As a young person, to be truly and fully happy about the experience of growing up having confidence and a great deal of respect for one’s tribe, sometimes is best gained from having a full experience as one’s ancestors had. Experience is a way of gaining knowledge that books and words, sometimes, just simply cannot provide. Morals, respect, and rights are better understood through experience and it can make learning easier and fun while providing discipline and pride.
“Utility, or the “Greatest Happiness Principle” is the foundation of morals (Ruggiero, 152).” Morally the Makah Tribe had great respect for the livelihood of gray whales enough to not allow for them to become extinct, even though they’ve hunted the whales for food and survival. It was also their way of providing discipline and pride, with respect to tradition, to the young men of the tribe. After the decision of not hunting whales came about due to the declining of the gray whales, it is not clear what they tribe had replaced whale hunting with for understanding of pride and discipline, but almost a century later they want to return to hunting, for the same reasons, however on a much smaller scale than before.
Utility; “This feeling expresses what has been termed a generalized benevolence, an attitude that everyone’s happiness is equal and one’s own happiness should not be pursued at others’ expense.” (Ruggiero, 152), Makah elders uses their reason of not eating meat for a long while for validation of not allowing the hunt, but it comes at the expense of the young men’s education. The beauty of learning about one’s own history and experiencing the great things hands on, is that it provides a greater sense of pride and higher standard of knowledge that cannot be taught in the classroom by a teacher who has only studied such tribe, or by stories from a tribe leader. Sometimes people cannot understand or chooses not to understand because they do not or have not experienced such actions. When trying to provide lessons and knowledge, giving students the maximum amount of effort to gain such knowledge, should be considered if they have access to the capabilities of providing such efforts for educating.
The environmental community, who is not part of the Makah tribe, believes whales’ right to exist on the planet will be violated and that makes it immoral for the whales to be hunted. John Locke suggest that the four basic natural rights are the rights to life, health, liberty, and property. In the defense of the Makah tribe, majority of the tribe support the hunt, and they plan to show respect towards the lives of whales by taking no pregnant or nursing females, and by only taking less than 5 whales lives, which by law they are permitted to do. When speaking of rights, Burnor & Raley suggest that we have positive rights and negative rights. “Positive rights involve things others ought to do or provide for individuals (Burnor & Raley, 195),” such as the tribe’s right to educate and train their young men, by means of traditional standards. The environmental community should be allowed to decide whether a tribe should be allowed to use their traditional methods, long as they are not causing detrimental harm to majority of society. “Negative rights, meanwhile, allow us to make claims on what others should not do to us. (Burnor & Raley, 196).” We must understand that Locke’s four natural rights, that most of society agrees with, are all negative rights. As the gray whales do have a right to life, they are also considered a food choice in such category with fish and other seafood. Does their size determine the difference in whether they should be hunted or not? “An inalienable right, such as a right to life or the right to liberty, cannot, morally speaking, be given up or transferred to another. In contrast, I can easily transfer my alienable right of property, say, by selling my property or giving it as a gift (Burnor & Raley, 195).” Can something that can be deemed as food have inalienable rights? The Makah tribe isn’t hunting to hurt the population of the gray whales and they take great pride in respecting the whales lives by evaluating the extent to which they can cause harm to the whales. This tribe seems morally grounded to teach their young men in a way that it teaches them to have respect for life even if it is a life they could consume for hunger and survival. That is a great reward when it comes to educating by means of one’s own traditions.
References
Ruggiero, Vincent. Thinking Critically About Ethical Issues, 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 01/2015. (MBS Direct).
Burnor, Richard, Yvonne Raley. Ethical Choices: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy with Cases. Oxford University Press, USA, 2010. [MBS Direct].
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