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OK ZULO, I’ll take issue with your statement.

Just because millions of people live in cities & drive to the store to buy food raised and killed by someone else, does not mean that all people live that way and should not be forced to. The Eskimo and Alaskan native population as well as the Russian coastal populations were there LONG before a safeway was ever built in your city and they NEED these whales as their livelihood and food. They can not travel thousands of miles to a store. There are hundreds of thousands of people who still live off the land. Hunting whales is not just to slaughter them for sport. They use every square inch, from stomach to bone for clothing, tools, shelter and food.

Stop living in your city-dwelling bubble of thinking and stop dictating to subsistence populations how they should live.

“The Eskimo and Alaskan native population as well as the Russian coastal populations were there LONG before a safeway was ever built in your city”

Agreed. But I don’t live in a city.

“and they NEED these whales as their livelihood and food.”

Sorry. I disagree. These people hunt whales as they consider it part of their culture. While the taking of whales in this fashion is far less damaging than by commercial whalers, its time for them to change their culture. Go back far enough and my ancestors in Europe took heads as trophies, and as much as the idea intrigues me when dealing with liberals, times change as people change. I never head of an Innuit who starved to death recently because he couldn’t harvest a whale.

“They can not travel thousands of miles to a store.”
??????????

So what? Again, I never heard of whales being a necessary ingredient today in the survival of any aboriginal people. Let them eat carabou or walrus or seal.

” There are hundreds of thousands of people who still live off the land. “

Yes. So do I. But I do because I like it, not because I’ll starve to death if I can’t get it.

“Hunting whales is not just to slaughter them for sport. They use every square inch, from stomach to bone for clothing, tools, shelter and food.”

I think you are conflating the past with the present.

“Stop living in your city-dwelling bubble of thinking and stop dictating to subsistence populations how they should live.”

I’ll remember that in the fall when I take my next buck.

My adopted son Vanya is from those "indigenous populations" you're talking about: he's a Koryak from Kamchatka RFE. It is not the "indigenous" people who are hunting the whales to extinction. It's Japanese "scientific" whalers-- scientific my asterisk --- and it's not a staple. A recent poll showed that 4% of the Japanese ate it "occasionally," and another 9% ate it "very rarely" --- it's an expensive luxury food.

Stupid whalers.

The Eskimo and native population here in Alaska no longer "need" these whales as their livelihood and food. They are the epitome of the welfare state. Thanks to welfare and other government handouts, a simple phone call or Internet order can have a shipment from Sams club or Costco in Anchorage to any village in Alaska in three days. Others take a (government subsidized) airplane ride to town for some shopping.

The subsistance "lifestyle" is a joke. Most native "whale Hunting" is done with modern aluminum boats, outboard motors, and modern hunting rifles. The dead whales are dragged from the ocean with front end loaders. The meat is distributed afterwards to the residents and the consumption is mostly ceremonial.