from Hypatia Volume 16, Number 1Tools for a Cross-Cultural Feminist Ethics: Exploring Ethical Contexts and Contents in the Makah Whale Hunt
Greta Gaard
Hypatia vol. 16, no. 1 (Winter 2001) © by Greta Gaard
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Antiracist white feminists and ecofeminists have the tools but lack the strategies for responding to issues of social and environmental justice cross-culturally, particularly in matters as complex as the Makah whale hunt. Distinguishing between ethical contexts and contents, I draw on feminist critiques of cultural essentialism, eco‚fem‚inist critiques of hunting and food consumption, and socialist feminist analyses of colonialism to develop antiracist feminist and ecofeminist strategies for cross-cultural communication and cross-cultural feminist ethics.
In 1997 and 1998, the 2000-member Makah tribe in northwest Washington was catapulted to national attention through its petition to resume whale hunting. As anti-whaling environmentalists, animal rights groups, and anti‚racist whites flocked to Neah Bay, feminist organizations and feminist ethical analyses were conspicuously absent. Why? Though current feminist thought opposes racism, it offers very little guidance in matters of environmental concern. This silence needs to be broken, for as the earth's wild places and wild species diminish through the rapacious practices of multinational corporations and the forces of industrial ìdevelopment,î the interests of indigenous people, animals, and the environment--interests that Euro-Americans have romanticized as harmoniously intertwined--now seem to be increasingly at odds. Antiracist feminists need strategies for responding to such events in ways that defend native people and simultaneously address matters of environmental concern.
The tools for responsive analysis come from a variety of feminisms. To date, antiracist white feminists and feminists of color have addressed the problem of ethnocentrism in white feminist theorizing, particularly in its cross-cultural approaches, and have made strides towards developing postcolonial feminist theories and cross-cultural feminist ethics (Lugones and Spelman 1983; Bailey 1998; Ferguson 1998; Narayan 1998; Okin 1998; Schutte 1998; and many others). However, these theorists have not addressed the relations between feminist and environmental ethics, the place of animals in feminist ethics, or the possible connections between these issues and indigenous rights. Conversely, ecofeminism is a feminist ethic that has addressed the linked conceptual structures authorizing the oppression of women, people of color, animals, gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered (GLBT) persons, and the natural world (Adams 1990; Curtin 1991; Gaard 1993; Gruen 1993; Kheel 1990, 1993, 1995; Plumwood 1993; Sturgeon 1997; Warren 1990; and many others). Although ecofeminist theory is internally diverse,1 with ecofeminists working in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia, ecofeminists have yet to develop theory for a cross-cultural ecofeminist ethics. Developing the tools for cross-cultural feminist ethics that can address matters involving both social and environmental ethics raises at least two questions: first, across differences of culture and power, what is the relevance or the limitations of ecofeminist insights about the dual oppression of women and animals, or the linkage of race/class/gender/sexuality/species in many oppressive modes of thought? And second, what tools can ecofeminist thought offer antiracist feminists striving to act politically in cross-cultural contexts, or striving to sort out competing political and environmental claims? Though I approach these questions from an ecofeminist perspective, I argue that this exploration is relevant to antiracist feminists and ecofeminists alike.
Certainly, exploring these questions requires the insights and analyses of both feminist and ecofeminist ethical theories. Historically, feminist ethics have emphasized the value of women's lived experiences in developing both moral authority and the ability to make ethical decisions, and have tended to criticize rule-based ethics because such ethics teach women and other subordinate groups not to trust or to develop their own moral authority, but rather to rely on the moral authority of knowledgeable others--the invisible author(s) of the ethical rules. These insights (and others) influenced ecofeminist philosopher Karen Warren in devising boundary conditions for a feminist ethic, and in arguing that ecofeminism is a feminist ethic because it shares an adherence to those conditions: ecofeminism is contextualist; it is structurally pluralistic rather than unitary, giving central significance to the diversity of women's voices; it reconceives ethical theory as theory in process, which will vary in relation to its historical and socioeconomic circumstances; it is inclusivist, favoring those claims and voices that articulate the perspectives of oppressed persons; and it makes no attempt to provide an ìobjectiveî point of view (1990, 138-43).
The view of ecofeminist ethics as contextual, however, is balanced against the need to establish certain minimum conditions for ethical behavior; for example, it seems unlikely that an ecofeminist ethic would develop that justifies an act of rape, on the one hand, or the siting of toxic waste in communities of color, on the other, simply because these practices violate basic principles of both feminism and ecofeminism. Yet while vegetarian ecofeminists have developed a body of literature explaining the place of animals in ecofeminism and therefore the compatibility, if not the necessity, for the practice of contextual moral vegetarianism among first world ecofeminists (Adams 1990, 1993, 1995; Curtin 1991; Donovan 1995; Gaard 1993; Gaard and Gruen 1995), most ecofeminists have been reluctant to articulate any minimum conditions for ecofeminist ethical behavior among first world ecofeminists, much less developing such ethics cross-culturally. In contrast, Third World feminists and grassroots activists, as well as some First World feminists, have recognized the imperative of developing not just a cross-cultural but a global feminism, and have worked tirelessly to establish the recognition of women's rights as human rights within the international human rights community. In the Program for Action from the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women held in Beijing, these feminists were able to articulate a strong rejection of ìculturalî justifications for violating women's human rights, thereby establishing in theory (if not yet in practice) certain rules that effectively articulate the belief that many basic insights of feminism can be legitimately defended cross-culturally (Okin 1998). In exploring strategies for cross-cultural feminist and ecofeminist ethics, then, both the minimum conditions for ethical behavior (for example, adherence to feminist goals) and the various and multilayered contexts of ethical decisions will need to be considered.
From both a feminist and an ecofeminist perspective, this exploration must be conducted within a specific context; thus, I have chosen to address the Makah tribe's proposal to resume whale hunting, a very current issue in Washington state, for this proposal creates a situation in which it appears that the rights of animals and of an indigenous tribe are in opposition. To explore this ethical dilemma, I first provide a context for the conflict by reviewing the history of the Makah tribe, particularly as it relates to whale hunting. Summarizing the whale hunting debate in terms of the arguments advanced by the Makah and by the anti-whaling environmentalists/animal rights activists, I argue that dialogue has reached an impasse not for lack of reason, but for an inability to examine the ethical story holistically. Distinguishing between ethical contexts and ethical contents, I draw on feminist critiques of cultural essentialism, ecofeminist critiques of hunting and food consumption, and socialist feminist analyses of colonialism to develop an antiracist ecofeminist analysis of the ethical context and content of the Makah whale hunt. I then suggest that developing and using postcolonial feminist and ecofeminist methods for cross-cultural communication may be the best strategy toward developing a forum in which the Makah whaling proposition might be resolved in a way that considers the interests of native people and animals alike.
