A Whale Hunt: How a Native-American Village Did What No One Thought It Could | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Sullivan
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 774881
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.7
ISBN: 0684864347
Dewey Decimal Number: 639.28089979079799
EAN: 9780684864341
ASIN: 0684864347
Publication Date: May 7, 2002
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Condition: first page corner cut otherwise like new
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Product Description
P For centuries the hunting of the whale was what defined the Makah, a Native American tribe in Neah Bay, but when commercial whaling drove the gray whale to near extinction in the 1920s, the Makah voluntarily discontinued their tradition and hung up their harpoons. In 1994, after the gray whale was taken off the endangered species list, the Makah decided to hunt again. The problem was that all the old whalers were dead -- no one knew how to go about hunting a whale. P IA Whale Hunt/I chronicles the two years Robert Sullivan spends with the Makah as they prepare for and stage the first hunt. Combating tribal infighting and inexperience, they must also face passionate, furious animal rights activists and swarming reporters. Before the ragtag group of hunters even pursues a whale, there are clashes, disappointments, and defeats, small triumphs and unexpected heroes. P A book of many layers and revelations, IA Whale Hunt/I is the story of the demise and attempted resurrection of a Native American nation and of the individuals on the reservation whose lives are forever changed.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 A Whale of a Tale: Bloated January 15, 2006
G. B. Talovich (Wulai, Taiwan, ROC)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The hunt is over 6 years in the past, and has not been repeated. This gives lie to the accusations that the Makah were puppets in the hands of Japanese and other commercial interests. Some people have trouble believing that indigenous peoples can act on their own volition. br / br /While I would much rather live in a world in which no animals were killed for food, I have to ask, why pick on the Makah? Greenlanders and native peoples of Chukotka hunt whales, so why can't the Makah? If the hunt could rally the tribe, how strongly can I protest the deaths of five whales, while millions of pigs, chickens, cows, and ducks are being slaughtered? br / br /Here in Taiwan, boar are a protected species, but the tribesmen in my village feel that they have an ancestral right to poach boar. Hunting boar is something others can't do; they don't know the mountains, they don't have the skills, and anyway, you want to go stick a knife in an angry boar? I have noticed that the successful hunters stand tall, hold their heads high in front of their families, and drink less. It would be nice if prestige and self-respect among Tayal were based on poetry or juggling, but they're not, and I feel no drive to remake their society to conform to my wishes. Every day around the world, millions of bound animals are slaughtered ruthlessly for consumers; if a tribesman wants to give a wild animal a fair fight with strength, skill, cunning, and courage, I do not need to force him to act according to my will. br /(I have been a vegetarian for over 20 years, have never gotten a driver's license or purchased an air conditioner, plant trees whenever I take a jet flight, and feel that my environmentalist credentials are valid.) br / br /What we need is a balanced discussion. With changes in the oceans' ecosystems, large numbers of gray whales are dying naturally; of course there is a difference between natural death and murder, but who cares about them, or protests the shrimp fleets that devastate the oceans? When the anti-whaling forces make death threats and post DAMN THE MAKAH FOREVER on their websites, we are not talking about reasonable discourse. The missionaries are peeved that the heathen savages have not toed the line. br / br /Although the author ridiculed the protestors, he didn't give us a balanced discussion of the pros and cons of the hunt, or even go into much depth about how the hunt would benefit the Makah, beyond vague generalities: it'll benefit them. They're spiritual. It's their right. br / br /Sullivan didn't give me a good sense of the Makah: how do they differ from Joe Blow, the average non-Indian American outdoorsman in a small town? br / br /Mr Sullivan desperately needs a Remedial Composition course. He seems to labor under the idea that if you repeat the same sentence pattern enough times, it becomes beautiful. He loves run on sentences. His usage is poor. In Chapter 10, he says the harpoon "is comprised of two lengths of yew." No sir. It is composed of two lengths of yew. Rustle has two meanings that I know of: to make a soft sound, as the rustling of leaves, or to steal, as in rustling cattle. What am I to make of this sentence? "His dark shoulder-length hair rustled in the breeze "(chapter 34). br / br /His grammar needs work too. The note on page 203 says there are two brothers, and one is the oldest. No, he is the older, because there are only two. That's something he should have learned in grade school! br / br /In his description of German author May, for some reason he starts giving us both the original German quote and the English translation. From time to time he presents a Makah word in IPA transcription, at other times just sounds it out. br / br /Where was the editor? The book is full of irrelevant details, especially about Moby Dick. The only real connection between Moby Dick and the Makah is hunting whales, but Sullivan beats it to death. Sea Shepherd Paul Watson claims membership