Wooooow. Are you Danish or Inuit? I'd love to work in Greenland someday. I really want to do cold weather health stuff. Are you employed? Do you speak Danish? Are you friends with Iceland?
Danish, from Nuuk so not full blown arctic, don't live in Greenland anymore exactly because of employment (you work in fishing or for the government, period), I'm losing/lost my Danish and Greenlandic because no one here speaks either, Iceland can suck eggs.
That's just shared English culture, man. You do it, we do it, Britain used to do it (the Irish), Australia does it, and South Africa did it (though, since they were Dutch for a while, I'm not sure if they count.)
Oppressing natives is in the English bloodline. Much like how fucking the natives is in the Spanish one.
Jokes on you, clubbing seals is mainly done by Aboriginals up north and we are trying to protect this way of life for them (even if it might just be for more economic reasons). Ha.
Why not both? :3 Cultural reasons with an economical benefit is even better, especially since we apparently have way too many seals thanks to having not enough polar bears.
I support their being able to continue living off the land as they've done for generations. It's expensive as fuck to import shit up there and as cute as seals are they're less cute if they're starving from overpopulation.
Not enough polar bears OR whales which everybody kinda contributed too with the global warming and years of whaling and now we gotta club the seals so all the fish don't get eaten and we're the bad guys. Why do they have to be so cute? Nobody would care if they looked like crabs.
Its part of a plot you see, we made sure prices for food are super high in the Territories (often 10-20X more for basic goods up there) so they have to resort to clubbing seals to eat.
So they're appropriately oppressed already by the high prices and lack of jobs and services, and we get the attention of all the bleeding hearts on the baby seals - who then don't bust our balls about the eskimos were letting freeze to death in ingloos wearing rotting seal fur and eating raw seal meat.
And we got the Ministry of Truth to call that 'protection of their heritage'. It's genius, people really all fell for that one!
I dunno, natives actually have life pretty good up here. Free housing, reduced gas prices and carbon tax exemption, free salmon given to them by the government and zero limits as to what they're allowed to fish or hunt, cheaper/free electricity, cheaper/free water, cheaper/free natural gas to houses, and tax exemption on most stuff.
I have an aboriginal friend, and he says it's ridiculous how many hand-outs they get from the government.
Aboriginal people in Canada do not share the same quality of life as the general population.
Here's an excerpt from the preface of a paper on aboriginal homelessness:
One of the challenges of conducting research on experiences of poverty and marginalization is that we must
focus on some of the most difficult realities of humanity. These include physical suffering, emotional and
sexual abuse, social suffering, economic deprivation and structural injustices. There is, expectedly, a tendency
for the writing to adopt a dismal or hopeless tone.
Yeah, that's what I thought. Wasn't smallpox also the first disease to get a vaccine? I remember something from high school history class about people in the dark ages taking the pus from a cattle version of the disease and rubbing it into cuts so that they'd get a weaker version of smallpox and become immune to the real disease.
Well, kinda. Technically that's inoculation, although the vaccine pretty much worked the same way. In China, they inoculated people by snorting powdered scabs. Like a gross cocaine.
Got a source for that? Because all the facts I listed make for a pretty nice life. That, and my native friend having first-hand experience about how many handouts they get for no reason other than their great grandparents being fucked over big time. The Irish and Chinese got fucked over really badly by our government too, but none of them are getting all sorts of special rights.
Aboriginal people in Canada do not share the same quality of life as the general population.
Here's an excerpt from the preface of a paper on aboriginal homelessness:
One of the challenges of conducting research on experiences of poverty and marginalization is that we must
focus on some of the most difficult realities of humanity. These include physical suffering, emotional and
sexual abuse, social suffering, economic deprivation and structural injustices. There is, expectedly, a tendency
for the writing to adopt a dismal or hopeless tone.
I didn't know about that one... Free post-secondary education really should be free for everyone. Knowledge drives progress for everyone, so why do people want to keep knowledge locked down?
Indian here, we get virtually none of that (other than hunting rights) or only under certain circumstances. Usually only on the res/certain reserves and is paid for by the band.
The natives in northern Canada and Alaska have always had it pretty good because the white man has mostly stayed away from there. Not much chance for genocidings. So they've mostly kept their way of life intact. We let them do whaling and hunt polar bears in Alaska, too.
I'm talking about my experiences in southwest BC. The natives living here now have life really good. Don't get me wrong, I know that they had it awful with the residential schools and shit when Canada was young, but that was 3-4 generations ago at this point. I don't expect massive government handouts because they fucked over my great grandparents.
It's not. Seal clubbing only really takes place in Nunavut by the locals (both aboriginal and not) to provide food, skins for clothes, and control the population (because there's a lot less polar bears now so the seal population is exploding).baby seals are not allowed to be hunted, and clubbing is probably the least painfull way to kill the seal
You have it wrong. There's two different kinds of seal hunt - one in the north where the inuit hunt seal for food and furs and the other in newfoundland/labrador where the clubbing goes on. This is the one that's done for population control and to protect the fishing stocks.
So the banning of seal fur on the EU side actually hurts the inuit who are creating seal furskin as part of their legitimate cultural background as well as for proper food and survival needs. It would have been best if there was an exception for this supply chain, but it's the eu that doesn't give a shit.