History of the MakahIn 1969, heavy rains uncovered the remains of an ancient Makah village at Ozette, which had been buried under a mudslide for over 500 years. Led by archaeologists from Washington State University, the ten-year excavation team uncovered over 55,000 artifacts from Makah history. Petroglyphs along the shore, the four different sizes of canoe (for hunting whale, seal, salmon, and for individual travel up inland streams), the many shapes of spears and knives, the basketry, the fishing nets made of nettles--all these attested to the tribe's uninterrupted tenure on the land for over 2,000 years. In 1979, the Makah Cultural and Research Center opened as a place to display the artifacts from Ozette, representing ìthe historic continuity of Makah efforts to self-determine their ways of knowing and living in the world around themî (Erikson 1999, 571). With other tribes around Puget Sound, the Makah participated in the ìPaddle to Seattleî as part of an effort to continue the traditions of canoeing cultures (Anderson 1997).
Those cultural traditions had been severely impacted by over a century of Euro-American colonization that had degraded the land, distorted the culture, and depressed the spirit of the Makah people. While the Makah tribe's pre-contact population was estimated at between 2,000 to 4,000, their numbers were diminished by diseases such as smallpox and measles brought to the area by white explorers (Tizon 1998b); in 1861, the first census of the Makah Reservation counted only 654 people (Makah Cultural and Research Center 1987, 66). When the U.S. government acquired the vast majority of traditional Makah lands on the Olympic Peninsula of what would later become Washington state, the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay guaranteed to the Makah ìthe right of taking fish and of whaling or sealing at usual and accustomed ground and stationsî (Crawford 1998, 8). But in 1913, the last successful Makah whale hunt took place (Makah Cultural and Research Center 1987, 66), and in 1915, the Makah voluntarily put away their harpoons and declared an end to whale hunting: not just because their chiefs had died and nobody was properly trained in the whale hunt, but because the whale population had been decimated by commercial hunting (Peterson 1996). The United States banned the hunting of gray whales in 1937 (Verhovek 1998), and in 1969, the gray whale was placed on the Endangered Species List.
During the years without whale hunting, the Makah struggled for economic and cultural survival. Today, much of the land on the reservation still bears the mark of the Makah Forestry Enterprises and its efforts to generate income through clearcutting (Hogan 1996). But after the timber was cut, companies like Washington Pulp and Crown Zellerback left the area and the jobs were gone (Makah Cultural and Research Center 1987, 4). Among the 2,000 people who now live on the reservation, unemployment reaches 55 percent in the summer and 75 percent in the winter (Tizon 1998b). The tribe has not fully recovered from colonization: this fact is illustrated by the presence of Christian missionaries, white boarding schools, compulsory language requirements, the forced replacement of traditional dress for western clothing, and the coerced relocation of the Makah from their five traditional villages, composed of communal longhouses grouped closely together facing the beach, into single-family dwellings arranged in linear blocks at Neah Bay. Poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, and drug abuse are now serious problems on the reservation (Verhovek 1998). In the face of such overwhelming circumstances, the tribe has attempted various strategies of cultural and economic renewal.
In 1994, after twenty-five years of protection, the gray whale was removed from the Endangered Species List, prompted by a request from the Makah tribe, along with the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, 14 commercial fishing groups, and 19 other tribes whose specific goal was to resume whaling (Peterson 1996). In 1996, the newly-formed Makah Whaling Commission sent a letter to the U.S. government, reminding government officials of the 1855 treaty and the Makah's right to hunt whales. But the Makah tribe has been divided on whether or not to resume whale hunting: a group of Makah elders has published statements opposing the hunt, and seven Makah elders attended the 1996 International Whaling Commission (IWC) meetings in Scotland to speak out against whaling (Shaiman 1998, 1). These elders have observed that, traditionally, the Makah hunted humpback whales for food; gray whales were boiled to yield oil that was traded to other tribes and early European settlers (Common Ground 1998, 26). By 1852, the Makah were the major source of machine oil up and down the Pacific coast, and in that year alone they sold twenty thousand gallons of oil to the sawmills in Olympia (Shaiman 1998, 1). Makah elders who denounce the hunt claim that the hunters are not following the traditional ways, that the whales will not be used for food, and that the Makah Tribal Council is only interested in the money (Shaiman 1998, 1); the Makah Whaling Commission, however, claims that the hunt is limited to noncommercial whaling, and that the whale will be distributed among the Makah people as food (Johnson 1998). This internal debate has not been resolved, but after continued harassment from other tribal members, most dissenters have become afraid to speak (Hogan 1996).
In October 1997, a delegation from the Makah tribal council returned to the IWC and gained approval for a renewed whale hunt. At first it was uncertain whether the Makah petition would be granted, since under IWC rulings, aboriginal whaling must be based on an unbroken tradition of whaling, and must take place only for subsistence reasons; in both instances, the Makah did not qualify. However, the U.S. government was able to broker a deal with the IWC, and the Makah were given an allocation that was taken from the subsistence quota for the Chukotka, a Russian aboriginal tribe that sells whale to Russian fur farms for fox food (Peterson 1996). For five years, from 1998 through 2002, the Makah are allowed to kill twenty gray whales, at a rate not to exceed five whales per year.
Deconstructing the ArgumentsThe debate over the Makah whale hunt has reached a standstill largely because every explanation offered by the Makah is countered by the anti-whaling environmentalists/animal rights activists, and no real dialogue is taking place. Interestingly enough, in the context of this debate, environmentalists and animal rights activists are on the same side of the issue; the differences between these two groups have not always allowed for their cooperation. Moreover, some Euro-American environmentalists and animal rights activists alike have sided with the Makah, feeling that to do otherwise perpetuates racism and colonialism. In this section, I offer a summary of the arguments, followed by an analysis of the character of the debate.
1) Treaty Rights. Perhaps the strongest feature of the Makah argument to resume whaling is stated in the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay, wherein the Makah tribe is guaranteed unrestricted rights to hunt whales, seal, salmon, and other fish on and around the reservation. Sadly, it is not surprising that some non-native descendents of the treaty-makers still enjoy the benefits of that treaty and yet wish to eschew its obligations. The environmentalists who challenge the Makah's right to hunt whales claim that these treaty rights are superceded by the International Whaling Commission moratorium on commercial whaling, and point out that the Makah do not qualify for aboriginal whaling rights because they do not meet the IWC requirements of having an unbroken whaling tradition and a genuine subsistence need. In return, the Makah point out that their tribe was not party to the formation of the IWC, and that the United States entered into these agreements without considering former treaty obligations with the Makah; consequently, the Makah do not believe they are bound to obey the IWC rulings, and have petitioned for IWC approval simply ìin the spirit of cooperation,î as a courtesy to the United States.
