The Makah, a native tribe from Neah Bay on the west coast of Washington state, have killed a second grey whale. They killed the first one on Monday, May 17th, 1999 – the first in seven decades – after applying for and receiving government permission to resume their traditional hunt. Harpooned and tethered to floats, the animal eventually died from exhaustion and multiple shots from a .50-calibre rifle. Reports of the day did not cite how long the dying took. As a gesture of triumph, two of the hunters stood on the floating carcass, their arms upraised in exuberant victory. Portions of the whale were reportedly eaten by the tribe, although many were unfamiliar with the taste and said they preferred hamburger.

The Makah killed their second grey whale on Saturday, September 8th, 2007, under less formal circumstances. Without the sanction of either the tribe or the US government, five tribal members aboard two motor boats approached a lolling 10 metre animal and plunged a harpoon into it.

Dave Salle, who was fishing nearby with a friend, described how the panicked whale tried to escape but could not dive because of an attached buoy. "The buoy was hooked into the whale somehow; it was going up and down, up and down, fighting for its life. It was a frantic situation. If they were showing this on TV, you would have to announce, 'If you have a weak stomach, don't watch this.'" (Globe & Mail, Sept. 10/07).

Then the shooting began. Salle counted at least 21 shots from a high powered .460 Weatherby Magnum hunting rifle, "One of the largest shoulder-fired cartridge weapons on the market." After notifying the Coast Guard, he and his friend watched the unfolding drama for more than four hours as the wounded whale struggled to make its way seaward. It died 10 hours later, sinking into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. No one planned to retrieve it.

Aside from the tragic and pointless death of this grey whale, the event raises a host of complex issues. While whale watching tours in the area have encouraged the curious animals to gently rub against boats and "smile" for the cameras, the Makah have a different purpose for the whales. In response to the killing of the first whale in 1999, Dr. Mark Wexler, a professor of applied ethics at Simon Fraser University, wrote: "The natives argued that bringing a whale to its death and eating its flesh is a mystical experience that rekindled the tribe's connection to its rightful heritage and culture" (The Vancouver Sun, May 28/99). But for most other people, such animals have a very different value. For them, the grey whale "is an emerging symbol of hope, harmony and peaceful co-existence in a world strapped with differences and strife."

"When symbols collide," wrote Wexler, "...we are in the midst of danger." And this danger is escalating. "Those who take your symbols and interpret them all wrong, seeing spirit and resurrection where you see flesh and death" can expect trouble. Predictably, the Makah received global condemnation for killing their first whale. The vigilante killing of their second whale may provoke a more intense response.

Such killing of whales complicates an already complex subject. "The mind leaps, as well it should," wrote Wexler, "at the image of a victimized people, the Makah, victimizing a grey whale in order to find their dignity as a people only to wake up, after the party, with real concerns about their future now that they are known as 'killers of the whale'." (Ibid.) Beyond the obvious psychological mechanism of victims victimizing, is the issue of anachronism. Despite the link between tradition and identity, the Makah now live in a world of changed values where returning to the past may not be an option. Not only is their old innocence of necessity gone but whale meat is as different from hamburger as a spear is from a .460 Weatherby Magnum. Indeed, in an age of exploding environmental consciousness, killing a whale is beginning to look brutal and archaic rather than sacred and spiritual.

The Makah are not alone in being out of step with the present. Like them, we are trying to maintain our modern, materialistic civilization with comparable zeal, attempting to maintain our identity with traditional practices that our planet is declaring impossible. Like a whale harpooned and shot, the seas cannot bear the pain of further industrial fishing, the atmosphere is panicking under the threat of rising carbon dioxide levels, terrestrial and marine ecologies are sinking under the burden of too much human use and abuse.

Broaden the Makah's dilemma and our technological, industrial civilization begins to resemble the plight of their tribe, struggling against a tide of circumstances to maintain a practice that we have nearly elevated to the status of sacred and spiritual. Instead of the anachronism of a dying whale sinking into the darkness of the sea, our victim may well be the human-sustaining capabilities of our planet's biosphere.

Not so? Is the idea too disturbing to confront? The supportive evidence for this analogy is compelling, from widespread decimation of species and rising levels of pollution to unprecedented global climate change. We are a burgeoning civilization increasingly at odds with most elementary principles of sustainability. Plastics poison us. Industrial agriculture ruins soils. Fossil fuels unleash global warming. We function with a pervasive numbness that makes the killing of two grey whales seem trivial.

Our tradition of production and consumption has become an economic imperative so enmeshed with our identity that it is inseparable from our image of ourselves. Indeed, as Wexler suggests of the Makah, we may be so identified with this tradition that we could be compelled to bring the planet "to its death" in order to maintain "our rightful heritage and culture."

Like the Makah, we need to re-define ourselves by bringing our own perceptions, attitudes, values and behaviour into compliance with the environmental reality of the present. If the Makah's killing of whales causes a clash of symbols that we find unacceptable, maybe we should instruct them. Meanwhile, we have barely started the huge work of bringing ourselves to a similar sensibility