Canada is a bit backward politically in many ways, not least the fact that, at the base, we are still a monarchy. While Canada has the window dressing of a modern democracy ... an elected legislature and a constitution ... the political reality is a little less democratic. When it comes down to legal technicalities, Canada's Head of State is not our Prime Minister, or even a Canadian citizen ... Canada's Head of State is the Queen of England.
In Canadian political life, her representative to Canadian politics is the Governor General. The Queen has been generous enough to allow Canadian PM's to choose our GG's for several decades now, but the fact remains that once chosen, the GG is the Queen's representative, not a representative of the PM, and that GG is also Canada's defacto Head of State. While the GG isn't responsible for any day to day decisions on policy, she controls parliament itself. Only the GG can call an election (usually on the advice of the PM) and only the GG can dissolve parliament (again, usually on the advice of the PM). The GG must also approve ALL new governments (typically a rubber-stamp that validates the election results).
As a result, the Governor General is an important figure in Canadian political life. The current GG, Michaëlle Jean, is a Haitian born immigrant who has made a point of showcasing the cultural diversity of Canada, but yesterday, she may have taken that notion a bit too far. While visiting the northern Inuit community of Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, she joined locals in an ancient Inuit tradition of celebrating a successful seal hunt by eating the fresh, raw heart of a seal.
One small bite for the GG, one stupid controversy for Canada
(photo from MSNBC.com)
One small bite for the GG, one stupid controversy for Canada. Opponents of the commercial seal hunt were quick to issue the predictable responses. "The fact that the Governor General in public is slashing and eating a seal, I don't think that really helps the cause, and I'm convinced that this will not change the mind of European citizens and politicians," said Barbara Slee of the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Brussels. PETA spokesperson Dan Mathews had an equally predictable response ... "It amazes us that a Canadian official would indulge in such bloodlust."
What these opponents of the commercial seal hunt fail to appreciate is that what Jean did yesterday had nothing to do with commercial sealing. The seal she ate from wasn't commercially harvested ... it was harvested as part of an ancient hunting ritual performed by Inuit for thousands of years. Jean took part in a ceremony that honours the life just taken, through the reverential consumption of the heart of the animal ... for Jean to have refused to participate would have been a gross insult by the Canadian head of state to one of Canada's oldest cultures.
Leaving the ethics of the commercial seal hunt aside (and there are definite ethical issues to discuss, not least is the misinformation of anti-sealing groups who still use video of baby seals being clubbed to promote their cause when no baby seal has been clubbed legally in Canada for 2 decades at least), linking this act by the GG with the commercial hunt is not only wrong-headed, but it is an affront to the rights of Canada's aboriginal people.
Canadian law protects the rights of aboriginals to engage in traditional hunting methods as part of their cultural heritage. For the Inuit, that includes seal hunting and whaling, both a HUGE part of their traditional diet, tools, clothes, and housing materials. Jean took part in a time-honoured ceremony of that traditional lifestyle while she visited one of the communities that continue to practise that lifestyle. There is absolutely no connection to the commercial seal hunt in any way.
The Inuit are one of the cornerstones of Canada's original people, and their culture forms a vital part of our cultural milieu here in Canada. As the Queen's representative to Canada, the GG has a vital obligation to respect the cultures that make Canada what it is. In contrast to opponents, its interesting to hear what Inuit leaders had to say about Jean's actions yesterday. "It really sends a message out to the public that maybe these animal rights campaigns are off-base and are giving inaccurate information," said Mary Simon of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Canadian national Inuit organization.
The reality is, despite the legalities, the GG is little more than a figurehead in the real workings of Canadian politics. She is the defacto head of state, but not the working head of state ... her functions are largely ceremonial these days. Those ceremonial functions include being a cultral ambassador to, and from, Canada's various cultures. For Jean to have refused to take part in the ceremony would have been an affront to some of the very people she works for. If others in the world are offended by something that is a vital part of Canadian culture, so be it, but let them be honest about what she did. This has NOTHING to do with issues around the commercial seal hunt, and if people want to oppose what she did, then they should do so honestly by opposing the ancient, traditional Inuit culture that she was honouring with her actions. Linking that tradition to the commercial hunt is not only wrong, its intentionally misleading.