2) Tradition. To support their claim, the Makah point to their tribe's over two-thousand-year-old tradition of whale hunting. Tribes around the Puget Sound area as well as up and down the Pacific Coast have long recognized the Makah as a whaling nation. To the Makah, whaling is a crucial part of their cultural identity. To the anti-whaling environmentalists, however, whaling is a tradition that can no longer be practiced sustainably. These opponents argue that traditions need not be followed inflexibly, but rather can be adapted or changed. These environmentalists and animal rights activists argue that killing offers no moral basis for cultural identity.2
3) Spirituality. Repeatedly the Makah have argued that the whale hunt is a spiritual practice. Historically, Makah whalers would undergo rites of purification that included praying, fasting, celibacy, and trials of endurance to build physical and spiritual strength. It was said that the whales would give themselves to the hunter whose spirit was pure. Today, Makah whale hunters undergo similar rituals for building strength and purifying the soul in preparation for the hunt. Anti-whaling environmentalists are not persuaded by these acts, however, and point out that many wrongs have been done in the name of spirituality; performing rituals does not make an act morally defensible. The most vocal group of animal rights opponents, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has sent its boats to Neah Bay to record the death struggles and cries of any whale that is hunted in order to prove that, contrary to the Makah belief, whales do not give themselves willingly to death.
4) Social Problems and Cultural Renewal. The Makah believe that many of the social problems suffered by the tribe--ranging from unemployment to alcohol and drug abuse--are a direct result of colonialism and the loss of cultural identity. Rather than treating these problems superficially, the Makah believe that restoring a sense of cultural identity by renewing ancient cultural practices will give their young people a stronger sense of self esteem and well-being. Anti-whaling environmentalists counter that renewed cultural practices will not address the root problems, since this strategy has been tried in the past through such initiatives as the ìPaddle to Seattle.î Instead, a stronger economic base is more likely to solve the Makah's problems than cultural whaling practices, and there have been several offers to assist the Makah in launching a whale watching enterprise to attract tourism (Tizon 1998a).
5) Knowing the Whale. The Makah believe that centuries of living close to the ocean has given their tribe a deeper understanding of the relationship between people, the mammals of the sea and the land. Because of their cultural traditions, the Makah believe that they know and respect the whale in a way that non-natives do not. But the environmentalists and animal rights activists counter that there are ways of knowing another being that do not require the annihilation of the other, ways of knowing that allow both parties to stay alive.
6) Colonialism and Cultural Imperialism. Greeting the anti-whaling protesters with signs reading, ìEco-colonialists go home!î many of the Makah feel that the non-native opposition to the Makah whale hunt is yet another instance of colonialism and cultural genocide. And there are numerous examples of the ways that opposition to the Makah whale hunt has provided an opportunity for latent white racism to become blatant: phone messages have been left at tribal headquarters saying ìfor every whale that dies, a Makah will dieî (Tizon 1998b), and scornful letters have arrived, like the one that reads ìYou people ought to stick to welfare. Your culture--what a jokeî (Verhovek 1998). Both the Makah and other antiracists have noted with consternation the ìunholy allianceî between the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Washington's Senator Jack Metcalf, whose anti-Indian policies are well known (Crawford 1998). But anti-whaling environmentalists maintain that challenging the Makah whale hunt as a cultural practice is not a form of colonialism but rather a defense of the whale. They argue that not all cultural practices are worthy of being continued, citing such examples as human sacrifice, cannibalism, bride burning, slavery, and female genital mutilation. Instead, cultural practices should be reexamined anew by each generation in light of contemporary environmental, economic, and ethical concerns.
What is the character of this debate? Is this a debate between natives and racist whites, as it was in the case of the 1990s Chippewa spearfishing debates in northern Wisconsin? (Whaley and Bresette 1994). From the standpoint of white environmentalists and animal rights activists who oppose the Makah whale hunt, the debate is a clear choice between the rights of the Makah and the rights of the whale; some environmentalists support the whale, while others have formed a group called ìPeople for the Makah and the Whaleî which opposes all whale hunting but believes there must be some way to accommodate the Makah without sacrificing the lives of the whales. In either case, this perspective foregrounds native rights and animal rights in an ethical narrative that places these rights in conflict.
From the dominant standpoint of the Makah, however, the conflict is quite different. Kirk Wachendorf, an Interpretive Specialist at the Makah Cultural and Research Center, explained the situation this way:
I've never seen people so divided about an issue since the O.J. trial. Now the environmentalists think that we're O.J., and the whale is Nicole. But we think that we are Nicole, and the whale is, too. (Wachendorf 1998)
On this view, both the whale and the Makah people are being subordinated and oppressed by white environmentalists, whose attempts to prevent a renewed whale hunt are a breach of treaty rights that were guaranteed to the Makah over a century ago. From this perspective, traditional Makah cultural practices of whale hunting allow both the Makah and the whale to flourish in ecological balance, but now the white environmentalists are using a whale mask to legitimate yet another racist attack on native treaty rights. This view locates the ethical conflict as taking place between the white environmentalists and the Makah.
From this review, it is easy to see why the debate has come to a standstill: there is a persuasive logic to each side of these arguments. Yet both of these ethical perspectives take a dualistic approach to framing the ethical question: one must choose either the whale or the Makah in the first narrative; one must choose either the Makah or the white environmentalists in second. But ecofeminism's critique of dualistic thought and ìtruncated narrativesî suggests that rather than seeing these different perspectives as competing, a more holistic approach would be inclusive of all these layers of relationships, examining the interrelationship between the ethical context and the ethical contents.
Ecofeminist Antiracism, and the Contexts and Contents of Ethical Consideration
Repeatedly, native writers and activists working with white feminists and environmentalists have urged us to ìlook to [our] own cultureî (Smith 1991), and if an ecofeminist ethic is to be truly antiracist then it seems that this form of self-reflection is the first step. If the ethical question at issue is the hunting, killing, and eating of nonhuman animals, the First World practices of sport hunting, factory farming, large scale cattle ranching and its attendant ecological degradation (deforestation, water loss and degradation, soil erosion, manure disposal) offer enough material to occupy most animal rights activists, environmentalists, and ecofeminists for a few years to come. While an eco-feminist analysis would resist a quantification of suffering that compares the twenty whales the Makah propose to kill (not exceeding five whales per year) to the millions of animals killed in the same period of time through the practices of industrialized food production, an ecofeminist critique would certainly emphasize the differential power positions of the multinational corporations whose operations kill animals, and the hunting operations of the two-thousand-member Makah tribe; this analysis would also interrogate how issues of race, class, and gender influence First World eco-activists in their choice of issues and opponents. Certainly these First World eco-activists are better positioned to oppose the corporate practices that harm whales and whale habitat: for example, throughout a five-year battle, environmentalists from Mexico and First World nations collaborated in persuading ESSA/Mitsubishi corporation to cancel plans for constructing an industrial salt production facility in San Ignacio Lagoon, one of four southern breeding lagoons in Baja California, where the gray whales return year after year because the warm, shallow waters are ideal for birthing and raising newborn calves (LaBudde 1998; Earth Island Journal 2000). Ecofeminists might also urge a form of self-reflective critique for those opponents of the Makah whale hunt: for instance, do these protesters oppose all forms of fishing and hunting equally, or is there a hierarchy to their protest, such that the whale receives more consideration than the trout? For it appears that there may be a morally suspect preference for the rights of intelligent mammals over less intelligent invertebrates, much like the rights-based ethic that many ecofeminists have rejected as a form of anthropocentric moral extensionism. There may also be a desire to enjoy the continued benefits of treaties through which the U.S. acquired its land, without fulfilling the responsibilities as promised in those treaties--an imbalance that has a long history in North America.
