The Makah claim a right to kill whales because their ancestors did. By that reasoning, modern day descendants of the Aztecs have the right to revive child sacrifice; Americans have the right to revive slavery; and Indonesians have the right to revive head-hunting.

The notion that sacrificing a whale would somehow help the Makah’s social ills including drug addiction, poverty and alcoholism is as nutty as thinking yanking the heart out of a child and throwing it into a volcano would work too. Whale sacrifice is an ill-considered distraction from doing something truly useful.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)