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Marine mammal protection will be better served by redirecting 

 resources from extensive permitting of trivial research takes to 

 stock assessment and conservation plans with some enforcement 

 power. 



The Marine Mammal Protection Act must be updated from regu- 

 lating the lethal takes of the whaling era to an era where a broad 

 array of unintentional impacts threaten marine mammals and the 

 ecosystems upon which they depend. Thank you. 



[Statement of Dr. Peter Tyack can be found at the end of the 

 hearing.] 



Mr. Studds. Thank you very much. Needless to say, Dr. Foster, 

 we are shocked. Shocked. I assume — I have to assume — it is law- 

 yers in your midst that are responsible for this activity. I, myself, 

 have spoken personally with the whales referred to by Dr. Tyack, 

 and they are in full concurrence. And as a matter of fact, they have 

 suggested we put the lawyers out there to examine who is 

 harassing whom. Anyway, the purpose of our switch has occurred 

 and it is a pleasure now to recognize Mr. Caleb Pungowiyi, Presi- 

 dent of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. Mr. Pungowiyi. 



STATEMENT OF CALEB PUNGOWIYI, PRESIDENT, INUIT 

 CIRCUMPOLAR CONFERENCE 



Mr. Pungowiyi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the 

 Committee and ladies and gentlemen. My name is Caleb 

 Pungowiyi. I am president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, an 

 international organization representing the Inuits of Canada and 

 Greenland, Alaska and Russia. 



My testimony today is on behalf of Alaska natives and our broth- 

 ers in Russia, Canada and Greenland. The encroachment of civili- 

 zation has not been kind to our people. From the days of the Rus- 

 sian fur trade, the Yankee whalers and the Gold Rush days, we 

 have suffered tremendous social injustices and hardship. Many of 

 our people have died from starvation, mistreatment and diseases. 



My mother's family were the sole survivors from the village of 

 350 people who died of mass starvation. It occurred on St. Law- 

 rence Island in the late 1880's. I remember my grandmother telling 

 us of leaving the bodies where they lay because they were too weak 

 to give them proper burial, and the reason I bring this up is be- 

 cause the exploitation of resources and the hardship it caused our 

 people is just in recent history. 



Arid we have no intention of seeing the marine mammals deci- 

 mated in a way that it hurts our people. Like the Canadian people, 

 we have managed our resources and our use of marine mammals 

 through our own cultural rules. And these rules have been success- 

 ful for hundreds of years. And we continue to abide by them today. 



I believe that the exemption in the Marine Mammal Act is the 

 Congress's recognition of the strength and value of native cultural 

 management of marine mammals. 



Since the enactment of the Marine Mammal Act, we have made 

 the protection of the native exemption our priority. The exemption 

 is not without its fault and there is probably no other law or policy 

 in the modern world that restricts the economic activity of a group 

 of people to handmade items and also restricts the sale of products 

 only to its own people. 



