By Barry Scott Zellen, PhD

1. Introduction: The Ideological Deadlock of the Maritime Commons

For over half a century, the international discourse surrounding the harvesting of cetaceans has been trapped in a state of paralysis. This structural deadlock is driven by a stark division between distinct worldviews. On one side stands a dominant, highly urbanized Western orthodoxy that treats the whale not as a biological resource to be managed, but as a sacred, untouchable symbol of environmental purity. On the other side stand historic coastal and indigenous communities—stretching from the icy shores of the Beaufort Sea to the traditional fishing villages of Japan—who view the ocean as a home, an active habitat, and a primary foundation for human survival.

This treatise challenges the preservationist framework that shapes modern international environmental diplomacy. As a political scientist who has spent decades studying Arctic sovereignty, indigenous rights, and the intersection of state and non-state actors in the global commons, I argue that the global anti-whaling regime does not first and forl emost protect marine mammals. Instead, it systematically erodes local autonomy, ignores historic rights, and weakens the co-management frameworks required to stabilize our world’s oceans (Zellen 2024).

As we look toward the immediate horizon, we approach a historic milestone: the 35th anniversary of the historic September 3, 1991 Inuvialuit bowhead hunt. Occurring decades after top-down bans attempted to sever indigenous relationships with regional fauna, this singular event stands as a foundational victory for decolonization. It offers an enduring template for how local communities can safely exercise their ecological stewardship. To move beyond the current international impasse, we must re-evaluate whaling through three core academic frameworks anchored in the legacy of that historic 1991 hunt:

1. Indigenous Sovereignty and Decolonization: Restoring the fundamental rights of communities to govern their historical assets.
2. Neotribal Fusion and Co-Management: Merging traditional ecological knowledge with modern constitutional structures.
3. Geopolitical Realism: Understanding how shared maritime harvesting practices can serve as diplomatic bridges between distant nations in an era of great power competition.

2. The Theoretical Foundations of Neotribal Fusion

To understand how traditional practices can survive within modern international relations, we must examine the concept of neotribal fusion (Zellen 2008). Throughout my field research, I have defined this process as the functional blending of indigenous traditions, ancestral rights, and historical patterns of governance with modern, sovereign legal and constitutional frameworks.

For centuries, the relationship between central nation-states and indigenous populations was defined by subjugation. Settler states viewed tribal sovereignty as an existential threat to Westphalian territorial integrity. However, the arrival of modern land claims agreements—such as the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971 and the Inuvialuit Final Agreement (IFA) of 1984—completely flipped this dynamic (Zellen 2008).

Neotribal fusion shows that respecting local harvesting rights does not lead to ecological chaos. Instead, it creates highly stable, self-regulating partnerships (Zellen 2022). When a state devolves management authority to regional co-management boards—where indigenous hunters and government biologists sit at the same table—the local population gains a direct stake in preserving the ecosystem (Zellen 2025). The hunter is no longer an outsider breaking a distant central law; they become an active custodian of the resource.

3. The Cultural Core: Whaling as an Anchor of Identity

In the high Arctic, among the Inupiat of Alaska’s North Slope, the Inuvialuit of the Northwest Territories, and the Inuit of Greenland, the whale is the central organizing foundation of society. The bowhead hunt requires absolute cooperation, binding generations together through a shared test of skill, courage, and mutual reliance. The sharing of the muktuk (the whale blubber and skin) is an essential communal act, ensuring that elders, widows, and vulnerable members of the community are provided for first.

When international bodies or distant federal agencies issue blanket bans on these hunts, they are not just regulating a diet. They are dismantling a social structure.

A clear turning point occurred in the Canadian Arctic with the September 3, 1991 Inuvialuit bowhead whale hunt (Freeman et al. 1992). For nearly seventy years, the Inuvialuit had been barred from hunting the bowhead (Zellen 2008). This restriction was forced upon them due to the historical damage caused by Western commercial whaling fleets in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Zellen 2020). The indigenous population was forced to pay the price for an ecological crisis they did not cause.

When that single bowhead whale was harvested in 1991 under a carefully negotiated co-management framework, it served as a powerful act of cultural and psychological reclamation (Freeman et al. 1992). It demonstrated that these communities could revive their ancient traditions within a modern legal architecture. The return of the hunt brought an immediate revival of toolmaking, linguistic terms, and oral histories, restoring local pride and countering decades of assimilationist policies.

4. Green Colonialism and the Fallacy of Universal Morality

The primary opposition to whaling is rarely based on modern population data; instead, it relies on a Western-centric moral absolutism. The International Whaling Commission (IWC), originally established by the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling in 1946 to manage a commercial industry, gradually shifted its core mission. Over the decades, it transformed into an organization focused on maintaining a permanent, unyielding moratorium. In doing so, it changed from a science-based resource management body into an ideological battleground.

This shift represents a clear form of green colonialism. Wealthy, industrialized nations—having already cleared their own forests, urbanized their landscapes, and depleted their own historic ecosystems—frequently seek to impose a singular aesthetic appreciation of nature upon global populations. They attempt to dictate to the Inuit hunter or the Japanese coastal fisherman which species are acceptable to harvest and which must remain untouched.

This perspective ignores the basic principles of ecological balance. Marine ecosystems are dynamic, complex, and finite. Whales, as apex predators, consume immense quantities of fish and marine organisms. In a world facing systemic food security challenges, a rigid, emotional prohibition on marine harvesting prevents the balanced use of sustainable ocean resources. If a specific whale stock is scientifically proven to be healthy and capable of sustaining a calculated, conservative harvest, there is no rational, resource-based reason to ban its use.

References

• Freeman, M. M. R., Wein, E. E., & Keith, D. E. (1992). Recovering Rights: Bowhead Whales and Inuvialuit Subsistence in the Western Canadian Arctic. University of Alberta Press, Occasional Publications Series, Issue 2 of Studies in Whaling.
• Zellen, B. S. (2008). Breaking the Ice: From Land Claims to Tribal Sovereignty in the Arctic. Lexington Books.
• Zellen, B. S. (2013). State of Recovery: The Quest to Restore American Security after 9/11. Bloomsbury Academic.
• Zellen, B. S. (2020). Tribe-State Collaboration and the Future of Arctic Cooperation: Moderating Inter-State Competition through Collaborative Multilevel Governance. The Polar Journal (Taylor & Francis) (September 1).
• Zellen, B. S. (2022). Co-management as a Foundation of Arctic Exceptionalism: Strengthening the Bonds between the Indigenous and Westphalian Worlds, The Yearbook of Polar Law XIII (Brill), 65–92.
• Zellen, B. S. (2024). Arctic Exceptionalism: Cooperation in a Contested World. Lynne Rienner Publishers.
• Zellen, B. S. (2025). Co-management, Knowledge Co-production, and the Re-empowerment of Arctic Indigenous Peoples. The Arctic Institute.
• Zellen, B. S. (2026). A Proposed Compact of Free Association (COFA) Between the United States of America and Greenland. Academia.edu Working Draft.