The whales were here first…
Metiria this morning raised questions about Maori fisheries body Te Ohu Kaimoana’s links to the Japanese whaling operation. It is the sole shareholder in Aotearoa Fisheries Limited (AFL), which owns a 50 percent shareholding in Sealord. The other half is owned by Japanese company Nissui, which is also a major shareholder in whaling fleets.
Metiria says:
Despite claims to oppose whaling, Maori fisheries body Te Ohu Kaimoana has previously hosted commercial whaling organisations and even prepared and presented papers on the economics and trade in whaling.
Indigenous whalers have a representative body. Here’s its self-description:
The World Council of Whalers (WCW) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1997 to provide a forum for whaling peoples around the world. Its mission is to promote their continued sustainable use of marine living resources, to protect their cultural, social, economic and dietary rights, and to address their concerns.
They have a recipes page, including ‘Seashepherds pie’ ;), which lists as an ingredient:
Pilot Whale mince 300+g (expensive tail area or belly area meat if you can get it!)
If you don’t like that, they do have a guest book, where you can leave your comments (most of the posts there at the moment would be worthy of some of the threads here 
).
Things get interesting when you check out their links page. It includes:
Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission (New Zealand)
Te Ohu Kaimoana (TOKM) is the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission. It was set up in 1992 to replace the Maori Fisheries Commission, established in 1989 to hold fisheries assets returned to Maori by the Crown, and to arrange for their eventual distribution.
Slightly out of date, TOKM is now managing the distributed resources, the title Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission having been dropped in 2004 when the final deal was done and the Maori Fisheries Act passed into law.
Of course, new Labour MP Shane Jones is the chair of TOKM. Monday’s Herald reported:
Meanwhile, Labour MP Shane Jones, who remains the chairman of Te Ohu Kaimoana, despite becoming an MP in November, has several times refused to comment to the Herald about the whaling issue, including whether he supports the Government’s position on whaling or whether he believes it is consistent with Te Ohu’s policy on whaling.
Well, what has TOKM said previously on whaling?
When the WCW met in Nelson in 2000, Time magazine reported:
New Zealand Conservation Minister Sandra Lee urged her fellow Maori to think hard before embracing the WCW’s goals. “Maori and other indigenous people need to be vigilant,” she said, “to ensure that we are never used as stalking horses by those seeking a resumption of commercial whaling interests.”
That warning was spurned by Sir Tipene O’Regan, a former chairman of the Fisheries Commission. “There is no more insulting or patronizing position than that which depicts this gathering as a naïve bunch of natives being led around by the nose by scheming industrialist, capitalist, destructive forces,” O’Regan said. His Ngai Tahu tribe (to which Lee also belongs) was a pioneer in whale-watching cruises-the ecotourism opportunity that conservationists believe should replace whale hunting. Maori did not traditionally hunt whales, obtaining prized whale bones and teeth from beached whales. But O’Regan’s battles with the Conservation Department over Maori access to such material appear to have made him sympathetic to the WCW’s position.
According to Lee, however, “Maori with an interest in retrieving bone from stranded whales have been doing so for many years, with the active support of DoC.” Any gripes Maori may have, she said, lie not with New Zealand laws but with the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (cites), which prohibits trading in all species of great whales.
I have to say that I think local hapu have some sort of traditional right to collect whale jaw bones and teeth for carving (though where that stands now that they don’t own their foreshore any more is another question), but they should accept that that should only happen once every effort to save the beached whale has failed.
The sale of the resulting carvings is another issue. I’d be opposed to them being sold for money, but accept that Maori would expect to be able to gift them or offer them as koha on marae.
But it is not that simple of course. Writing in the last Sunday Star-Times, Glenn Hema Inwood, the PR man hired by the Institute for Cetacean Research (ie the whalers), who happens to be Maori, writes (offline - ‘Whales - they’re magnificient, and some people like to eat them’):
There is still debate over whether we should push whales back out to sea - some say it is an insult to Tangaroa (Maori god of the sea).
The rest of his arguments are similar to those put forward by Stephen Franks last Friday.
What do you lot reckon about the indigenous rights arguments around whaling?
(The meat-eating arguments, on whaling and every other angle, are already getting a good work over elsewhere on this blog, so let’s not go there again on this thread, PLEEZE )
January 18th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Well - there are limits to “I have a right to do this because I have always done so”. Female circumcision is a case in point.
I think it would be harder to argue against whaling if the Japanese got into whale farming and humane slaughter.
January 18th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
a cheap shot frog…there are already posts on this front page from you ..on whaling..that we haven’t gone near..
i guess you are insinuating at spamming on our part..and hinting we should close down/shut-up..?
spamming is a charge i would rigorously refute..and would contend the dialogue has been reasoned and enlightening (hopefully) for some…
and your subliminal message that we should just shut-up will be resolutely ignored..eh..?
methinks we have been too quiet for far too long…how long has it been now..?..a decade..?..