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I have noticed the honor paid to the "First People" in Canada (at least compared to US neglect - here they are the Forgotten People) and I think the GG was doing Canadians proud.
Shivaun: Thanks for the comment from an activist ... I was unsure how this would be received in that community. I'm not a huge fan of the commercial seal hunt (though I do think its not much different from the commercial beef industry), but the traditional hunt is an entirely different beast. You are right ... for Jean to have refused the opportunity would have been seen as a grave insult, IMO. Thanks for the rate and comment :)
First, it states that Canada is backward politically because we are a monarchy. Well, we're a constitutional monarchy and we're hardly the only ones in the world - most of the countries in the Commonwealth and many in Europe are the same.
And to state that we're less democratic than other countries is just stupid.
Also, if you must know, our head of state is not the Queen of England, but the Queen of Canada. Yes, Elizabeth is, in this instance, our queen - as she is for Australia, New Zealand, etc.
We, like all Commonwealth countries, have no connection to Britain other than old historic ones - not much different than the US.
And, no, Shivaun Nestor, we are not part of "The British Empire" -not even sure that that exists anymore anyways.
Pollister: You are right, and wrong. Canada is a democracy, but the ultimate power lies with the Queen. She can legally suspend Parliament and rule by fiat, though Canada would likely ignore such an attempt and secede from the Commonwealth. Also, the British Empire DOES still exist ... its called the British Commonwealth now, and Canada is a member. Most of the comments about "undemocratic monarchy" was intended as satire, but surely you must realize the Queen, not any elected official, is still the official head of state of Canada, with the power to suspend parliament.
I disagree with you guys on her being Harper's lap dog. I'm no Harper fan, but that coalition would have been a disaster and she did what she had to do. Keep in mind what was supposed to be a twenty minute meeting lasted two hours. So I'm guessing words were exchanged. She was a Liberal appointment under Paul Martin, so I'd be very surprised if she's a Harper fan. And frankly I was glad to have somebody in this country responsible for political decorum, because that was just an embarassment for everyone involved. Jean has done way more than diplomatic window dressing. She was an activist for Haiti all of last year, and Obama invited her to Washington before he even invited Harper. Her role is largely ceremonial, but she fulfills the same role that any parliamentary system needs to have. President, Queen, GG whatever... In a parliamentary system you have to have somebody who can manage the very rare constitutional crisis. I don't think there's anything backward about that. It's just the reality of the system.
That said. I'm not even against the commercial seal hunt. Generally I'm pretty liberal on most things. But this seal issue has been exploited by camera whore celebrity activists for too long. There are people struggling with the real poverty of boom bust economies who have been devastated by the by the recent European decision to ban seal product. These animals are in no danger of becoming extinct. They breed like seagulls. There's little difference ecologically between hunting seals and fishing for wild salmon. They are killed with way more humanity than the hamburger than billions of people eat every day. Enough of this crap.
An official EU spokeswomen called the incident "too bizarre" to comment on. I find that comment more offensive than any of the more graphic comments about "slashing and eating" a seal. Referring to partaking in an Inuit tradition as "bizarre" is awfully xenophobic.
All of the critics seem to assume that this was a ploy to conflate the Inuit ceremony and meal with the commercial seal hunt. I think that's unfounded. I suppose that from an EU point of view, they think that the commercial seal hunt is a prominent issue in Canadian politics, and so they assume that any other seal-related topic must be intertwined with it - but of course its mostly a non-issue here.
