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U.S. activists turn up heat on seal hunt

Local officials fear effect of campaign on Nunavut

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Sandra Lyall of Taloyoak tells a protester about the importance of seals to the Inuit culture and economy. Lyall was one of 19 Nunavut Sivuniksavut students who challenged animal rights activists earlier this month when they held a demonstration on Parliament Hill calling for a ban on the harvesting of harp seals. (PHOTO COURTESY OF NUNAVUT SIVUNIKSAVUT)

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A U.S. animal rights group is pressing the federal government to shut down a commercial seal hunt that Inuit consider vital to selling their own seal skins.

The Humane Society of the U.S. is leading a campaign to ban the east coast hunt of harp seals, using some of the same publicity techniques that turned the world against the hunt in the 1970s and 1980s.

This time, they've added a call for an international boycott of all fish products from Canada - a move that their own organizations are describing as a desperate last resort in the face of an unflinching government in Ottawa.

If the campaign succeeds, the ban would not apply to the ring seals caught by hunters throughout the North.

However, Nunavummiut blame previous attacks on the harp seal hunt for temporarily destroying the international demand for ring seal furs harvested by Inuit hunters. Prices peaked in the 1970s, just before the anti-sealing campaign reached its apex.

"It was an absolute devastation," said Wayne Lynch, director of fisheries and sealing for Nunavut's department of the environment.

International consumers didn't make a distinction between local ring seals, Lynch says, and the east coast baby harp seals shown in the group's campaign materials.

"When they did the campaign against sealing, it decimated the hunters here. They killed the industry," he said.

About 25 years ago, anti-sealing activists launched their campaign with pictures of docile baby ring seals, known as white coats, being bludgeoned to death by a hunter with a club. These video recordings, circulated by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, won the hearts of the public and decision-makers around the globe.

In turn, the European Union banned white coat seal furs and products, and eventually, the federal government made it illegal for Canadian hunters to kill white coats.

Despite winning the ban on hunting white coats, the anti-sealing coalition wants the government to stop the entire Canadian harp seal hunt. Backed by Greenpeace and other groups, they launched a boycott campaign with demonstrations around the world on March 15.

During the anti-sealing demonstration in Ottawa, a handful of students from the Nunavut Sivuniksavut program brought their own placards, highlighting how important sealing is to their traditional culture and economy.

Anti-sealing activists argue that Arctic hunters weren't hit hard, if at all, by the select European and Canadian bans in the 1970s. Those trade embargoes still allowed indigenous hunters to sell their products, especially if they weren't from harp seals.

One anti-sealing protester has accused fur trade lobby groups of using the plight of the Inuit to boost business.

Rebecca Aldworth, a Humane Society spokesperson in Washington, said the fur lobby is manipulating Inuit into defending the harp seal hunt, even though it doesn't resemble the smaller scale hunt of the North.

Aldworth said Inuit and others need to understand that the east coast harp seal hunt and Arctic ring seal hunt are two separate issues.

"Some very misleading things have been said about the impact of the seal hunt ban," Aldworth said. "I would like to see, in cold hard facts, what was the impact of the seal hunt ban on those [Nunavut] communities.

"From everything I can gather, it was minimal at best."

The GN didn't have statistics available for the number of hunters affected in the past. But current numbers suggest Nunavut seal products bring about $800,000 a year to the local economy.

Government records show about 1,230 hunters from Nunavut sold about 10,000 pelts in 2003. Officials stated that the majority of hunters participating in their seal skin auction program are from smaller communities outside the regional centres.

Seal skins are currently selling at nearly $75 pelt, after going as low as $5 per pelt, at the peak of the protests in the 1970s.

Jose Kusugak, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said protesters are ignorant about how much the anti-sealing campaign could hurt Nunavummiut.

"No matter what they say, it has an impact on Inuit," he said.

Federal government officials suggest that Nunavut should worry less about the power of the anti-sealing lobby. They are increasingly "desperate," according to a senior fisheries bureaucrat, because support is waning for their campaign.

But Ken Jones, a fisheries management officer in Ottawa, said Nunavummiut's best weapon is to denounce the campaign themselves.

"When a government speaks, everyone is suspicious," Jones said. "An Inuk presenting why the hunt is good is much better than a bureaucrat."

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