with the Oglala Sioux - a claim an earlier reviewer refutes in detail - and Sullivan has to tell us that Melville's cousin fought Indians. Does it matter? Half way through the book, I started skipping the footnotes, because they contribute nothing. br / br /The book is far too long. Sullivan can't let go of any trivial bit of research. He tells us what tv show somebody was watching, what brand of soft drink somebody drank. Why on earth does Sullivan think we want to know cousin John sleeps on a queen size bed? In the middle of the climatic whale hunt, the author digresses to explain in some detail how somebody's cell phone is billed. Does he suffer from attention deficit? Is he getting paid by the word? br / br /Eventually, I realized that Sullivan is actually a genius. He drags in Melville and a thousand inconsequential details for a very good reason. By about Chapter 60, the reader says, "Enough already! Just go harpoon the darned whale and get this over with, ok?" br / br /No less an authority than the New York Review of Books assures me that the book is `funny.' A book of this sort need not be funny, but if it is, so much the better, and indeed I did laugh a few times. However, the overall tenor of the book is hardly funny, although I did spot a few places where Sullivan appears to be attempting humor. For a one-word description, tedious would fit better than funny. br / br /If you want to know how poorly Sullivan served the Makah, read The Reindeer People. See how this sort of book should be done. br /
Serve Your Conscience Over Seas (Over Me, Not Over Me) May 4, 2005
Andrew Parodi (Oregon, United States)
4 out of 12 found this review helpful
"There is no way anyone can defend the Makah whaling. No one can claim the right to kill as part of their culture." ~ Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, in personal correspondence with me. Quoted with permission. br / br /* * * br / br /My mother's first husband was half-Aleut. My mother's family moved to territorial Alaska in the 1950s and my mother spent the better, and happier, part of her childhood and teen years among the Aleuts. Obviously, it was while living in territorial Alaska that my mother met her first husband. br / br /Two of my half-sisters are registered members of the Aleut tribe, as are several of my cousins, as is my half-Aleut uncle. br / br /I lived among the Aleuts for a brief period of my early childhood. I took my first steps on Kodiak Island. br / br /(Note: One of my Indian half-sisters recently told me that Indians typically refer to themselves as "Indians." The term "Native American" is misleading. To be "native" to a land simply means one was born in that specific land. In this vein, anyone born in either of the American continents is, by definition, a "Native American." The term "Native American" is also misleading because it obscures the fact that the Indian peoples were native to these lands before these lands were even referred to as "America." That may, of course, be the point.) br / br /I fell in love with whales when I was a young boy. I was only five-years-old when my mother and I paced off the length of a blue whale, which we read were 100 feet long. My family and I were living at Colegio Cesar Chavez in Mt. Angel, Oregon, at the time. So we paced off one hundred feet on the Colegio lawn. I remember being stunned by how huge the blue whale was. This remains one of the happiest memories of my childhood. br / br /Colegio Cesar Chavez was a Mexican-American, or "Chicano," college. My stepfather, who was Chicano, worked at Colegio, and our family lived on the grounds for three years. As some Indian activists have said, "Chicano" is just another term for Indian, albeit Indians from the land now designated as Mexico. And so it could be said that it was while living at an Indian college that I first fell in love with whales. It was on the lawn of an Indian college that my mother and I paced out the size of a blue whale. br / br /As a boy living at Colegio, I dreamed of one day being a marine biologist, and I had even, before I truly knew what it was all about, joined Green Peace. By "joining," of course, I mean that I sent Green Peace something like ten dollars for a yearly membership. I remember once asking my mother when I would leave. I thought that I had joined some organization that would require that I leave home at some point and volunteer, most likely on the open seas defending whales from those who would kill them. br / br /So, as you can see, a desire to protect whales and a love of Indian people had peacefully commingled in my life since childhood. So it played hell with my mind when in 1999 I was told that the two contradicted one another, or at least that my expression of the two contradicted one another. (Granted, the Makah say that their desire to hunt whales stems from their love of the whales. So, suffice it to say that love is expressed in different ways, apparently.) I was told that if one opposed the Makah whaling then they were in reality racists, merely hiding their anti-Indian sentiment behind a half-hearted and pantomimed desire to protect whales. br / br /This seems to be the angle that Robert Sullivan has taken in "A Whale Hunt: How a Native American Village Did What No One Thought It Could." While Robert Sullivan takes a very positive approach to the Makah (which is fine with me, of course, I have nothing against the Makah tribe), he demonstrates no real desire to understand the anti-whaling perspective. He seems more content to project onto the anti-whaling activists a desire to oppress the Indians. br / br /This penchant of Mr. Sullivan's is, ironically, nowhere better demonstrated than in his condescending appraisal of Alberta Thompson. Thompson is a Makah elder who