578 



[The following is excerpted from an ai^ticle written by Georg Gerster and 

 distributed by The Toronto Telegram News Service] 



The Bering Sea Massacre 



The sad, almost accursing look in its eyes gives the Ue to its martial tusks and 

 scrub moustache. The walrus is in fact an uncommonly peaceable animal. 



It would be difficult to exaggerate tlie image of phlegmatic satisfaction and 

 finny togetherness created by a group of these sleepy giants on an iceberg. 



And seen against such a peaceful backdrop the massacre of the walrus being 

 carried out by American Eskimos in Alaska is all the more abhorrent. In their 

 sealskin boats, with motors switched off, they coast noiselessly to a point just a 

 few yards away from a herd and shoot indiscriminately into the massed bodies 

 until the magazines of their rifles are empty. While the remainder flee panic- 

 stricken into the water, a few animals lie helplessly on the ice bleeding to death, 

 staining the surrounding water red. Bult no effort is made to pursue and harpoon 



the dying animals. . ^,, . x, 



A few hundred yards further another herd of walrus sits on another iceberg, 

 not vet frightened by the noise of the shooting. 



This was the view I had, on a brilliant May day in tlie Bering Sea in full view 

 of the snowy mountains of Siberia's Chukchen Peninsula, of what is ^till 

 euphemistically termed a "walrus hunt" in official language. I make no accusa- 

 tions against the crew of the boat in w^hich I rode ; its three Eskimos behaved 

 like good, responsible hunters. But what I saw from my vantage point in their 

 boat was a pure slaughter which does no honor to the land which ijermits it. 



The Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) migrates with the periph- 

 ery of the ice-floe which advances and recedes in the course of the seasons. 

 The herds ride on floating icebergs which pass through the Bering Strait in 

 May and June heading for the Arctic Ocean. A few thousand bulls separate 

 themselves from the herds and, instead of travelling northward with the cows, 

 calves and other bulls, remain in some sheltered bays in southern Alaska, spend- 

 ing the warm season there and, in their temporarily hairless condition, showing 

 a pinkish sunburn like that of inexperienced summer vacationers. 



In October and November, swinmiing in front of the returning icefloe, the 

 herds drift back through the Bering Strait to their breeding grounds. The Eskimo 

 settlements on the islands of the Bering Sea, in and around the Bering Strait and 

 a few Eskimo villages on the Alaska coast of the Arctic Ocean, taken advantage of 

 their proximity to the migratory path of the walrus particularly in the spring- 

 time. In the autumn, however, stormy weather and tricky ice conditions protect 

 the animals from ttie hunters. 



The walrus has always provided the traditional economic foundation for these 

 Eskimo communities. It yielded meat for immediate consumption and dried meat 

 for the winter, its hide was used for the exterior of the unmiak boat and for 

 ceremonial drums, its stomach provided a long-lasting knapsack, its intestines 

 took the place of glass in the windows of Eskimo dwellings and were also worked 

 into waterproof rain garments, while the ivory of the walrus tusk served as the 

 raw material for household utensils, hunting tools, jewelry, toys and even wea- 

 pons of war. 



Official terminology still stubbornly holds fast to the phrase "subsistence hunt- 

 ing," while the jwwerful Eskimo pressure groups operating in Washington profit 

 from the bad conscience which white Americans have developed vis-a-vis the 

 Indian population (but need not feel with regard to the Eskimos). Oi>erating with 

 the fiction of tlie "subsistence hunts," the Eskimo lobby has created a dual stand- 

 ard : A white man who shoots a duck off-season winds up in jail ; an Eskimo 

 who does the same thing defends liis hunting rights before Congress and returns 

 to his village after shaking the hand of the President. 



To observe the Eskimo's walrus hunt I flew to Gambell, a village of 62 houses 

 on the northwestern cape of St. Lawrence Island in the narrow part of the Bering 

 Strait. Most of tJie 250 inhabitants live as pensioners of the government, bene- 

 fitting from one form or another of welfare payments. Despite this, the fresh 

 strawberries from California which had arrived by the same ain>lane in which I 

 flew, disappeared almost immediately, and in the house of the female entre- 

 preneur who does her buying in the "lower 48" (the Alaskan's term for the con- 

 tinental United States), 'half the village gathered to reach graspingly for the 

 luxuries of the outside world. 



