Makahs Merely Followed A Path Long-Established

Every hunter had something in common this week with the Makah Indians who harpooned their first gray whale in 73 years near Neah Bay.

The irrational outrage and threats over the legal killing of a single creature would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

Killing the whale posed no conservation issue. More than 25,000 gray whales roam the Pacific Coast, and their numbers have been increasing rapidly in recent years.

The outrage is simply over hunting.

In this case, the harvest was the symbolic gesture of a people desperately clinging to what little heritage remains on the wettest and most remote corner of Washington.

Native American culture only recently has become politically correct in America. But it’s a cause for support only as long as the Indians are behaving themselves with beadwork and powwow dancing.

Whaling was the foundation of Makah culture centuries before commercial whalers nearly wiped out certain whale species.

Killing a whale, however, isn’t acceptable to the white masses in the post-Free-Willy era.

Sen. Slade Gorton said the Makah whale hunt was “extraordinarily foolish and an affront to the sensibilities of tens of millions of their fellow Americans.”

Slade should know, being an expert in offending the sensibilities of millions of Americans.

Other sensible people might consider it courageous to venture onto the open ocean in a canoe and harpoon a 25-ton whale.

They finished the job with rifle shots, a modern addition to the hunt that minimized the whale’s suffering and helped avoid the escape of mortally wounded prey.

The hunt has been a hot topic in Puget Sound, where sanctimonious creature-lovers sort out political correctness over coffee originating from denuded rain forests.

But in all the Sea Shepherd Society’s propaganda on the issue, no rational argument has been raised against the modest wishes of the Makahs to legally reach into the roots of their heritage.

The Keikos that have amused our children in movies and aquariums have no more noble fate than the 30-foot gray whale that was killed on Monday.

The whalers pitted a canoe against a creature 25 times their weight and hauled the core of their culture back to a beach.

Tribal members have worked day and night on the carcass. Makah kids got their first taste of the whale blubber that sustained their ancestors.

The meat will be divided among all their nation. Fat will be rendered to oil. The skeleton will be boiled and assembled in a display that will offer a view of the whale as a spiritual and nutritional sustainer of Native American life.

This is the link that has been cleansed from most touchy-feely whale education programs.

Most people are fat and happy in bigger towns away from Neah Bay. Most of us have little concept of why the impoverished Makahs are celebrating.

Paul Watson, pilot of the Sea Shepherd Society’s protest ship, castigated the young Makahs who danced and sang in reaction to news of their brothers’ successful hunt.

It’s probably true that their Makah ancestors mourned the killing of a whale as they took its sustenance.

A bit of cheering on an historic day isn’t unnecessarily a break in tradition.

But Watson tried to make what his ilk would see as the ultimate low blow to the Makah Nation’s euphoria.

“What we have here is a group of red-neck hunters having a good time,” he said.

With that comment, reported around the world by the Associated Press, he captured the ugliness of a politically correct society.

Since the Littleton, Colo., tragedy, talk shows have been dredging for reasons why teenagers don’t accept peers with slightly different outlooks.

We can’t expect kids to be any better at it than the adults around them.

Anti-hunters were giddy over the release of “Deer Avengers,” the contemptible computer game in which deer use weapons to blast hunters.

Hunting and fishing are scapegoats for the shame the masses can’t acknowledge for paving wildlands, draining wetlands, damming salmon streams and building gaudy houses on wildlife winter ranges.

Most hunters, regardless of skin color, have a link with tradition that deserves to be preserved.

They share their harvest, respect their prey and become involved in its preservation. They maintain contact with the wilds in a way that can’t be duplicated on the Discovery Channel.

Trouncing on the Makahs reveals how selfish and silly people become when they’ve lost this contact.

Which tribal activity warrants the biggest protest?

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s Toughman Contest, where humans will gather to cheer while others beat one another’s brains out.

The Makah Tribe’s quest to harpoon a few whales.

Television stations spent thousands of dollars to keep the helicopters circling - and even pre-empted Good Morning America - so viewers could see live coverage of a bleeding whale in its death throes.

Now there’s a new tradition for which we can be proud.