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A City Mourns

Where were you when you heard the news?

On Nov. 28, Seattle School Superintendent John Stanford passed away. Not since announcing in April that he had leukemia has the city been so shocked and saddened. The past few days have been filled with heartbreak and a sense of loss, with thousands, perhaps even millions, wondering "what if..."

Stanford had presided as school superintendent for barely more than a thousand days when he succumbed to cancer. Now we can only imagine what the future would have been like under his leadership.

A Seattle Post-Intelligencer headline neatly sums up his most important achievement: "Sanford's legacy: Hope." The P-I also writes, "From the moment he became superintendent in September 1995, his unquenchable optimism and his slogans--'Love 'em and lead 'em'--helped reignite support for public education."

Stanford's achievements were not limited to the field of public education. He inspired love and dedication that cut across the lines of race and class. He was, even more than our former mayor, a black man we could love.

Matt Asher, Seattle

The Makah/Whaling Letters

Ed. note: after the last round of Makah articles and letters, we got more letters, as well as some truly hateful and racist voice mail phone calls that I hope and pray are not representative of the animal rights movement. The amount of racism, intentional and unwitting, that has been displayed in this debate has been truly depressing. And important, because stopping the slaughter of endangered species--or any other species--is very important work, and finding ways to do it ethically is essential. In the spirit of dialogue, here's another round letters, followed by our responses.

Your Awe of Native People

ETS!,

I found your essay on the Makah and their attempt to go whale hunting to be as credulous as most left wing writings about native peoples (and I say this as an old left winger). It is true that when we deal with environmental issues we must always keep class and race in mind.

However, did your writer understand that the Makah had planned to hunt the whale with the traditional power boat as tow vessel and the traditional high powered rifle to actually kill the whale? If a native people want to re-affirm their traditional values with the killing of a very intelligent life form, then shouldn't they be expected to use traditional methods? Even if those traditional methods require a lot of hard work and danger, maybe especially if those traditional methods require hard work and danger. Aren't the values of the tradition destroyed by the use of the ruling white culture's gasoline engines and tools of death?

In other words even if some (or most) of those who oppose the "hunt" are white, might they not have a point? That is you can't reestablish a pride in a tradition with a short cut using the ruling culture's modern technology. Finally, if you are using the modern ruling culture's tools as a short cut maybe you aren't really trying to get the tradition going again, but something else entirely.

Think about it.

--Ron Couch, via e-mail

Cultural Invasion

Dear people,

The cultural concerns you bring up about the hunt are certainly valid, but at the same time you may be misreading this one. Lisa Distefano was making a courageous attempt to contact the traditionals in the Makah tribe who still oppose the hunt because the gray whale population, while back from the edge of extinction, still is just sustainable in my opinion and not ready for even a subsistence hunt if that is what it really is. It is just like the multinational astro-turf corporatists who support the hunt to use a morally unassailable agent such as the Makah to achieve their goals indirectly over the long term. What happens to a tribe that is seduced by the false promises of a better life by their conquerors? The disintegration and assimilation of their culture and the loss of their people accelerates. Though the captain is wrong to attack the natives, I support the actions of the Sea Shepherd society in protesting the hunt.

Additionally a few other questions need to be asked. Who is the white man with the fifty caliber rifle out there working with the younger men? Is the tribal council also seeking to open up their land for oil prospecting against the will of the traditionals who oppose the hunt? Why was Helijet Airways out there preparing infrastructure for pushing the hunt on Tatoosh Island a month before the opening of the hunt, and why did Gary Locke spend so much money on police and military support for the Makah Days? The traditionals who oppose the hunt have been terrorized into silence.

This pattern repeats itself throughout the U.S. sphere of influence. See my website at http://www.speakeasy.org/~dopewar/. What is the answer to all my questions? There is big money to be had and the traditionals will be screwed out of it again if they are not careful. What will the impacts on the land and the marine sanctuary be? Very destructive because the oil business is one of the dirtiest and most poisonous businesses out there both in technology and practice. Please refer to the article in On Indian Land for a more balanced and accurate perspective. I learned a long time ago to tread very softly and accurately when dealing with indigenous issues.

Lyle Courtsal, Seattle

Ethical Complexity

Dear Eat-itors,

OK, I've been sitting on this letter long enough. I guess it just felt kinda weird for me, having done layout & proofing for ETS! since the beginning, to be writing a letter to the editors of ETS! But this one thing has been bugging me...

I believe the real story of the Makah whaling conflict, in all it's ethical complexity, has yet to be told. It hasn't been told by Seattle dailies. Neither The Stranger nor The Weekly hit the mark with recent feature stories. And Eat the State! alas recently seems to have taken the easy road by simply choosing sides and commencing the type of name-calling and vituperation we have all come to know and love in ETS! ... when aimed at appropriate targets. But hey, y'all, some situations are not simply white hats vs. black hats, and require a more nuanced approach than the patented ETS! search-and-destroy-style journalism.