spoke out very early on against the Makah whaling. She stated publicly that she opposed the whaling because she didn't see much in the way of spirituality involved in the hunt. She said she didn't see anyone truly respecting any of the Makah traditions in regard to preparation. She also spoke publicly about her belief that the Makah were pawns in an international attempt by certain countries to re-open the waters to whaling. (If the Makah can claim the right to whale on the grounds of "cultural entitlement," then why not the Japanese, why not the Norwegians, etc?) Despite his proclaimed respect of the Makah ways, ways that accord great respect to the elders, Mr. Sullivan callously portrays Alberta Thompson as "siding" with the anti-whalers. He describes Thompson as being a "gadfly" and a generally difficult person -- a person who deserved to lose her tribal post for speaking out. And he conveniently does not mention that during the time of the whale hunt Alberta Thompson's dog was killed and she had to leave the reservation because of the threats she was receiving from her Makah brethren. br / br /After writing a rather autobiographical review, I'm going to have the audacity to say that I don't think the autobiographical mode worked in Mr. Sullivan's favor. This is such a complex, emotional, controversial, and nuanced story, that interweaving it with a narrative of personal experience just muddles the whole ordeal. What this story needed was straightforward reporting, not autobiographical musings. (This autobiographical mode is not the only problem with this book. As other reviewers have noted, Mr. Sullivan needed a better editor. In fact, I found this book quite difficult to get through. It borders on unreadable. Run-on sentences abound. Take a look at the first sentence of the book. It is over 200 words long!) br / br /Sullivan seems less interested in presenting the sides of the pro-whaling anti-whaling argument, and more interested in relaying his personal experience among the Makah. I could understand this approach if Mr. Sullivan were a famous author or a particularly dynamic personality in his own right. In my opinion, however, he is neither. I found that retelling this controversy in terms of his own experience among the Makah weakened what is actually a very interesting story. I think Mr. Sullivan should've known better. He should've made the Makah and the anti-whaling activists the star of this book. Instead Mr. Sullivan makes himself the star of the book. br / br /But since autobiography seems to be the order of the day, I thought readers might be interested in my own involvement with this situation. My half-sister, who is one quarter Aleut, lives only an hour from the Makah reservation. She is involved in the local Indian community, occasionally receiving health care from the local Indian reservation, occasionally partaking of Indian celebrations. On the way to an anti-whaling rally in Port Townsend shortly after the whale hunt, I stopped to visit my sister. She told me how proud her Makah friends were of the hunt. (My sister's then-boyfriend is a friend of the men who killed the whale, has known them since childhood.) My sister said that the whale hunt had really given the Makah a sense of purpose. My sister even read me a poem she had written in support of the hunt. br / br /But it was my nephew's take on the situation that I found most interesting. My nephew, who was about 10 at the time, told me that he had been offered some of the whale's meat at school during lunch, but had refused to eat the meat. He told me that teachers had been giving students whale meat at his school in Forks, Washington. My nephew has always had a reputation for being "imaginative," as little boys can be. I therefore brushed his story aside as a mere invention, a vulgar one at that, but I excused it because, after all, he was just a little boy. Upon arrival at the anti-whaling protest in Port Townsend, I learned that, as part of a "cultural enrichment" program, whale meat had indeed been distributed to local public schools. All without FDA approval. br / br /Toward the end of "A Whale Hunt," Mr. Sullivan himself eats some whale meat. Had he let down his prejudice against anti-whaling activists long enough, he may've heard some of us mention the fact that due to pollution of the seas over the last several decades, it's likely that whale meat is no longer safe for human consumption. Sadly, many of these great mammals now carry various diseases. This could possibly explain that stomachache Sullivan describes having after eating the whale meat. br / br /This has been a long review, the longest I've ever written (thank you to those who have hung in there with me), so I'll close with a few parting thoughts. In this debate over the rights of the Makah to resume their whaling, two men inevitably come to mind for me: Malidoma Some and Arun Gandhi. br / br /Malidoma Some is a fully initiated elder of the Dagara tribe from Burkina Faso, Africa. Malidoma was a spiritual mentor of mine during my late teens and early 20s. In his autobiography "Of Water and the Spirit," Malidoma describes the "purists" on both sides of the cultural debate. There are some white people in Africa who want to help preserve the indigenous peoples as they have lived for thousands of years, and there are some indigenous peoples who want to do the same. To such people, Malidoma offers the pragmatic, "When we come to talk of preservation, it is already too late. For the indigenous peoples of the world it is no longer a question of preservation, but of mere survival." Sadly, I can't help but see the Makah in this statement. In a tribe plagued by drug addiction, alcoholism, unemployment, and suicide, I don't think the debate should be over whether the Makah had the lawful right to kill a female baby Gray whale. I think the debate should be over how to improve the Makah's way of life in very real, vital ways. (Did any of the vices plaguing the tribe fall away after the hunt?) br / br /Arun Gandhi is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and the founder of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence. Shortly before the Makah whale hunt, I had the honor of going on a retreat with Arun Gandhi. After the hunt, I sent Arun a piece I had written on the Makah whaling wherein I said that the healthiest organism is the one that learns to change and adapt. Arun told me he agreed, and provided me with the quote I use to open this review. br / br /Andrew Michael Parodi