But a tu quoque argument is not an adequate defense of indigenous whaling per se: the oppressive practices of First World cultures, and their adverse effects on humans, animals and the earth, do not legitimate the initiation or reintroduction of arguably oppressive practices in other cultures. Therefore, in addition to examining the ethics of one's own cultural food practices, an eco-feminist approach to understanding the ethics of the proposed Makah whale hunt would perceive both the environmentalists-vs.-Makah conflict and the Makah-vs.-whale conflict as different aspects--the context and the content--of a larger ethical narrative, and address each in turn.
Though feminist ethics has stressed the importance of context in ethical decisions, it has not sufficiently foregrounded the ethical content as a distinct issue, such that ethical decision-making might include an exploration of all three aspects: the ethical content, the ethical context, and the interaction between the two. Nor has feminist ethics considered situations involving various layers of content and context, such that the ethical context in one layer of relationships becomes the ethical content in another. The usefulness of such distinctions, particularly in matters involving cross-cultural ethics, can be immediately understood in addressing the Makah whale hunt.
First, native treaty rights are at issue in the ethical context of the Makah whale hunt, but the treaties themselves had both ethical contexts (historical, environmental) and ethical contents (land, hunting rights, money). Because the boundary conditions for a feminist ethic include an emphasis on both context and on the previously marginalized voices of subordinated others (Warren 1990), the historical context of European colonization and the feminist and ecofeminist commitment to ending domination all indicate that an antiracist feminist and an ecofeminist ethic alike will offer support for native treaty rights. Of course, that support must be contextual, not absolute: advocating the absolute support of treaty rights (or anything else, for that matter) is comparable to advocating the unquestioning adherence to rules, without attention to context. However, in the last 150 years since the treaties were signed, the historical context of European colonialism and white racism has not been significantly transformed, and it is in this context that native treaties, as well as Euro-American feminists and ecofeminists, continue to be located. So long as the historical and contemporary context of treaty rights is colonialist and racist, antiracist feminists and ecofeminists will have at least two ethical courses of action: supporting native treaty rights, and working to transform the context of white racism.
But treaties with native tribes also presupposed an environmental context, and that context has changed dramatically. Tribal representatives often made treaties under duress, hoping to safeguard the existence and way of life of their people. Today, it is easy to see that these treaties have shortchanged native people, not only in terms of what was promised them, but also in view of the fact that native people may now be unable to collect on the goods or materials that were guaranteed to them by law, in part because the environmental contexts for those treaties--an assumed constant--have been reduced and degraded. How can treaty rights be upheld if the things that were promised to native people no longer exist? Anticipating this problem, some tribes and native people are now using treaty rights as a way of protecting both native people and their environment (Whaley and Bresette 1994), arguing that the rapacious practices of multinational corporations (the newest manifestation of colonialism) must be stopped at the boundaries of native lands. These arguments articulate an understanding of treaty rights as promising not only an ethical content (water, land) but an ethical, environmental context (clean water, forested land) as well. Following the example of these native activists, an antiracist feminist and ecofeminist approach to native treaty rights would begin by restoring an understanding of both the ethical content and the ethical context of the original treaty to all present-day interpretations. Such considerations of native treaties characterize the ethical context of the Makah whale hunt.
For the gray whale, the ethical context of the Makah whaling petition has to do with the history and present viability of this marine mammal as a species. Globally, the gray whale population stands at approximately 23,000 animals worldwide, with a recovery rate of 2.6% per year (Shaiman 1998, 1; Tizon 1998b). There is some dispute among scientists as to whether these numbers are sufficiently strong to have warranted the gray whale's removal from the Endangered Species list; some fear that the whale was de-listed prematurely, and that hunting of any kind will threaten the whale's continued viability as a species, particularly if other indigenous tribes and whaling nations follow through on their expressed intentions and file their own requests to initiate cultural whaling.3 But the gray whale is not the only endangered species in this ethical context: feminist writers such as Pat Mora and Ana Castillo have suggested that indigenous people are also an endangered species, a metaphoric equation that reminds feminists to be suspicious of valuations that give more ethical consideration to romanticized animals than to very unromantically oppressed humans (Castillo 1994; Mora 1993). In the ethical context, then, the issue of endangered populations is of prominent concern. But in the ethical content it becomes clear that population numbers are a necessary but insufficient basis for moral consideration. For even if there were ìenoughî (by whatever definition) gray whales--or Makah, or white middle class feminists--this quantity alone would not justify killing one of them: the question for consideration in the ethical content, from an antiracist and antispeciesist standpoint, is whether a morally capable being is ethically justified in killing another to satisfy non-subsistence needs. For the proposed whale hunt is no longer a subsistence hunt, but a cultural one, and addressing this question involves the ethics of hunting.
The ethical content of the situation--the issue of ìcultural whalingî--raises many different issues involving the gray whale, the ethics of hunting and animal consumption in various cultural and historic contexts, and the Makah tribe past and present. I will address these ethical contents in turn--and sometimes, in conjunction--for these issues are not always separable.