ETS! started out on the right track, IMO, with the multifaceted three-part Stump Talk series penned (keyed?) by John Reese over the summer. It explored the issue as complex and many-sided.

Much later came Geov's Backtalk response (10/28) where he seemed to deny this complexity with this declaration, "the bottom line: the Makah have treaty rights that must be respected. How they as a tribe and as a nation choose to implement them is their business, and nobody else's." So in other words, because the U.S. government, in 1855, said it was okay for Makahs to kill whales, this must now be respected by all as an unassailable "right." But didn't that same government at that same time also say it was okay for white people to own black people as slaves? It doesn't seem that Geov takes what the U.S. government allows as the final word on many other subjects.

(This is not to say that U.S. treaties with indigenous nations should not be given greater consideration than certain other agreements and declarations made by the U.S. government. Of course they should, but more on that later.)

The following week the venomous attacks started: Geov compares the Sea Shepherds to "a genuine, hood-wearing, cross-burning Klansman with a 'Save the Whales' button." In the same piece, he calls pro-whale activists clueless for appealing to Sen. Patty Murray, because, again, the Makah constitute a separate nation not under Murray's jurisdiction. This ignores the fact that it is only the active support from the U.S. federal government that has enabled the Makah hunt to move forward; if the U.S. government really were indifferent in the matter, it would be much harder for the Makah to kill whales.

Then as the situation heated up at Neah Bay, ETS! pulled out all the stops (11/11): Jim Page slamming Paul Watson in the lead article, Maria slamming Sea Shepherds in the shorts, Arthur J. Miller calling Watson and the Sea Shepherds "racist eco-fascists" in the letters.

By this point, if I were relying on ETS! for my information, I would probably think Watson was just some redneck asshole who had done some good things for whales over the years. I probably wouldn't guess that Watson had risked his life as a medic with AIM at the shootout at Wounded Knee in 1973, or that he had worked alongside Native Americans in 1991 to seize a replica of the Santa Maria in protest of quincentennial celebrations, or that his original inspiration to save the whales came from a vision in a native sweat lodge ceremony that was interpreted for him by a medicine man. Now, none of this background should exempt him from being held accountable for current actions, but it's not exactly the profile of an anti-Indian, "hood-wearing Klansman."

If you want to criticize Sea Shepherd's decision to forge a temporary tactical alliance with Jack Metcalf on this particular issue, go right ahead. It's the type of "by-any-means-necessary" tactic common among single-issue zealots, and the type of thinking I'm inclined to criticize myself. But I also know that single-issue zealots have done much to advance the causes I believe in. And also that internecine battles among activists around strategic differences has done as much as anything to undermine progressive chances for success. So could you spare us the ad hominem attacks and name-calling, and stick to constructive criticism when it comes to activist accountability?

Beyond holding press conferences with Metcalf, it's been insinuated several times by Geov that Sea Shepherd is actively working to undermine Makah sovereignty, but unfortunately no specifics were provided. If that's true, of course it should be criticized, but despite having read dozens of articles on this subject, I'm not clear what he refers to. (Unless he means that opposing the whale kill by definition undermines Makah sovereignty. But then, does that mean that Big Mountain activists are undermining native sovereignty by opposing the decisions of the Hopi and Navaho tribal councils? Or that denouncing the massacre at Tiananmen Square undermines the sovereignty of China?) Less heat and more light on this topic would be helpful all around.

So, what's the "bottom line"? Here's two: We have inherited a historical legacy of physical and cultural genocide and broken treaties that white people have committed against Native peoples, and it's ethically incumbent on us to do all we can to rectify that legacy; and killing a whale is, for some of us at least, the moral equivalent to killing a human being, and the notion that any human could be granted a "right" to do this by any human institution is morally reprehensible.

And here's a third: Between these two bottom lines lies an ethically complex terrain that well-meaning but imperfect people are going to stumble around and face off in, making sometimes imperfect choices in defense of their passionately held "side." Personal attacks based on one flavor or another of moral reductionism can only make the situation worse.

Yours in constructive (I hope) disagreement,

Lansing Scott, Seattle

Technical Definitions

ETS!,

Here's a big fuck-off for Geov's attempt to put me into the camp of Metcalf's white racists for my opposition to the Makah whale hunt. (Backtalk 11/18). For one thing I'm not white. For another I oppose white-skinned Norweigan whalers too. Geov seems to have based his opinion of me as a barely-closeted racist on my use of quote marks--"hate quotes" as he dramatically puts it--around the word "sovereign" as in "sovereign" nation. In actual fact my intention was not to question whether the Makah are a de jure nation but to passively point out that they are far from a de facto sovereign nation. Political science 101: sovereign means independent of outside authority. When was the last time the Makah were supreme authority over their land?

