Governor General Michaelle Jean was criticized by a European animal rights group Tuesday but praised by others after she sliced off and ate a raw piece of a seal’s heart to show solidarity with sealers devastated by a planned European ban on seal product imports.
Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada’s national Inuit organization, “applauds” Jean for her public support of traditional Inuit culture. ”Hunting and eating a seal is not a political act, nor is it ‘bizarre’ or ‘disgusting’ as the anti-sealing lobby have commented,” she said. “To us, this kind gesture is an acknowledgment by the Governor General of our culture and our dependence upon our wildlife as an important resource for our communities today.”
Jean was accused of continuing the Canadian government’s tactic of using the popularity of the Inuit in Europe to fight the ban, while ignoring the ban legislation’s exemption for traditional, subsistence sealing.
“I think it’s another sad and desperate attempt by the Canadian government to blur the distinction between the seal hunts,” Barbara Slee, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, told Canwest News Service. “We do not oppose subsistence hunts.”
But a sealers’ rights activist said the Europeans are misleading the world when they say their ban, directed principally at the commercial hunt by Newfoundland and Quebec sealers, protects the Inuit by leaving the door open for their products.
“We have said for many years that the supposed ‘exemption’ is of no use as the price of seal skin has already dropped dramatically and there is no one buying the sealskin anymore because of the European Parliament,” Aaju Peter, of Iqaluit, wrote in an e-mail to Canwest. The exemption was put there to make the European Parliamentarians and the animal rights groups feel good about themselves that this ban will not affect the Inuit seal hunt. Well, it has already affected us and will continue to affect us, (but) not in the way that EU and the animal rights groups are portraying.”
Peter said the European animal rights groups “have demonstrated that they know absolutely nothing of Inuit culture, nor do they have any idea about our stance on the ‘exemption’.” He also praised Jean for her gesture Monday. ”Both she and the Inuit are showing great respect for the animal and great respect for each other in the sharing and accepting of this seal that has offered itself to the hunter.”
Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, who is from Nunavut, also praised Jean. ”I’m very happy that she ate the seal to promote the importance of that diet to Aboriginal people,” Aglukkaq told reporters in Ottawa. ”Everything in the seal is eaten. There’s not a thing wasted,” the minister explained. “Whether it’s the heart or the intestines or the meat or the fat, everything is eaten.”
The European Union ban was endorsed in a vote earlier this month and expected to take effect in the spring or early summer of 2010.
Jean tasted the seal meat at the start of her tour of the Canadian North while attending a community feast at Rankin Inlet, where Arctic char, raw caribou and raw seal were served. Earlier Monday, according to spokeswoman Marthe Blouin, she visited the Maani Ulujuk High School, asking the students: “What do you want people in the south to know about you?” One student responded: “The seal is our life, the seal is our way of life,” Blouin said.
Both Slee and a spokesman for European parliamentarian Arlene McCarthy, chairwoman of the committee that drafted the ban legislation, said Canada’s ongoing lobbying and public relations efforts are futile. ”We have listened carefully to the views of representatives of indigenous groups,” said McCarthy spokesman Alex Stringer. ”We’re of the view that the law has been finalized, the parliament has adopted its final position on it, and it’s going ahead.”
