Several members of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians (CTSI) recently shared their perspective about harvesting a humpback whale last November. The event was to establish the mammal’s cultural and historical importance to coastal Natives.
For nearly two hours on June 6, three tribal members and one non-Native who worked for the CTSI’s natural resources department spoke to 165 people at the Amanda Trail site in Yachats.
Last fall, a 28-foot long, 10-ton juvenile humpback washed ashore nearby, trapped in crab pot line. Many people gathered to try to push it back into the ocean, and formed bucket chains to keep it doused in seawater, but ultimately officials with NOAA determined the mammal had to be euthanized.
“It was tragic for many people, but for us, it was a blessing,” said CTSI member Joshua Rilatos. He and roughly 20 others from the tribe arrived on Nov. 18 to remove parts of the whale, working alongside members of a necropsy team from Oregon State University who were removing samples for analysis.
Siletz people – like many coastal Natives – often harvested stranded whales for food, oil and materials for regalia. These efforts largely stopped during colonization, which were followed by federal termination policies and a 1980 consent decree that created the Siletz reservation but diminished their subsistence rights. Just last year, the Siletz and allies on Capitol Hill managed to completely repeal the consent decree, which many critics say sprang from a dated and biased view of tribal sovereignty.
Rilatos’ mother, Lisa Norton, is the chief administrative officer for the CTSI. She remembered the rush to get a special permit from NOAA once the tribe agreed to harvest the whale, which was no small task given there was a federal government shutdown underway at the time.
“Our CEO was out, so I was in charge,” Norton said. The whole incident had unfolded just before the CTSI’s 48th annual restoration powwow was being held in Lincoln City, roughly 50 miles away from the whale. “I had to scramble within hours to get the permit.”
Dylan Gorman, a tribal employee, explained that whales are a protected species. Fortunately, one of his contacts at the Oregon Coast Aquarium had the personal phone number of the NOAA official who’d process the permit. “We called after hours, she worked out the permit, and sent it back. It was good to go.”
Rilatos talked of carving the baleen and blubber from the whale, much like his ancestors did before colonization. Fellow tribal member Todd Logan had secured four specialty knives to properly remove the material, which helped them avoid using power tools.
“This happened because the Creator made it happen,” said Logan. “Through this tragedy, I asked: How do I respect this creature? I never thought I’d get to do this in a million years. It was a very emotional time.”
“A one-foot by one-foot chunk of blubber was 40 to 50 pounds,” Rilatos said to the crowd, describing the often excruciating work involved the night of Nov. 18. With the night and tide encroaching, they hurriedly finished burying the remnants in the sand and moved the carcass off the beach with help from Tru-North Construction, a local contractor.
Controversy surrounding the harvest followed the whale’s euthanization. Some online commenters made racist remarks or crude generalizations about Native people.
“‘This is what happens when you give Indians casino money,’” Rilatos recalled seeing in some comment threads on social media posts. Other comments said members of the tribe “didn’t even look like Indians” or were demonstrating “Red privilege.”
Logan said many of the online attacks isolated moments from the entire day’s harvesting, shedding context or framing it in ways to provoke outrage. “Social media takes a moment and does its thing.”
Everyone in the group agreed it was best to not engage trolls, but to keep practicing one’s own traditions and truth. But Norton said when some people began asking why the Siletz didn’t practice whale harvesting “until that day,” she pointed out the decades of oppression, federal termination, and restrictions placed on the Siletz and other Native people that kept them from practicing their ways.
“This is why we haven’t done it for a while,” she said, as people in the crowd began to applaud. “I will not apologize.”
Norton added that seeing her son learn a time-honored tradition and then pass that knowledge on to other tribal members through the night was a powerful thing to witness. Rilatos told KLCC that he never knew until that moment how much it touched his mother.
“It makes me feel good, it makes me feel loved,” he said.
Moments of joy were expressed during the harvesting, but Norton and others emphasized that this was not making light of the whale’s death. It was a celebratory event, but also done with the offering of tobacco and prayer before any knives touched the whale.
After the talk and a question-and-answer session, the crowd gave the CTSI group a standing ovation. Rilatos said he was pleased that the event was so well-received.
“It was a little nerve-wracking at first because you never know what to expect from the community, especially because of social media and just the perceptions people have,” Rilatos said. “But people here have got a pretty good understanding of what it was like for us, and the hard work and the respect and love that we had for the animal.”
Among those in the audience was Doug Barrett, chief of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians. He said his tribe recently had a dead whale wash up on a nearby beach as well.
“I did my best with my knives,” he said. “I’d like to use the oil to coat our canoes.”
Barrett added that he’d like to consult with the Siletz and also the Makah Tribe of Washington state, on how to best remove and keep materials from whales. The Makah are one of the few tribes allowed to hunt whales, though they’ve not carried out one with federal permission since 1999.
Joanne Kittle is co-chair of the conservation nonprofit View the Future, which sponsored the event. She was pleased with the turnout, and as the crowd began to thin, said she felt immense gratitude from those who came to hear the Siletz share their accounts.
“Their truth, in their own words,” Kittle said, smiling. “I’m not surprised 165 people came.”
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