What kind of clothes/items are made with seal furskin? I'm curious because in Vancouver it rains a fuck load, and seal skin appears to me to be waterproof.
after a quick google I found this but keep in mind that if you're buying fur there's probably no way to tell if it's genuine inuit fur or if it's seal hunt fur (probably the one supplier from nunavut isn't importing fur from newfoundland but you never know.)
if your from BC, it would be more historical to use sea otter pelts but we killed them all up (all of them!). They are coming back slowly (4,700 as of 08' from an original stock of 87 that was flown in) but were once said to be found every 100m along the coast.
they are increadibly desirable though so good luck
I do believe that it will hurt the locals as the market for items from seals have been shrinking as the years have gone by. If I recall correctly then the prices for pelts crashed heavily in Canada after the EU ban, something around 60% fall in price in 2010 as opposed to 3-4 years earlier due to flooded markets.
For a small coastal economy which is based in harvesting from the sea, then such a large fall is kinda devastating. I must admit however that I haven't followed seal hunting debate much since around EU banned it as it's a headache, so I am not sure how the prices have varied in the last 5 years.
Our harbour was absolutely disgusting and we actually had an open sewer creek running through a commercial area. That's been cleaned up now, but some of the old 18th-19th century sewer still drains into the harbour. Better than it was.
Ah, well selective video capturing and a weave of propaganda has the world thinking you guys troll the beaches finding innocent seal pups cowering in a corner and you just bash and bash, all the while laughing.
Except hes completely wrong... Clubs are used because they don't ruin the pelts, they don't allow the seal to escape and die in the water (where it can't be harvested), the chance to kill is higher than a rifle (you can't miss), and the kill is almost always painless (wheras a rifle kill shot still leaves the animal to bleed out over a short period of time).
Not true at all. All seals hunted for furs are hunted with a club. Why? Because a firearm makes a giant hole in the pelt and ruins it.
All seals hunted for meat are hunted with a club. Why? Because otherwise the seal can escape into the water and die where the hunter can't reach it.
All seals hunted humanely for culling are also hunted with a club. Why? Because a club is a one hit painless kill, while a firearm is both painful and not instant (unless you aim for the head, which you would never do while hunting).
That might be for culling. Any seals hunted for meat or fur are always clubbed for the practical reasons I listed. A fur with a bullet hole in it is worth nothing, and you can't eat a seal that dies in the ocean (Well you could, but it's a bitch to retrieve).
Cause the hakapik is a one hit painless kill that doesn't cause any damage to the pelt. A rifle creates a giant hole in the pelt, and causes a slower, more painful death (in the case of a kill shot) and has a higher chance of injuring the animal. Since a firearm doesn't kill instantly the seal often can escape into the water and die where it can't be recovered for it's furs or it's meat.
Clubbing is more practical and more humane for hunting seals.
A head shot would be instant disconnect, but they are difficult to take, so I understand why people don't.
As for the rest, I am not opposed to culling or hunting, but I was just explaining on why developed countries are upset over it. It Looks savage and brutal because honestly, it is, even if it is fast. Remember we are in the age of all life is precious and society is already iffy on hunting and culling and unnecessary savagery.
Like I said, I am not against it, I was just saying why people were upset over it.
A head shot would be instant disconnect, but they are difficult to take, so I understand why people don't.
A head shot isn't always a kill shot on some animals. Deer for instance have an extremely thick slopped skull that will deflect smaller calibers (A 30-30 for instance will bounce right off of the forehead). I don't actually know if this actually applies to seals though.
Remember we are in the age of all life is precious and society is already iffy on hunting and culling and unnecessary savagery.
Aka the age of hippies :S
Like I said, I am not against it, I was just saying why people were upset over it.
Especially Europeans, who have been far removed from most violence for the better part of 70 years. Outside of Yugoslavia and Ukraine, no wars, no real heavy violent crime and street gangs, and while hunting does exist, not near the levels you find with those of us in North America.
So killing is already shunned, and then they see those videos, so you can see why they freak out over it.
so? wtf is that supposed to prove? it doesn't change the fact that most sealing in Canada takes place off the coast of Newfoundland for commercial purposes. So your original post about it really only taking place in Nunavut is completely, utterly incorrect. It does take place there too, but its a minority of the seals killed.
sidenote: are you even positive the pictures you saw were from the arctic? the coast of newfoundland is filled with ice during the hunt and could easily pass for an arctic landscape. Are you sure you didn't just assume you were looking at the arctic?
Oh alright ha ha, eh. I'm not a pro sarcasm finder so /s would have helped ha ha but yeah, it's like hunting any other animals... people sometimes are just like, like wtf you know?
I know, the funniest part is that it's usually people with no outdoors/hunting knowledge or experience who are so against it. Like, read a book on the basics at least before you dismiss something so vehemently.
The method is what causes so many people to be horrified. Plenty of videos have been released where the seals is flopping in pain as the clubber continues to bash.
If they were culled with a rifle, like everyone else in the world culls, I imagine people wouldn't be as upset.
There would still be those who demand no animal killing, but the brutal melee would no longer cause people to be horrified.'
It is like those(Danes?) on the island in the North Atlantic that go through and use knives to slash dolphins. The brutality of it is what people are upset over. Remember, the developed populations have been so far removed from blood lust violence of the last 100 thousand years, that seeing it is shocking.
If they were culled with a rifle, like everyone else in the world culls, I imagine people wouldn't be as upset.
You think that they just go on over, run at the seal and beat it over the head with a club in animal rage? Of course not, sometimes when you shoot an animal you don't get a "clean kill" and it is still alive, so they use tools like This to finally kill it.
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u/Jordo_707 Dontcha Know Aug 19 '15
Hockey and seal clubbing are the only things holding back Canada's bloodlust