When cultures collide: A rhetorical history of the Makah whaling controversy (Washington)

In the mid-1990s, the Makah Indian Nation, located in the state of Washington, decided to resume a practice that it had voluntarily suspended for over seventy years: the whale hunt. This decision caused one of the most potent rhetorical battles of the decade. The Makah's main opponents in the controversy were animal rights organizations such as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the Progressive Animal Welfare Society, and the Sea Defense Alliance. This thesis analyzes the ways in which the Makah and their opponents framed the situation, the topoi and arguments driving each side's claims, and the uses of identification and confrontation strategies, against a larger backdrop of rhetorical history. By examining the case study of the Makah whaling controversy, I suggest that we can acquire new knowledge about Native American rhetoric, environmentalist/animal rights rhetoric, and colonialism.