Inuit Students To Hold Sealskin “Fashion Show”
INUIT STUDENTS TO HOLD SEALSKIN “FASHION SHOW” at ANTI-SEAL HUNT DEMO
A group of Inuit from Nunavut will be putting on a counter demonstration at Thursday’s anti-seal hunt protest on Parliament Hill.
The Inuit, all students in the Nunavut Sivuniksavut college program based in Ottawa, will model a variety of contemporary sealskin clothes to illustrate the importance that seal hunting still has to the Inuit culture and economy.
The students will be there because European attempts to reduce the European market for seal pelts in order to protest the East Coast seal hunt have hurt Inuit in the past, and will do so again if successful.
Inuit hunt a different kind of seal than East Coast Sealers, and hunt them one at a time. The money earned from the sale of pelts plays an important role in keeping alive the traditional hunting economy that remains central to Inuit culture.
The students will perform traditional Inuit drumming and songs as part of their appearance.
The fashion show will take place beside the Flame on Parliament Hill at
12:15 pm, Thursday, March 15th
For more information, contact
Murray Angus (613) 244-4937 ext. 16 or at ns@magma.ca
Yikes. Some of those anti seal hunt protesters are nuts. I hope our friends from NS are wearing their Kevlar Kamiks.
Interesting approach where the Inuit try to distinguish themselves from the East Coast sealers. I wish them well, but I don’t think that it will make much difference.
The idea that “Seal hunt = Evil” has become very firmly embedded in the media, and it is an easy target for legislators to show that they are “doing something” about the environment.
The Inuit may want to take a page from the RKBA organizations in the USA, who have fought gun bans successfully by not allowing themselves to be divided into hunters, competition shooters, collectors, and defensive firearm owners. There have been many attempts to get hunting organizations to say “Ban the other guys’ stuff, but leave us alone” and most of these have been rebuffed, allowing American firearms owners to make gains in RKBA protections in recent years. “We must all hang together or we shall surely hang separately.”
It seems like the Inuit here are pursuing a strategy similar to “Fair Trade Coffee” where premium prices are charged for a luxury in order to provide increased revenues to coffee growers and workers. I’m not sure how successful that will be, since sealskin carries with it a very bloody set of imagery that has to be overcome–and at the end of the day, I assume that there is nothing to distinguish Inuit sealskin from East-coast sealskin other than a label.
Personally, I’d go the RKBA route and combat the negative imagery of all seal hunts–possibly even set up a national organization that acts to properly market seal hunting against the negative stereotypes perpetuated by the champaigne animal-rights set. Making all seal hunting acceptable in the eyes of the consumer will pay bigger dividends that trying to say “ban their stuff, but leave ours alone.”
There is, in fact, such an organization - the Fur Council of Canada. Since the first wave of Eurogreen anti fur campaign they’ve been the focal point for both the Aboriginal organizations, the Governments of Newfoundland and the NWT, and the retail sector. They’re very good, and they’ve had some big bucks behind them (including DFAIT, and some pretty heavy private sector hitters ). Unfortunately, there is simply NO message as visceral or powerful as the ones that the anti-fur lobby can summon up. And those guys are nuts.
The issue you raise has been and is being hotly debated in Inuit political circles. The problem is, as SL points out, the Nunavut and Labrador hunts are two VERY different hunts. The Nunavut hunt has always been about subsistence: the real point is the seal as food, but the pelts pay the cost of the hunt. I suspect many Inuit are not pleased at the mass commercial harvests in Labrador and Newfoundland, and are reluctant to associate themselves with it. But you may be right - I think it’s a little naive to think they can successfully distance themselves in the eyes of the earnest German university students demonstrating in Belgium in “baby seal” costumes.
Thanks for the information Balb. I’m not up on the fur industry in Canada.
Here’s an interesting resource by an interesting guy, Alan Hercovici, former ED of the Fur Council. He did an excellent series on Ideas about the Animal Rights movement a few years back: this book pretty much sums up his main arguments.
Fur is murder. Soft, luxurious murder.
I support the Inuit students on this issue, and I think it’s an important part of cultural preservation.
“Fur is murder.”
Nope. “Murder”, in the English language, refers to the willful killing of one human being by another. Seals are not human beings, any more than cows, squid, or tomatoes. You’re inventing a new definition for propaganda purposes, rather in the way American politicians are fond of reinventingthe word “war”.
Your adaptation doesn’t have quite the flow of its original cousin, “Meat is Murder”, used by militant PETA folks to try to put people off their dinners.
[...] via Stageleft [...]
This is interesting, and shows what the Inuit are up against…
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070315/seal_ban_070315/20070315?hub=TopStories
“The European Commission will be sending an inspection mission to a seal hunt in Canada, it announced Thursday, after dismissing calls for an EU-wide ban on the import of seal products.
Under pressure from the European Parliament, which demands an immediate moratorium on seal products, the commission also ordered a study to assess the welfare of seals.
Many EU legislators have blasted what they see as inhumane hunting tactics used to kill seal pups for their skins.
However, the European Commission said Thursday “there is no scientific evidence” of serious damage as a result of seal hunting.
“There must be a proper impact study before any action can be taken,” EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told the European Parliament.
“If it is established seals are hunted in an inhuman way, a ban on export and the marketing of seal products will be considered.””
Don’t those protesters know the strength and utility of genuine Saskatchewan Seal Skin bindings? How can anyone be against that?