In a first world cultural context, an ecofeminist approach to whale hunting seems fairly unproblematic. The most fully developed ecofeminist critique of hunting in first world contexts may be found in the work of Marti Kheel (1990; 1995), who distinguishes among six different types of hunters, based on their motives or the types of arguments advanced to explain or to justify animal hunting. Prior to the emergence of the environmental movement, three types of motivations predominated among the rationales given by white hunters: the ìhired hunterî killed animals for commercial profit, the ìhungry hunterî killed for the sake of food, and the ìhostile hunterî killed to eradicate ìvillainousî animals (Kheel 1995, 87). Within environmental literature, three additional types of hunters emerge: the ìhappy hunter,î who hunts for enjoyment and character development (which Kheel classifies as psychological need); the ìholist hunter,î who hunts to maintain the balance of nature (ecological need); and the ìholy hunter,î who hunts in order to attain a spiritual state (religious need). As Kheel's analysis reveals, none of these six types of hunters considers the needs or interests of the animals; instead, their arguments remain self-absorbed and self-interested, projecting onto the animals the attitudes and desires that best serve the hunter. Moreover, some of these arguments rely on colonialist reinforcements, and Kheel criticizes deep ecologists and other white environmentalists for borrowing convenient aspects of native cultures in the attempt to legitimate their own hunting practices:
these writers single out hunting as the activity with the greatest instructive value. Although native cultures engaged in myriad other practices (e.g., gathering, planting, cooking, weaving, singing, dancing), no other activity is seen to have the same moral relevance. Most of these environmental writers also ignore the vast cultural differences that existed among tribal people, referring to them as if they were a monolithic block. But not all Native Americans hunted and not all showed ìrespectî for the animals they killed. (Kheel 1995, 101)
Kheel's concept of the ìtruncated narrativeî explains how it is that white environmentalists believe they can import selected aspects of native cultures to legitimate their own actions (Kheel 1993). In particular, holy hunters have uprooted the notion of the animal's death as a willing ìgiftî from the context of native cultures. Though Kheel's analysis is focused on hunting among Euro-American environmentalists, she acknowledges that Native Americans appear to constitute the ìprototypical example of the hungry hunterî in that those who did hunt were subsistence hunters; moreover, Native Americans differ from the holy hunters in that ìthey do not appear to be endorsing the virtues of hunting as an activity in and of itselfî (1995, 88). Kheel's analysis leaves aside those who hunt for survival, and focuses instead on those who hunt out of desire, but not out of need; that is, those who could otherwise survive without killing and eating animals. The Makah's introduction of ìcultural whalingî fundamentally redefines the ethical content of this practice: no longer subsistence hunters, Makah practicing cultural whaling today would fall outside Kheel's descriptions of both the ìhappy hunterî and the ìholy hunter,î since these are justifications based on individual rather than cultural needs. Perhaps the Makah's only resemblance to Kheel's ìhappy,î ìholy,î or subsistence hunters is the fact that the Makah cultural whalers plan to consume the animal they have hunted.
Again, in a First World context, ecofeminists have challenged the alleged necessity and healthfulness of an animal-based diet, arguing that a vegetarian diet is more compatible with ecofeminist goals since it not only withdraws support from exploitative practices (both factory farming and free-range animal production treat animals as means rather than as ends in themselves) but promotes the goals of social and ecological health (eating lower on the food chain makes more food available for more people, and transfers demand away from animal-based food production practices that cause environmental degradation) (Adams 1993, 1995; Donovan 1995; Gaard and Gruen 1995; Gruen 1993; see also Robbins 1987).4 But ecofeminists have not advanced an argument for vegetarianism as a universal: instead, Deane Curtin's theory of contextual moral vegetarianism shares with Kheel the emphasis on context that is a significant characteristic of ecofeminist ethics. Acknowledging that ìthe reasons for moral vegetarianism may differ by locale, by gender, as well as by class,î Curtin concludes that he ìcannot refer to an absolute moral rule that prohibits meat eating under all circumstancesî (1991, 69). To feed his child if he were starving, or to protect a loved one from an assault, Curtin speculates that he would kill if such killing were unavoidable. But when there is a choice, then the decision becomes not a matter of self-defense or personal survival, but one of ethics. Curtin argues that ìthe injunction to care, considered as an issue of moral and political development, should be understood to include the injunction to eliminate needless suffering wherever possible, and particularly the suffering of those whose suffering is conceptually connected to one's ownî (1991, 70). Curtin's contextual moral vegetarianism acknowledges that it is not possible to eliminate violence and suffering from the world completely, because ìto live is to commit violenceî (1992, 131). Contextual moral vegetarianism is not a moral state, but rather a moral direction. Acknowledging that some cultures ìhave cultural rituals that mediate the moral burden of killing and inflicting pain for food,î Curtin simultaneously rejects arguments that would legitimate treating animals as food as a choice that is ìmorally justifiable in exotic cultures, or in the ëThird World,' or in extreme contextsî and restricts his analysis to First World, industrialized countries, where animal foods articulate these cultures' ìalienation from and dominance over other beingsî (1992, 132). Contextual moral vegetarianism is best understood ìas a response to a particular context, to specific culturally embedded practicesî (Curtin 1992, 132). Curtin's theory offers a good beginning for an ecofeminist approach to exploring dietary ethics cross-culturally, though he leaves this task for others to pursue.
Thus, while the ecofeminist critique of sport hunting and animal-based agricultural practices, along with an advocacy for contextual moral vegetarianism, clearly indicates that whale hunting and consumption in most First World contexts is ethically unjustified, ecofeminists have had less to say about subsistence carnivorism, even asserting that such hunting and dietary practices may be morally justified when no other food alternatives are available. But the Makah whale hunt is not now a subsistence hunt, and therefore falls outside these considerations: developing a new category of ìcultural whaling,î the Makah have argued that whale hunting is integral to their cultural identity. Rhetorically strategic, the Makah have positioned their petition in such a way that opposing the whale hunt is tantamount to opposing Makah culture and cultural identity.
In addressing situations where the moral decision is reduced to a conflictual scenario where one must choose between the competing claims of two moral agents, ecofeminists have chosen rather to critique the description of the moral problem itself. Kheel has coined the term ìheroic ethicsî to refer to the popular conception of ethics ìas a tool for making dramatic decisions at the point at which a crisis has occurredî (1993, 256). Describing the moral crises of heroic ethics as a form of ìtruncated narrative,î Kheel suggests that eco-feminists seek instead to discover the whole ethical story of how and why this crisis arose in the first place. Applying Kheel's strategy to the task of developing an ecofeminist perspective on the Makah whale hunt involves interrogating this distillation of Makah cultural identity from an entire range of cultural practices down to a single practice, and seeking a more holistic version of the story about whaling in traditional Makah culture.
