Love Medicine

Love Medicine
Detail of beadwork from an Ojibwe medicine pouch

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Eskimos allowed to hunt walrus in order to extract ivory tusks

When I visited Alaska with my family a few years back, not only did I learn what Ms. Deckard had told us in class about there being a special clause that allowed native American Indians to hunt certain species like walruses and whales, but I learned that part of the clause insists that the majority of the animal remains be used for some sort of purpose. I got to see canoes made completely out of the rib cage of a whale, as well as many good luck charms made of ivory (rubbing the belly of these little men was good luck, but I forget their name). I bought one of the charms, and hopefully I will be able to bring it to school one day. However, like Ms. Deckard also said, not all Native Americans were so conservative towards nature, even some off shoots of an eskimo tribe were convicted as abusing their hunting clause, and acting more as poachers than anything else, extracting only precious parts of endangered species, and over-hunting them

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