Few good things come out of the SW lately. This is one of the few:

Since Native Americans claim a right that makes sensitive people squeamish, I don’t think it’s too much to ask them to claim it in a picturesque manner. For example, it seems to me that a hollowed-out canoe should be involved any time an Indian kills a whale. Based on designs that go back through the generations and all that. Drums booming slowly in the background would also help, as would a chanting medicine person of some type to get the whole myth-invoking, pipe-toking deal on the road.

I know that this latest whale incident had nothing to do with any legitimate hunting, and the Makah tribal leaders have condemned it and so forth. But the last time there was a legitimate hunt, didn’t they use a shotgun? Guy in the back of the canoe, holding it across his legs? And now a machine gun, so what next? If it’s efficiency over tradition they want, why not a huge conveyor belt that carts the whale carcasses from the ocean into factories on the shore? Then they could carve them up and package the whales for mass consumption. Indian whaling should not be allowed to resemble a soulless and highly profitable enterprise like America’s meat industry.