Historically, whale hunting was not a universal practice in Makah tribal society; rather, it was limited to individuals of a specific class, gender, and ethnicity. According to reports of ethnologists and early European explorers, as well as later anthropological studies, traditional Makah society was divided into three classes: slaves, commoners, and chiefs (Colson 1953, 15, 202-3; Swan 1857). The slaves were captured in war or purchased from other tribes, and were therefore seen as aliens to the village; their children were also slaves, and no slaves were permitted to ìintermarryî with free-born Makah (Colson 1953, 202). Early explorers reported that the Makah ìprostituted their slave women to ships crews from the beginning of contact with Europeans in 1790î (Colson 1953, 57), but it is unclear whether free-born Makah made sexual use of slave women as well, since such intercourse would run the risk of creating offspring, and ìany degree of slave blood was a permanent stigma against a family line. . . . [T]he word ëslave' was a stinging insultî (Colson 1953, 202). The second class of Makah, the commoners of the village, were descendants of the junior lines of the extended family, but they were not wealthy and had to work for their living. At the top of the social hierarchy were the chiefs, wealthy leaders who owned smokehouses, held potlatches, bore important names, and were famous among the tribes to which the Makah were known. Some reports say that the status of chief was solely hereditary, while others claim that even hereditary members had to justify their status through great deeds, such as whale hunting, or otherwise fall into the class of commoners. Only men from wealthy families could afford to organize and direct a whale hunt, since only the chiefs had the time and wealth needed for the ritual preparations and for making the equipment, and the inherited privilege necessary for leading whaling crews of male relatives or slaves (Kirk 1986; Kirk and Daugherty 1978). During the hunt, whalers' wives were expected to help from shore by lying motionless in a darkened room (Waterman 1920; Erikson 1999): as one whaler's wife recalls, ìher utter stillness was intended to keep the whale from acting in an unruly mannerî (Kirk 1986, 138). A single whale successfully towed into the village provided ìvast amounts of oil, bone, and meat--and prestige. No families received more deference than that accorded whalers' familiesî (Kirk and Daugherty 1978, 90). The desire for high social status and respect may explain why Elizabeth Colson, an anthropologist who interviewed the Makah in the 1940s, was told by virtually every one of her informants that while their own family was of upper-class status, descended from chiefs, other families were from low-class ancestors (Colson 1953, 205-18). It may also explain why, eighty years after the last successful whale hunt, the Makah have come to equate their cultural identity with the most famous practice of their elite, upper-class male ancestors.
Tribes and nations struggling to reject colonialism and colonized identities often see the reassertion of nationalism and national or tribal identities as a vital strategy in the struggle for self-determination. In her study of international politics and the legacies of colonialism, Cynthia Enloe finds that ìnationalism typically has sprung from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation and masculinized hopeî (1989, 44). Women's experiences are rarely taken as the starting point for understanding colonization or for reasserting national and cultural autonomy. Instead, women in nationalist movements are pressured to ìbe patient,î ìhold their tongues,î and ìto wait until the nationalist goal is achievedî (Enloe 1989, 60, 62). Enloe's analysis sharply illuminates the Makah tribe's efforts to reassert cultural identity after more than a century of colonization, in both its emphasis on the whale hunting practices of elite upper-class men, and the tribe's current practices of silencing the dissenting voices of women elders who oppose the renewed hunt. A descendant from a whale-hunting family of chiefs and treaty-signers, Makah elder Dotti Chamblin had initially protested that ìshooting a whale with a machine gun is not a spiritual wayî and that ìno one in this village has a direct relationship with the whale any longerî (Hogan 1996). Long before Alberta Thompson began working with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, both women elders were ostracized and denied services from the tribe. Thompson was even called a ìslaveî by Makah tribal council vice chair Marcy Parker and fisheries director Dave Sones (Hogan 1996). These women elders who have spoken out in defense of a more traditional ecological ethic and cultural identity have been silenced in the name of Makah cultural whaling and a new tribal identity that is both masculinist and elite.
Certainly, the construction of gender is not homogeneous, but changes repeatedly based on such variables as cultural and historical context. Feminists and ecofeminists seeking to avoid gender essentialism in negotiating ideas and values cross-culturally have stressed the importance of thinking about issues of gender in conjunction with issues of class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Yet these attempts to avoid gender essentialism sometimes result in cultural essentialism, as in the definition of Western and Non-Western cultures. As Uma Narayan observes, the contrast between ìWesternî and ìNon-Westernî cultures was a ìpolitically motivated constructionî that functioned as both a rationale and a mandate for colonialism, defining the self of Western culture in sharp opposition to the Non-Western Other (Narayan 1998). Yet this contrast obscured the ìprofound similarities between Western culture and many of its Others, such as hierarchical social systems, huge economic disparities between members, and the mistreatment and inequality of womenî (1998, 89-90). Like Enloe, Narayan observes the way that anti-colonial nationalist movements have embraced even stereotypical facets of their own cultures in order to make strategic nationalist arguments. Unfortunately, both ìWesternî and ìNon-Westernî feminists have also tended to homogenize ìNon-Westernî cultures even while arguing against ìWesternî imperialism. Often, culturally essentialist feminist representations of ìThird Worldî or ìNon-Westernî cultures will ìdepict the practices and the values of privileged groups as those of the ëculture as a whole'î (Narayan 1998, 90-91). In the case of the Makah, the whale hunting practices of a certain elite group of men have been conflated with the practices and substituted for the identity of an entire culture. Indeed, the dominant group of the Makah may be seen as using a form of strategic essentialism to achieve their goals.
But this strategy subordinates women and animals, two marginalized groups of concern to ecofeminism. While analyses of ethnicity, class, and gender can be used to avoid cultural essentialism and to understand the oppression of the Makah women elders, these analyses are only relevant in understanding human cultures. Unlike the women elders, the gray whales are not members of the Makah tribe; rather, they belong to themselves, and to their own society of marine mammals. While there may be some debate about the limits of cross-cultural ethics in regard to cultural practices involving two members of the same cultural group, there can be less certainty about a group's ethical basis for continuing cultural practices that require the lives of non-tribal members. Perhaps the practice would seem more defensible if the non-members were to give their consent, but this consent cannot be determined: on the one hand, Makah whaling advocates claim that the whale will ìgiveî itself to the most skillful hunter; on the other hand, animal rights activists working with the Sea Shepherd Society sent boats and cameras to Neah Bay to record the struggles and death cries of the hunted whales as proof of the whales' dissent and resistance. In either case, of course, the consent or dissent of the whale will come too late.
In sum, then, an ecofeminist perspective on the ethical content of the Makah whale hunt reveals this proposal as one that advances the dominant perspective of a marginalized culture at the expense of certain women (the dissenting Makah elders) and animals (the gray whales). Just as some white feminists have focused on their own gender oppression and thereby overlooked their racial privilege and their role as oppressors, so too have some native people focused on their racial and cultural oppression and thereby overlooked their potential role as oppressors of other humans and animals. Certainly, feminists and ecofeminists are right to be concerned when it appears that our support of marginalized cultures requires the subordination of feminist and ecofeminist values and goals. Antiracist feminists and ecofeminists will not be good allies if we offer unqualified support to native people at the expense of our own values and beliefs: instead, ìa functioning antiracist--one who can pass ëcompetency tests' as an antiracist--must be an actively thinking antiracist, not just a white robot ëprogrammed' to repeat what [racially non-dominant others] sayî (Harding 1991, 291). Considering the ethical contexts and contents of situations such as the Makah whale hunt is a strategy that allows feminists and ecofeminists to become ìactively thinking antiracist[s]î in our responses to complexly layered ethical problems.