(and we still get bbqed limbs waved at us at green functions..?..)
time to get a bit noisier..methinks…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
January 18th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
oh..btw..jgg in an oxymoronic spasm…”…humane slaughter..”
and where..pray..are the models of this..?..on any farmed creature..?
and is that ‘humane slaughter’ myth not just part of the sanitising/de-sensitising language used by carnies to hush the realities of their actions..?..
(wot..? kneck-rubs..?..soft music…a soothing mix of opiates to send them on that long/short(?) journey..?..
what a crock..their slaughter is harsh and brutish..(how can it be anything else..?..)
you know what is a major conciousness-raising exercise for carnies is..?
take yourself..(and your loved ones)..on a tour of a slaughterhouse…
you’ll never look at those pink/red lumps of flesh wrapped in plastic in the supermarket again….
phil(whoar.co.nz)
(in my defence..all i can say is jgg started it..)
January 18th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Phil: The vegan debate happening on the other threads is good, worthwhile and useful. I don’t think its going to ‘go away’, nor do I want it to.
But sometimes it breaks out where I don’t expect it and overwhelms the question I’m asking, THATS ALL.
I was just trying to ALSO get a debate started on what this post is actually about.
Chill, phil, you’re being no fun to debate with, there are other people in the room.
January 18th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
As I’ve said earlier - ‘indigenous’ whaling doesn’t involve factory ships and explosive harpoons. Different kettle of.. err.. whales.
January 18th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
yeah..fair enough frog..which is why i (and others i presume) haven’t bled into other posts intentionally…
but i think i’m nearly done now..for now..on this…
and as i say (sniff) he started it by evoking the ozymoron of ‘humane slaughter’…(red flag to a bull..eh..?..)
but..fair do’s for now..i’ll try to shut up for a while…(i did say ‘try’..:)..ahem..and only on this subject..:)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
January 18th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
“There is still debate over whether we should push whales back out to sea - some say it is an insult to Tangaroa (Maori god of the sea).”
Oh dear. C’mon guys, you wouldn’t let the fundies stone gays just because Yahweh wants it. Harmful behaviour doesn’t become any less irrational when you’re obeying the whims of an imaginary deity from other cultures.
“I have to say that I think local hapu have some sort of traditional right to collect whale jaw bones and teeth for carving (though where that stands now that they don’t own their foreshore any more is another question), but they should accept that that should only happen once every effort to save the beached whale has failed.”
On the principles of justice that I advocate, that right should properly be extended to all New Zealanders who want to participate in this cultural tradition, and if the foreshore is held in commons as the property of us all, then I don’t see why that should be a problem? (Surely restricting it to one privileged group would be more problematic here?)
“I’d be opposed to them being sold for money,”
Why? It seems fairer to just impose a slight tax or a fee for taking the whale-bone from the commons (after all, it does deprive others of access, if the resource is in demand), perhaps earmarking the revenue for whale conservation efforts.
January 18th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
Oh, but I guess that might not be enough to prevent large-scale commercial activity here, which would rather defeat the purpose. Fair enough.
January 19th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
i totally agree with CutFoldGlue, but would also add that traditional Japanese whaling did not happen in Antarctica!
if they want to send out wooden rowboats off their own coast to torture large mammals, i suppose that’s their right…but if they want to travel in massive ships 15,000 km to raid one of the world’s last wildernesses, they can just f-c-u-k off!
January 20th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
“I have to say that I think local hapu have some sort of traditional right to collect whale jaw bones and teeth for carving (though where that stands now that they don’t own their foreshore any more is another question),”
Under the current law iwi can get special rights to the foreshore. Owning land and having a special legal right to do things there are not the same.
“I’d be opposed to them being sold for money,�
You can’t accept that maori have rights under the treaty in one breath and then impose arbitrarty restriction in the next breath. Not if they’re covered by The Treaty.
If they’ve a traditional right to take and carve whalebone from whales found dead on their iwi’s part of the shore, then it seems pretty obvious that they should still get a right to do so under the Treaty. Saying “oh, you can do that, but then we’ll impose these limits on the results” doesn’t cut it. Pre-european maori (and more to the point, maori when the Treaty was signed) had a fairly sophisticated trading set up: you can bet that they would have been trading whale-bone items in 1840.
It’s not like the fishing situation where the modern govt has needed to change the way the game works because in the 21st centures you need catch limits to protect fisheries, and in 1840 you didn’t. What you do to an already dead whale on the beach won’t change its ability to breed.
The whale is dead. It surely does not care what is done. And it’s not like the whale’s friends and relations are wandering around Te Papa’s gift shop saying “That’s uncle Finny’s tooth! How horrible!” and being offended or hurt by it.
January 18th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Just been looking up subjects maori rights to whale bones - Just been to look at a washed up sperm whale that had it’s bottom jaw hacked off for maori customary rights. A sign close by states that it is illegal to take whalebone without a permit. It was such a shame to see such an amazing creature being hacked up. Had young children with me, quite difficult to explain to them that some people are allowed and want to do that. If indeed they wish to take whalebone, then why not use all the whalebone and deal with the rotting blubber.