But, speaking of the commercial hunt, I'll echo Norwonk's questions. If someone is a strict vegetarian, then in principal I can respect their opposition to the seal hunt, eating seal meat, and wearing/using seal skin. But in that case, why should they care any more about seal than they would about me eating beef, pork, and fish and wearing a leather jacket? (I'm sure there are several people who hold such positions, and I respect their consistency. I don't respect PETA though, that organization is just plain crazy.)
It was a power grab. A merited one maybe, but still a power grab. Personally, as a disgrunted ex- NDPer. I hold Jack Layton responsible for this mess. It has all the stink of the opportunistic alliances he's forming since he stepped into parliament. Remember, Harper is in govenment right now because of Jack Layton's alliance with him (which he did right before a commitment to federal funding for universal daycare was about to be signed into law. Something we will never see again in our lifetime, I suspect. )
I disapprove of the commercial seal hunt. (I am a vegetarian except for fish, eggs and the occasional restaurant meal.) I don't even approve of any kind of hunting, blah blah (bleeding heart blah blah).
I'm not entirely sure about the Inuit traditional stuff - thanks to modern weapons, their hunting, fishing, sealing and whaling is a lot more destructive than it once was. (OTOH, fewer Inuit starve when hunting is poor. Plus, there's the store full of modern food.) Inuit and others defend 'tradition' even when it can be shown to be harmful or wasteful.
Don Ontario - saying a custom is bizarre is not necessarily xenophobic - lots of customs of native and other-than-good-grey-Canadians are bizarre...and a lot of OURS are too.
All that said, I think it's pretty cool of the GG to do what she did. (I'd have gagged on it myself...)
Of course, vegans like myself are often confused by lines some meat-eaters draw between eating certain animals (say, seals as opposed to cows or kittens), or even eating certain parts of animals (say, pig ribs as opposed to seal hearts or puppy anuses, etc.). If you eat meat, may as well go all in, I say! Of course, lines such as this never fail to defy logic:
"Jean took part in a ceremony that honours the life just taken, through the reverential consumption of the heart of the animal ..."
Such an honor, of course, could not be more ironic or dubious...
JGarth: I agree there is a lot of hypocrisy in what constitutes meat, and what doesn't. However its worth pointing out that no human can survive without death of some sort. Even vegans have to kill plants to eat, and the plants they eat survive off the decomposed matter in the soil. Humans survive on death, and without killing something, we die of starvation. Recognizing that fact means that we HAVE to kill to survive, but it also means that we need to recognize that cycle of life in some way. Native hunting techniques usually honour that life by using as much of the animal as they can for survival, and thanking the spirit of the animal for its sustenance in some way, like a ceremonial eating of the heart. But the bottom line is, nothing on this planet lives, except through the death of something else. As humans, we kill to survive, or we die of starvation. The only real question is how we choose to honour the lives that we HAVE to take in order to survive.
But while honoring the death one has caused is an understandable impulse, I don't see how it follows in logical or ethical terms. I would suggest that a more appropriate response to the problem of surviving upon death would be to actually attempt to diminish the death one's own survival necessitates. Similarly, I don't think it follows that just because one cannot avoid causing injury or suffering to EVERYthing one need not be concerned about causing injury or suffering to ANYthing. (i.e., i can't prevent all crime, therefore I shouldn't prevent ANY, etc.).
The only thing to do is to do what you can to mitigate the pain & suffering your own existence causes. & in that equation the suffering of the seal trumps the turnip. (My apologies to the turnips of the world - I celebrate your sacrifice.)
That being said, I completely & absolutely support the right of indigenous peoples to hunt & kill animals for whatever use they want, provided that use does not irreconcilably interfere with other competing interests- such as the interest of the rest of the world to not have the entire seal population destroyed forever.
Emma Peel: I agree that the coalition was a frankenstein monster, and I think it would have failed spectacularly had it been given a chance. But that doesn't change the fact that Harper is ONLY PM by the grace of a majority of MP's, and that coalition represented a majority of MP's. I think the appropriate response from Jean was to force Harper to face the vote, and then call an election if he failed the confidence motion. Nothing in law or convention required her to give the coalition a chance to form a government ... her "default" choice if Harper's government fell was to call another election.