 Excellent memoir of some guy I never heard of November 1, 2004
Jonathan Nelson (Illinois)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is one of those books that I do not quite know how to rate. The book is a first person account of a outsider observing the Makah Indian hunt for a gray whale off the Olympic peninsula in Northwestern Washington state. br / br /The book is the greatest memoir I have ever read. The book gets a little wordy, but the writing is full of vivid details. I think the author provides thoughtful insight into the whale hunt through numerous conversations and interactions with local Makah Indians. I do agree with a previous reviewer that the author's viewpoint did seem slightly biased toward the Makah, but not enough to ruin the book. Some previous reviewers commented on the accuracy of the book. To be honest, I do not know enough about the topic to note whether the author's story is inaccurate or not. br / br /I purchased the book as I wanted to find out more about the Makah whale hunt, as I did not realize the significance of the hunt to the Northwest Indians at the time it happened. Judging by the title of the book and the previous reviews, this did not seem like a bad choice. However, while the book is an excellent memoir, in the end it is a memoir of some journalist I have never heard of. I admire the author's dedication to the story as he followed it for well over a year while other reporters only seemed to appear when they though something will happen. In the end, I really did not care if the author slept in a tent or a plywood shack and I really did not find the type of car he rented to be especially relevant. While I am sure the trip to see the gray whales in the Baja Peninsula in Mexico was a moving experience, I really did not feel it fit into the overall storyline of the book. Also, I personally found the whole Moby Dick parallel to be incredibly irritating. br / br /The book is an excellent read, though it does get wordy at times and some of the subjects do not seem to have much relevance to the storyline. The author had a lot of interaction with the Makah Indians who were on the whaling crew. For this reason, I would recommend the book to anyone who is interested in the Makah gray whale hunt. I would also recommend the book for anyone who is interested in the modern life of Northwest coastal Indians or who are bored and just looking for some decent non-fiction to read.
 Hunt for an editor August 8, 2002
Anthony M. Frasca (East Setauket, NY USA)
6 out of 13 found this review helpful
In "A Whale Hunt", by Robert Sullivan, the main focus is on the effort -- and eventual success -- of the Makah tribe from Washington State in resurrecting their cultural heritage by hunting whales. The story should be compelling, and Sullivan makes a valiant attempt to share the story from the viewpoint of the tribe. The problem is that Sullivan apparently decided that it would be too expensive to invest in a proper editor, or that the editors at Simom and Schuster had better things to do than edit this book. That leaves the reader with the incomprehensibly difficult task of trying to sort out the grammatical errors. To wit: Page 22, "He is compact and bespectacled, and he was wearing khakis and a polo shirt." The change of tense in this sentence would have been picked up by even the most junior editor. Even worse: Page 28, "Harriette talked of being in the Army and about a dream she had that involved a horse, which, to her, had something to do with Christianity being forced on the Indian people, and which became a poem." It was impossible for me to continue to read this book after trying to sort out the meaning of this sentence. I will save you all the trouble of plodding through this awful book. A group of native Americans overcomes the objections of the "save the whale" environmental whackos, and in the process manages to recapture some of the heritage that was taken from them by European invaders.
 Inspiring, fascinating July 31, 2002
Stephen D. Clements (Seattle, WA USA)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is an inspiring, funny, interesting, quirky, and quietly heroic story, very well told. Even without the climactic, unifying event, it would be a fascinating study of a community and its people.pI think the reviewer Doc Rosen, below, is wrong when he says that Sullivan accepted the "lies" of Paul Watson, the anti-whale-hunt captain of the Sea Shepherd. It seemed to me that Sullivan's portrayal of Watson as a bombastic fraud was quite effective, although never explicit, and that he merely passed along, skeptically, what Watson told him, and then left it to the reader to accept or reject.pI, for one, did not believe Watson for a minute, and I am grateful to Rosen for the confirmation.pI can do no better than to second Karen Rudolph's review, below. I only wish Sullivan could have provided portraits of more of the people involved (e.g., more crew members).
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