In the case of the Makah whale hunt, it is no contradiction for an antiracist feminist or ecofeminist to support native treaty rights (the ethical context) and simultaneously to oppose traditional cultural practices that perpetuate the subordination of other marginalized groups (the ethical content): rather, it is a position that reflects an acute awareness of where one stands in a complex and multilayered set of relationships. Acting on the dual analysis of this position admittedly requires some finesse: we can stand with native people and other antiracists in defending native treaty rights and native sovereignty, but how do we voice our dissent about the oppressive features of traditional cultural practices in a way that does not reinscribe colonialism, enhancing divisions within the tribe for our own commercial or political purposes? Thinking about our location in this multilayered web of relationships suggests that antiracist white feminists and ecofeminists are better positioned to confront the colonialist practices of our own culture, our government and corporations, and to challenge their oppression of those others marginalized by race, class, gender, sexuality, and species. In this specific intersection of historical, political, and cultural contexts, it is not the place of non-native feminists and eco-feminists to challenge even what we perceive to be oppressive features of marginalized cultures; rather, only members of a specific culture are positioned to lead an inquiry into traditional cultural practices. Because ecofeminists strive to act as antiracist allies to people of color, feminist allies to women cross-culturally, and antispeciesist allies to nonhuman animals, an ecofeminist approach to situations such as the Makah whale hunt would consider both the context and content of the ethical question, and seek an inclusive forum for cross-cultural ethical dialogue, following and supporting the leadership of feminist cultural border-crossers.
Feminist Border-Crossers and the Critique of TraditionThe arguments on both sides of the Makah whale hunting issue articulate the logic of different moral voices, stemming from different cultural contexts. The dialogue has stalled in part because there is a breakdown in cross-cultural communication, not unlike the breakdown that has been observed between white feminists and women of color, as described in the now classic essay by María Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman:
We and you do not talk the same language. When we talk to you we use your language: the language of your experience and of your theories. We try to use it to communicate our world of experience. But since your language and your theories are inadequate in expressing our experience, we only succeed in communicating our experience of exclusion. We cannot talk to you in our language because you do not understand it. (1983, 575)
To reopen dialogue, what is needed is the help of bicultural, multiethnic ìborder crossers,î who are able to move freely between the dominant cultural context of the non-native environmentalists/animal rights activists and the marginalized cultural context of the Makah, translating the ethical voices and beliefs of each so that they can be heard by the other. In that dialogue, an antiracist feminist or ecofeminist approach to developing a cross-cultural ethics would require listening to the experiences and analyses of the women working for social and environmental justice within their own culture, building relationships among cultural insiders and outsiders, and working in solidarity both to combat white racism and to support the insiders' efforts to reshape cultural traditions or practices that are harmful to women and other marginalized groups.
Inevitably, in the translation of ethical perspectives between cultures with differential power, something will be lost, what Ofelia Schutte calls ìa residue of meaningî that is so important that it may be ìa principle of cross-cultural incommensurabilityî: ìThe culture with the upper hand will generate resistance in the group that fails to enjoy a similar cultural status, while the culture of the subaltern group will hardly be understood in its importance or complexity by those belonging to the culturally dominant group unless exceptional measures are taken to promote a good dialogueî (1998, 56). Creating that ìgood dialogueî means that participants from the dominant culture must be willing to listen and to take on the perspectives of the non-dominant Other, and requires a genuine commitment to building cross-cultural solidarity. Typically, just as ìWesternî feminism still harbors the hope that its own views of freedom will be universally valid for the world's women, first world ecofeminism probably hopes that its analyses and goals will be cross-culturally valid as well. Though such hopes--the desire to end the oppression of women, people of color, the poor, GLBT persons, animals, the natural world--form the impetus for our cross-cultural communication, if we are to be successful, our most fundamental task will be to build and strengthen ìnetworks of solidarityî (Narayan 1998), participating in a kind of ìëworld'-travellingî (Lugones 1990) that shifts one's identity from dominant center to alignment with marginalized others, thereby developing a postcolonial ecofeminist perspective.
Already, feminism has many examples of bicultural border crossers attempting to come to terms with the patriarchal content of their various cultural and religious heritages, a task that is best performed by those situated as inheritors of each particular tradition. Thus, Jewish feminists and Christian feminists, for example, have grappled with the consistencies and contradictions between their religious heritages and their political perspectives. For African-American and Native American women, however, the process of bringing feminist and/or ecological perspectives to bear on one's cultural heritage can be complicated by the fact that these cultural traditions are often mixed and can be difficult to trace. The example of two prominent U.S. writers, Alice Walker and Linda Hogan, can be used to demonstrate how multiethnic and bicultural border crossers are developing feminist critiques of cultural traditions.
Alice Walker's novel Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), and her later film/book collaboration with Pratibha Parmar, Warrior Marks (1993), exemplify a feminist intervention into the harmful cultural practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), following the leadership of cultural insiders. Walker invited filmmaker Pratibha Parmar to create a film on this subject ìwith the intent to encourage people to reevaluate their ëtraditions' in light of the fragile health of their societies and the planetî (1993, 9). ìThe fear of being labeled cultural imperialists and racists has made many women reluctant to say or do anything about female genital mutilation,î writes Parmar, and ìthis reluctance to interfere with other cultures leaves African children at risk of mutilation. If we do not speak out, we collude in the perpetuation of this violenceî (1993, 95). Moreover, Parmar does not believe that all things regarded as cultural traditions should be sacrosanct: ìThe expression ëTorture is not culture' tells us quite clearly that we cannot accept ritualized violence as an intrinsic part of any culture, or for that matter any sort of violence against womenî (1993, 95). In order to make the film with authenticity, Walker and Parmar made sure ìto foreground African women's voices: voices of anger, analysis, resistance, and self-determinationî (1993, 109). Intent on building an international feminist movement, Walker and Parmar offered their documentary as a way of supporting the leadership African women were taking in their own fight to end female genital mutilation.