Beth: Thanks for the comment. The reason I wrote this is I think she is getting abused i the media for an act that was not only culturally appropriate at the time, but which would have been seen as a huge insult if she refused.
I love arguing about this stuff, but yours was not an article about this specific subject & I suspect it's boring to others.
So let me just say that I support your premise that GG Jean has been wrongly beaten up about this & she did the right thing in partaking in the feast & the practice itself should be protected & respected as an important part of an important culture.
I am, however, never eating a turnip again.
http://www2.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=967a7bcf-53f6-4963-99af-4be36121ef0b
i think neilpaul makes a great point. we should be able to discuss these events more objectively, but that becomes impossible when you're talking about someone's heritage. we have not tolerated cannibalistic practices in other cultures. my cultural heritage (being a southern, white american) included scalping native americans, selling black people and dogfighting. and i would desperately hope you guys wouldn't stick up for my right to do those kinds of things. there ought to be room to discuss the impact of these acts and limit their destructiveness/cruelty without offending people.
Further, there is an argument to be made that using more of the animal reduces the cruelty of waste. If you kill an animal to skin it and let the rest rot on the ice, you are wasting the death of that animal on a small return. When you use the whole animal after death, nothing is wasted. Sure, the animal is still just as dead, but it also seems clear that using all parts is less cruel than leaving most of the animal out to rot.
Leslie: Thanks for the comments, and I largely agree with what you've said :)
In Newfoundland, the part of the world where the commercial seal hunt is based, there's a market for seal meat and other products besides the fur The bakery around the corner from my house ( one of the best in the city) had Seal Flipper Pie listed as today's lunch special, written in big blue letters on the window. Seal oil is sold in capsule form as an Omega-3 supplement.
I'm a longterm vegetarian, and not a huge fan of the commercial seal hunt, but I think it's been the favorite hobby horse of the animal rights movement for far too long.
I do think the account of the Canadian constitution in this article is misleading. The power of the governor-general is a legal fiction except in rare cases of constitutional crisis. I can only think of one previous case in Canada: when the minority Conservative government of Frank Miller was defeated in Ontario in the eighties, the leaders of the Liberal Party and the NDP went to the lieutenant-governor of Ontario and asked him to appoint the leader of the Liberal Party, David Peterson, premier, with a 2-year pledge of support from the NDP. The lieutenant-governor could have refused and called an election instead. But he agreed.
In this case, the governor-general had only one legitimate reason why she might have refused to do what the Prime Minister asked, and that was if she thought his request was unconstitutional. In my view, it was a low political maneuver, but it was constitutional. This decision does not show, as Batemen seems to be arguing, that the G-G is after all a real power, but rather that her options are very, very limited, even in a once-in-a-lifetime situation of constitutional crisis.
The system did fail, though. The public has seen no explanation from the G-G, and that's bad. She does owe the public an explanation, but it looks as though the traditions surrounding the position prevent her from explaining. And it should not be so shadowy what is constitutional and what it is not.
The GG responds to requests from the legitimate PM of Canada ... in Dec, before the planned vote, Harper had lost his legitimacy by losing the confidence of the house in every way but through an official vote. That he sought to avoid that VERY vote on his legitimacy with the prorogue is the reason Jean should have refused it.
My reaction was that she is fulfilling her role perfectly, and I am a bigger fan of her now because of it.
When I was in school in Toronto back in the mid 60's grade 2 or 3 we had studied "Eskimos" as they were known back then, part of the lesson was how they live and what they hunt for food, clothing and tools.
One thing we did experience was "whale blubber" on it's own or on crackers.
I still have vivid (good) memories of the taste of that .
