...the tribe has now little hope of actually holding any legal whale hunts in the future.

(Not the title of the post, by the way, which is obviously by DR, remembering his Old Kentucky Home.)

The single gray whale who was put to death last year, in what was clearly most inhumane circumstances, was, fortunately, not the sole hope of the species, or even of the local population.

Right now, it is important for everybody to BACK OFF from the Makah community.  We MUST give them time to work out not just the law but the ethics --- which plainly they want to do, amidst great public embarrassment.

It is one of the failings of our civilization, that we do not usually acknowledge the great good that comes with conducting ourselves well.  We emphasize our personal pleasure, our personal enjoyment of what wealth we have, up to the point where it might intrude upon the convenience of our neighbor.  But we say too little about the positive value of doing nice things.

It is up to the Makah, right now, men and women, of all ages, to continue thinking about what they value, over against us, the Euro-American tyrants, now and again benevolent.

Hopefully they will understand that "doing nice things" overcomes standing up in adolescent destructive protest against us tyrants.

And, hopefully, we may learn that lesson too.

By insisting on killing whales, which are not a natural prey species, the Makah show that, at least in this, they're just as bad as anyone else.  The claim that killing whales is a traditional ritual has no merit.  What if killing babies was a traditional ritual?  The only excuse for killing is to eat, and the only species that should be killed for that purpose are prey species (fish, elk, deer, etc.).

I'm normally a very strong supporter of traditional indigenous people, but on this issue we part ways.

I saw you slip in that "who" for the gray whale.

I like.