Subsistence Whaling: Past History and Contemporary Issues

This book examines the past history, and contemporary status of subsistence whaling. The papers derive from a symposium ‘Aboriginal Whaling and Identity in the 21st Century’ held at the Eleventh Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies in Vienna, Austria in September 2015. Whales, especially large baleen whales, are the largest animals targeted by many societies, prehistoric or modern, and major facets of subsistence, social structure and ideology are still deeply embedded in past and current whaling lifeways.  Yet there is probably no other environmental/political issue that has attracted as much attention in the late 20th and early 21st century as whaling practices and policies.  Accordingly, the papers address two major themes: 1) the extent and characteristics of major prehistoric and early historic whaling activities, and 2) case studies amongst modern whaling societies, and how these societies are impacted by current political and economic realities and by the anti-whaling movement.

James M. Savelle is a recently retired professor in the Department of Anthropology, McGill University.  He has conducted 30 seasons of field research in the Canadian Arctic and Alaska, with a focus on prehistoric whaling in this region, as well as on the earliest human occupations specifically in the Canadian Arctic. Among his 70+ academic publications, 20+ deal specifically with prehistoric Thule whaling (ca 800-500 A.D.) in the Canadian Arctic. Notable works include Collectors and Foragers: Subsistence-Settlement System Change in the Central Canadian Arctic, AD 1000–1960 (1987, British Archaeological Reports 358) and "Paleoeskimo Occupation History of Foxe Basin: Implications for the Core-Area Model and Dorset Origins" (2014, with A.S. Dyke, American Antiquity 79(2): 249–276), among many others.

Gregory Monks is Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba, currently continuing research on the Toquaht Archaeological Project. His recent publications include Co-editorship of, and two chapters in, The Toquaht Archaeological Project: research at T’ukw’aa, a Nuu-chah-nulth village and defensive site in Barkley Sound, western Vancouver Island (2023, British Archaeological Reports International Series 3135), editorship of, and chapter within, Climate Change and Human Responses: a zooarchaeological perspective (2017, Springer), and Zooarchaeology of the Northwest Coast of North America (2017, Oxford Handbook of Zooarchaeology). He formerly served as a Canadian representative on the Board of the International Council for ArchaeoZoology.

Nobuhiro Kishigami is Professor Emeritus at the National Museum of Ethnology and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan. His recent publications include Food Sharing in Human Societies: Anthropological Perspectives (2021, Springer), World Whaling: Historical and Contemporary Studies (2021, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan), and Indigenous Cultures in the North Pacific Rim: History, Language, and Society (2024, Rinsen Shoten, in Japanese). In 2007, he received Canada's Prime Minister's Award for Publishing in recognition of his contributions to Canadian Studies in Japan.