Like it or not Michaëlle Jean embraced part Canadian culture that many would rather sweep under the carpet ( keep on the reserve)
Three cheers to Her Excellency The Right Honourable
Michaëlle Jean
According to Kathleen Marquardt, founder of Putting People First, an anti-animal rights group, animal rights activists are unsympathetic to the plight of animal dependent cultures. "In Canada," writes Marquardt, "more than half the trappers are Native Americans. Indigenous Survival International reports that the attack on trapping has slashed the income of Native American tribes such as Aleuts, Inuits, and Metis by more than 60 percent, causing a wave of unemployment, alcoholism, and suicide.
"According to the Toronto Star, ‘a severe downturn in trapping has led to increasing suicides among aboriginal people.’ In one small trapping community, twenty of the sixty teenagers attempted suicide, and nine succeeded."
Marquardt quotes Priscilla Feral of Friends of Animals as having voiced outrage in 1987 because the American Aleuts were still permitted to hunt seals for food: "They’re playing politics, knuckling under to the goddamn Aleuts," she said. "The Aleuts don’t need to eat those seals."
When Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops in Northern Canada expressed their "solidarity with the aboriginal peoples of the North who are engaged in a struggle to save fur-trapping as a way of life," the Reverend Andrew Linzey, an Anglican priest and the foremost theologian in the field of animal-human relations, responded:
"The issue is not of course whether a particular way of life depends upon fur-trapping but whether fur-trapping can be justified from the outset...It is not difficult to understand why bishops as ‘pastoral leaders’ should be concerned for the welfare of the peoples they apparently represent. Unemployment, a sense of the hopelessness and suicidal tendencies are matters of concern to pastors especially.
"But the Christian concern demonstrated by these bishops does not appear to extend to fur-bearing animals at all. They clearly don’t see it as part of their responsibility to the Christian gospel to ask whether ways of life which necessarily involve suffering to other forms of life are in fact worth defending in the first place.
"Since it is well known that Christian missionaries all over the world have disrupted the natural life of indigenous peoples, we may fail to see how it is that defending the ‘social and cultural values’ of traditional life is now to be regarded as a self-evident Christian concern. Of course the bishops may reply that they are simply trying to pay back indigenous culture something of what imposed Christian culture once took from them.
"’The anti-fur campaign,’ argue the bishops, ‘violates the dignity of aboriginal peoples and some of their deeply felt cultural and spiritual traditions.’ One cannot help but wonder whether some sense of guilt is being rationalized here for all the previous disruption that Christian missionaries have caused.
"And yet it may be argued that humans have a right to their culture and their way of life," observed Reverend Linzey. "What would we be, it may be questioned, without our land and history and way of life? In general, culture is valuable. But it is also the case that there can be evil cultures, or at least cherished traditions which perpetuate injustice or tyranny.
"The Greeks, for example, despite all their outstanding contributions to learning, did not appear to recognize the immorality of slavery. There can be elements within every culture that are simply not worth defending, not only slavery, but also infanticide and human sacrifice...In short: human traditions and ways of life may be generally worth defending, but not at any cost and certainly not when they depend upon the suffering of thousands, if not millions, of wild animals every year.
"Our hope for the indigenous peoples of the North," concluded Reverend Linzey, "is that they may live in peace with wild animals (as arguably many of them once did) but, if they cannot, perhaps it is better that the animals be left free to live according to their own way of life."
Anybody who has seen footage of the seal "hunt" will not forget seals repeatedly being skinned alive, which is also illegal. Fishery officials stood by and laughed. There are two sides to every story.
I have a deeper issue with your post, and others defending the opponents of animal use. I find it pretty insulting that we are using our cultural values to judge Inuit culture. By THEIR standars, our use of land and animals is pathetic and immoral. Factory farming, lack of natural planting methods, overuse of chemical pesticides, and many others features of our life are in direct contrast with their core beliefs on manageable land use. What gives US the right to judge their culture on our standards, when we don't accept their judgement of our culture on their standards.
Regardless, thanks for the comment. These issues never get resolved if people refuse to discuss them openly and honestly.
