Animal Rights, Human Rights : Ecology, Economy, and Ideology in the Canadian Arctic

The campaign to ban seal hunting in Canada won international headlines and achieved its aims to a large extent. Most observers felt instinctively that the campaigners were "right" but little thought was given to the cataclysmic consequences the ban would have on the way of life and economy of a traditional people, the Inuit of Arctic Canada. A distinguished anthropologist who has spent over twenty years living and working with the Inuit Community, George Wenzel provides a reasoned, in-depth, coolly written but powerful critique of this received interpretation and shows how the campaigners 'own cultural prejudices and questionable ecological imperatives brought hardship, distress and instability to an ecologically balanced traditional culture. This book is both a careful academic study and a disturbing comment on how environmental activity may oppress a whole society, which raises serious questions about the motives and methods of the animal rights' movement in a much wider context than the case here studied. This study of the controversy surrounding the hunting of seals in the Canadian Arctic concentrates on the Inuit of Clyde River, Baffin Island, and traces the evolution of the traditional subsistence economy and social structure to the present cash economy, and the effects of animal rights movements on the Inuit culture. Extensive bibliography, maps and glossary of Inuit sealing terms