A similar kind of ethical border-crossing is at work in Linda Hogan's efforts to interrogate tradition and to defend both native people and animals in the Makah whale hunting debate. In a Seattle Times editorial, Hogan argues that while native treaty rights must be upheld, the Makah would be best served by following traditions that are even older than the 2,000-year-old tradition of the whale hunt: the tradition of listening to old women as the tribal elders; the traditional emphasis on the relationship between the people and the whales, and on the importance of maintaining ecological balance, which is the ìtrue and deep wellspring of a culture, of a people, one that holds to a reverence for lifeî; and ìthe unremembered story of the whales who do not belong to human beingsî (Hogan 1996). What is particularly relevant is that Hogan seems to make a distinction between the ethical context of the Makah's whaling petition--both in terms of Euro-American/Native American power relations, and in terms of environmental quality past and present--and the ethical content of the request, in terms of the relationships between indigenous people, non-human animals, and plants:
while our treaties must still hold, in these days there are new considerations. At the time our treaties were created, we did not foresee the loss of species, large-scale toxicity, the thinning of waters, the deforestation of continents. . . . As Indians, we have the necessity, the requirement, really, to speak out for both the old people and the old ways. What most tribes shared in common has been the respect for life. In the traditional and historic past, we recognized the sovereignty of other species, animal and plant. We held treaties with the animals, treaties shaped by mutual respect and knowledge of the complex workings of the world, and these were laws the legal system can't come close to. That is what gave us our past. That is what the Europeans who arrived here did not have. (Hogan 1996)
Hogan's current work-in-progress, a collaboration with Seattle writer Brenda Peterson, is a book about whales that was initiated as a response to the Makah bid to go whaling. Like Walker and Parmar's book/film project, Hogan and Peterson plan to produce a film to accompany the book, and they are working with the Cousteaus to film the relationship between whales and people, following the gray whale migratory pathway from Mexico up to the Bering Sea. Although Hogan is a Chickasaw and not a Makah, like Walker and Parmar, Hogan supports the leadership of other native women inside the culture who are themselves challenging the ethics of their own traditions.5
Tools for Cross-Cultural, Antiracist Feminist EthicsFrom this exploration of the Makah whale hunt, certain guidelines can be derived to aid antiracist white feminists and ecofeminists in developing ethical perspectives on cross-cultural social and environmental issues. First, feminists and ecofeminists committed to building cross-cultural ethics need to challenge oppression within the movements and the cultures of which we are a part. Within first world industrialized cultures, this awareness could mean challenging the racism that is involved in criticizing native cultural practices when maintaining similar practices within the dominant culture--for example, criticizing the Makah whale hunt and then going home to a turkey dinner at Thanksgiving. Ecofeminists need to continue to raise awareness about factory farming practices, which harm the earth and the animals oppressed within those operations, and to interrogate rationalizations about human dominance over nature, other humans, and other animal species. We must continue to challenge tokenism not just in terms of race, class, gender, and sexuality, but also in terms of species: for example, in the movements of which we are a part, we can challenge the tokenism of those environmentalists and feminists who proclaim their love of animals by keeping household pets, and yet who eat animal bodies and wear animal skins. Because multinational corporations are chartered in our home nations, First World ecofeminists and other eco-activists are well positioned to challenge corporate practices that degrade animal habitat and human environments: the ESSA/Mitsubishi salt plant in Baja's San Ignacio Lagoon, as well as the siting of polluting industries and industrial wastes in communities of color and low income communities, are but two examples.
The strategy of distinguishing between the different relationships inherent in the contexts and contents of ethical considerations will also aid antiracist feminists in addressing ethical problems. Without this strategy, it is too easy to set up false dualisms (such as Makah vs. whale) and to forget the various layers of ethical relationships, historical and environmental contexts, and the ways that these variables are constantly in flux. The concept of the ìtruncated narrativeî reminds feminists and ecofeminists to ask for the whole ethical narrative, and provides a strategy for avoiding gender and cultural essentialism. White antiracist feminists and ecofeminists alike need to remember that neither feminist theories, women's communities, nor indigenous cultures are static, timeless, and unchanging, nor are they untainted by internal hierarchy and domination. Finally, feminists and ecofeminists must recognize the difficulty of cross-cultural communication between cultures with power imbalances, and in situations involving matters of cross-cultural justice, we should seek out, build relationships with, and support cultural border crossers whose values and goals coincide with the values and goals of feminism and ecofeminism. With the leadership and collaboration of such border-crossers and cultural insiders, feminists and ecofeminists can contribute to envisioning and creating social and economic practices free from oppression of any kind--gender, race, class, sexuality, or species.
All of these strategies toward cross-cultural feminist and ecofeminist ethics require continued commitment to the project of building solidarity between bicultural, multiethnic border-crossers and white antiracist feminists. To become better allies cross-culturally, antiracist feminists and ecofeminists need to improve and expand our knowledge and understanding of nondominant cultures by reading about those cultures, building working relationships and friendships across the boundaries of culture, and visiting other cultural and ethnic communities in a way that best positions us to learn. María Lugones has recommended this kind of repositioning as ìëworld'-travelling,î by which she means not just visiting as a tourist a community to which one is an outsider, but actually allowing one's identity to be reshaped as a result of this repositioning, and allowing one's perspective to identify with that community as well (Lugones 1990). It is this kind of double vision, shifting from mainstream culture to marginalized culture, that is held by cultural border-crossers, and it is this kind of postcolonial perspective that antiracist feminists and ecofeminists alike must develop in order to initiate and support dialogue toward cross-cultural feminist and ecofeminist ethics.
Notes
Special thanks to Lori Gruen, Marti Kheel, Kate Miller, Noël Sturgeon, Vega Subramaniam, and Midori Takagi for their constructive criticism on earlier drafts of this essay.
1. Ecofeminism's internal diversity is finally being noted, and a variety of taxonomies have been developed (Cuomo 1998; Gaard 1998; Mellor 1992, 1997; Salleh 1997; Sturgeon 1997). The approach presented in this essay transcends those taxonomies, drawing insights from branches variously described as ìanimalî or vegetarian, social, and socialist ecofeminisms. Clearly, the development of ecofeminist theories has already outpaced the existing taxonomies, and a new description has yet to be developed.
2. An excerpt from one letter to the editor of The Bellingham Herald captures this view: ìI think it is great that the Makah Tribe is trying to reclaim their ancestral heritage. I think I'll try to reclaim my heritage also. Tomorrow, I'll run over to my neighbor's house, chain him up, and sell him as property. After all, he is black, and slavery was a staple of my Anglo ancestryî (Tyler 1998).
3. I use the verb ìinitiateî here because by definition, subsistence whaling cannot be ìresumed.î It is widely believed that whaling nations like Japan, Norway, and Russia are waiting for the Makah to set a precedent for ìcultural whaling,î since this new IWC category would then open the way for those countries to file similar petitions.
4. Nutritional science is currently investigating the relation between a population's traditional diet and its current nutritional needs, but has reached no certain conclusions. If today's Makah must eat whales to survive and flourish because of their genetic type, then to argue otherwise is to support biological genocide. But is this the case? Consider that the body tissues of Inuits eating a traditional diet today have the highest concentrations of PCBs of any human population on earth--a dubious distinction they share with the marine mammals that form the staple of their traditional diet. It appears that traditional and contemporary diets alike have unique environmental, nutritional, historical, and cultural contexts and contents. Today's polluted contexts are influencing the nutritional content of traditional diets. When more conclusive findings on the relation of traditional diet to contemporary nutritional needs become available, those findings must be considered in feminist discussions on dietary ethics, ecology, and issues such as the Makah whale hunt.
5. Ideally, given the strategy I suggest, this essay and any other essay on cross-cultural feminist ethics should be written collaboratively, by feminists speaking from dominant and non-dominant cultures. I offer this essay as an invitation to encourage further research and dialogue that may correct, modify, or build upon the ideas suggested here.
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