But as someone that was served seal meat way too often in my tender years and had to remain at the table til i finished an adequate portion of it - i'd like to point out that every part i tasted was beyond horrible. Even as a 7 yr old, just the sight of it would have me begging for cows liver and spinach instead.
True, i never ate any part of it raw. Perhaps this would have made it a bit more palatable
As for the nature of the hunt, well, it's true that sometimes there is excessive abuse and cruelty. Hey, i know first hand that there are bad people in this part of the world but then i suspect that folks of this type can be found all over the globe.
And as for seal flipper pie, trust me..you do NOT want to try this. The person who invented this recipe obviously had a sick sense of humor and likely only served it up to people that wronged him/her.
Still i'm guessing that there are at least two of them in my parents fridge as i write this
It is sad that a culture that shows true reverence for animals and their animal spirits faces such opposition, however this is the ruthless world of politics were talking about.
I sure that as a former journalist, Michaelle remembers that the 'Queen' has a mixed history with these folk as at one point, her former representatives committed genocide against them. Maybe the heart can heal after all.
Truly, what is the difference of seal from sushi - other that the seal is not becoming an endangered species compared to Tuna? As mentioned before, tuna don't look as cute and cuddly as baby seals.
The environmental aspect of not eating meat to save the planet is interesting, however if we all lived like the Inuit, we wouldn't be in the predicament that our planet is now in. And they are the people most affected by our disregard for the Earth. Another aspect of this issue is that if we didn't eat meat, our brain mass would not have evolved to its current state.
I recently found out from a Cree Elder that when they enter a certain advanced stage of their practice, they must stop hunting and can no longer kill animals out of reverence for the life force and I assume, to be better attuned to it (they can however trade services etc. for meat). Interesting how this is similar to Buddhist practices.
Unjustifiable cruelty to animals, I have a problem with - like sickos who torture dogs or like the alleged instances of seals being skinned while conscious. But seals being shot or clubbed to death for a commercial hunt - I don't care. Rats being trapped with lethal snap traps - I don't care. Chickens being raised in small cages so that they are "stressed" - I don't care. These don't seem to be commonly, explicitly stated positions, but they do seem to be common positions, since most people are happy to buy meat produced in this way. Then again, maybe most such people are just in denial or don't think about where their meat comes from.
I'm not saying everything is OK as it is. I recognize some of the dangers of "factory farming" and some of the benefits of "free range" animals. I grew up in rural southern Ontario, and all the cows I saw were roaming around open pastures eating grass - for a long time I assumed that all farm animals were raised like that.
I think that local humane societies and SPCAs to good work.
I think that Vasu Murti's post sums up the opposite view well. The quoted Reverend remarks disapprovingly that "the Christian concern demonstrated by these bishops does not appear to extend to fur-bearing animals at all" and says that "perhaps it is better that the animals be left free to live according to their own way of life." I'm not belittling these claims, but I think that these positions constitute a fundamentally different basis for viewing the world.
How could Vasu or the quoted reverend rationally convince me that I should extend the same moral concerns to "fur-bearing animals" as I do to humans, or that animals have a "way of life" in the same sense that human cultures do? Likewise, how could I rationally convince them that they do not?
Now, I don't actually want to convince anyone here of that, and I'm certainly not interested in attempts to convince me, on this post's comments, either. My point is more that arguing about PETA's positions is like arguing about abortion: what do rational points about things like choice, right to privacy, misogyny and oppression matter? If you believe that the tiniest, undifferentiated zygote is a person with inherent, inalienable human rights, those other points are irrelevant.
I'm not trying to mischaracterize all opposition to the commerical seal hunt as being like PETA's or the quoted Reverend. Many people might agree with me in principal, but think the seal hunt should be banned for other reasons. Myself, I would not want to see it all banned because of some instances of excessive cruelty. I think better enforcement of laws and regulations is called for, if such instances are actually more than a few isolated cases.
Don: More very thoughtful comments ... thank you :)