And how Geov derives from my letter that I'm trying to "dismiss a two century legacy of genocide and stolen land as [a] legal technicality" is beyond me. My argument was based wholly on basic ethical precepts (the whole as a being rather than a resource/cultural tool) and had nothing to do with technicalities, legal or otherwise.

If I promise not to misquote Geov in the future, perhaps he can promise not to willfully misinterpret me.

--Andy Chan, Seattle

Ed. note: my apologies, Andy, for misreading your handwriting and getting your name wrong last time.

Jim Page replies: In order to save the earth you have to change the world. The earth is the physical planet and the world is that human construction made of cultures, languages, roads, cities, armies, etc., that sits on top of it. The world is very complicated.

I am opposed to hunting whales. I am also opposed to colonialism. Paul Watson wants to stop the hunt, Jack Metcalf wants to stop the Makah. Watson joins forces with Metcalf. The whales are saved and the Makah are beaten down a little more. Jack Metcalf doesn't just want to save whales, he also, and maybe primarily, wants to stop Indians.

It is said that allowing a hunt on the basis of cultural renewal will open the door for exploitation; it would also appear that stopping the hunt in this manner will open another door for further cultural destruction. Something doesn't seem right here. Yes, Watson is committed, a zealot as some say. Yes, he has done great things in the past. Yes, he was at Wounded Knee, yes he has risked his life, yes to all of these things. And yes the Makah are a sovereign nation by treaty, and yes their unemployment rate is disastrous, and yes they have been subjected to the weight of the U.S. industrial machine, and yes history does matter. And history in unequal. And history plays dirty. And we all know these things.

Accusations of racism have been flying around in the most ridiculous fashion. As far as I can tell the only avowed racist in the bunch is Jack Metcalf, son of John Metcalf, member of The Silver Shirts. I used to work at a tree farm on Whidbey Island run by an old ex-Silver Shirt who couldn't stop talking about World War Two and the great things that Germany had tried to do before the allies cut them short. He told me about John Metcalf, how they used to have meetings at his house where he would lead seances and they would discuss the advances of the Reich. Jack has never addressed this so far as I know.

Jack is a big friend of the timber industry and has stated that he wants to conserve the environment so it can be used. And now he's on Watson's team. Can't we criticize this the same way that we criticize the Stalin-Hitler pact? Stalin was a zealot, too, and we know where that led. I'm not saying that Paul is going to build gulags to cage millions of people, just that he has a kind of tunnel vision that can be very confusing at best and disastrous at worst. Environmentalist-native relations are bad enough as it is.

How did we get into this weird mental situation anyway? Lisa Distefano knew full well what was involved when she set foot on that dock. She knew the danger that 74 year old Alberta Thompson was in: her dog had already been killed and she had already lost her job. Lisa disembarks and the shit hits the fan. Then Paul wants his little rubber boat back saying that his First Amendment rights were violated. (I didn't know that my First Amendment rights reached into another country, but maybe he's smarter than I am.) He contacts the FBI. And Janet Reno. Good one, Paul. Tunnel vision. I've read where he claims that the Makah are like the KKK in the days of the Mississippi Freedom Rides. This means that he is the Freedom Riders and the whales are the unregistered Black voters. This is nearly certifiable. This is comedy.

It's racist when non-Makah deny the rights of the Makah not just to a particular decision, but the very concept of self-determination. It's racist when non-Makah reserve the right to unilaterally decide when a treaty their government forced upon the Makah under the most favorable possible terms to the U.S. government is no longer valid or needs to be honored. It's racist when non-Makah pass judgment on what is and is not appropriate to Makah culture and tradition. And I absolutely reject the idea that out of some misplaced sense of loyalty or solidarity that we shouldn't criticize allies when they make mistakes--how else can we possibly learn and become more effective? (It's why we print critical letters in BackTalk, too.)

Especially on this issue, in this city. Liberals and radicals in Seattle don't deal with racism because they can give the issue lip service and then ignore it. It's important to name the anti-whaling activists' conscious choices in strategy and alliance-building for exactly what they are, because too many of us would rather look the other way. I've been deeply saddened by the responses we've gotten, which have ranged from thoughtful critique to the most frightfully bigoted bile. It has mostly been either ad hominem arguments about Watson's sincerity, the evils of whaling, etc., or venom of the Metcalf kind--among other things, voice mail calling me an "Indian lover," objecting to treaties "because we gave them all that land anyway," and so on.

I don't take that as representative of the environmental movement, but coming from ETS! readers I do take it as a sign that we've got a problem--which is what prompted my comments in the first place. If that's "moral reductionism," good. I think Watson's campaign here has been enormously destructive. I can think of a half-dozen ways that the facets I find most objectionable could easily have been avoided, and what bothers me most is that Watson is experienced enough to have easily done so, too; instead, he embraced them. He has embraced and mined for our purposes this region's extensive anti-Indian sentiment. We, as fellow progressives, are associated with his actions; and as the slogan says, silence is complicity.