the Gulf of St Lawrence. The gulf is which is where a lot of the most objectionable seal hunting takes place. So I just assumed I had to defend our family tradition.

Now today, a full 39 years later and a huge public relations war has been going on the whole time. The anti seal hunt people have been trying to get the message out about how bloody and cruel and wasteful the hunt is. The pro-hunt people have tried to portray themselves as kind, loving hardworking family men trying to make ends meet in a hard climate and a poverty stricken area.

So I was quite surprised by the European ban. I'm always being taken by surprise by the seal hunt, because as I said I know nothing about it. My father had already given up seal hunting by the time I came along. In fact he grew up during the prohibition where rum running to St Pierre and Miquelon was by far the easier and more profitable way to spend your down time. So I doubt if he ever did any seal hunting. Although he was capable of clubbing a baby seal, just from the way he trapped rabbits for meat in the winter. He would look at a live animal about the way I would look at shrink wrapped hamburger in Food Basics.

Anyway, what surprised me about the ban was the exemption made for the Inuit. But after reflecting on it for a while, I can see why the perception would be totally different. First, the Inuit have a tradition of hunting seals that goes back to pre-history. They have actually evolved to eating a diet of seal blubber that would kill an average white person faster than an unlimited free pass at MacDonald's. So when they kill a seal they typically kill one at at time, and eat the whole thing.

The white man's way is to step into a group of seals and start clubbing away, then strip off the fur and leave the rest to rot. It's a greedy,cruel and wasteful spectacle. I'm not saying the Inuit couldn't do that too, but the perception is totally different. White men just have to take their lumps because of some of the shameful things they have done in the past. Remember the western plains buffalo herds? Slaughtered to the point of extinction. By who? Not the Indians, who had been there living side by side with the buffalo for ten thousand years or more. But by the white men who simply wanted to take the livelihood away from the Indians so that they could more easily drive them into reservations. That's the type of thing that catches up to you after a while in the perception department.

Of course, if I had known about this exemption for Inuit back in 1970 I could have provided a lot of valuable advice for the pro-seal hunt public relations campaign over the years. The hunters could all put on those old carved bone snow blindness goggles and a parka hood and mukluks and go at it. For a little extra drama, bring along a dog sled and throw some of the dead seal meat to the dogs. You never know it could have changed the perceptions, and the European parliament may never have come up with this law. Of course, doing that now is too late and it would be just another case of cheating.

I don't think I'm being biased by saying this question comes down to perception more than fact. I personally don't hunt seals, and I don't hunt or fish anything else either. Although I will admit to swatting flies. But I realize that even in the African savanna, the hunting by lions, for example is kind of gross. The reason the animal rights people put up with lion hunting is that they consider it to be part of nature. White men are not really part of nature any more, because in the battle between white men and nature, the bell rang a while ago, but we are still punching away while the ref tries to drag us back to the corner.