Despite the Makah Tribe’s success in getting a waiver to carry out their exclusive treaty right for whaling, the permitting process that had dragged on for over 20 years has now been effectively delayed another year and a half because of bogged-down federal bureaucracy. The Makah Tribe is the only one in the Lower 48 that has an exclusive treaty right to whaling.
The Makah tribal council applied for the permit in March, in consultation with the whalers and federal regulators at NOAA Fisheries who have been guiding them for years. This came after the tribe’s leadership successfully attained a waiver to hunt gray whales under the Marine Mammal Protection Act — a huge accomplishment that the tribe celebrated in June 2024. Getting a permit to hunt was the last hurdle the tribe needed to clear, and many observers thought of it as a formality.
All that was left to do before the potential start of a summer hunting season off the coast of their reservation in Neah Bay was for the agency to issue its decision. But this year’s summer season came and went with no notice to the tribe from NOAA.
“We’re committed as a council and a community to get out on the water,” said Timothy J. Greene, Sr., Makah Tribe chairman, in March this year.
After 25 years of waiting, Greene wanted to “ignite that fire” and get their permit application in.
“Our future whalers — they need to see that it’s real,” Greene continued.
NOAA Fisheries spokesman Michael Milstein, who is based in Portland and has been supporting this permitting process for years, said after the shutdown he was only able to provide a short emailed statement from the agency.
“NOAA is continuing to consider the Makah Tribe’s application for a permit to hunt gray whales for ceremonial and subsistence purposes. We do not have an expected decision date,” the statement said.
The Makah Tribe has only conducted one successful permitted hunt in the last 100 years, in 1999. That hunt and several attempts the following year were shut down by anti-whaling and animal rights groups that threatened violence against the whalers and took to the water in speedboats to stop them.
The whalers paddled through ocean waves in traditional hand-carved cedar canoes. They struck the whales with harpoons and secured them with floats before shooting them with a high-powered modern rifle, to ensure the most efficient and humane killing method possible.
The hunt was governed by a Makah tribal whaling commission that selects the crews, oversees training, and ensures that tribal and federal government regulations are followed.
The animal rights groups also challenged the Makah’s treaty right to continue whaling through legal action, which led to a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2004 that reaffirmed the Makah can continue whaling but must now comply with the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
The protection act, passed in 1972, requires hunters to first obtain waivers and then secure detailed permits from federal authorities at NOAA Fisheries before hunting or killing any marine mammals.
In their permit application to hunt eastern North Pacific gray whales in 2025, the agency required that the tribe meet a list of criteria set forth in the waiver. These include setting a duration and maximum number of approaches, strikes and landings of the whales, demonstrating that their proposed hunting method is humane, and demonstrating that the tribe has enacted its own whaling regulations and has a certification process for its whaling captains, riflemen, harpooners, observers and safety officers. This was submitted on March 18, 2025.
The NOAA permit would have authorized the Makah Tribe to hunt during two summer seasons, from July 1 to Oct. 31, in 2025 and 2027. The waiver allows them to kill up to 25 eastern North Pacific gray whales over a 10-year period, in the tribe’s usual and accustomed hunting grounds west of Cape Flattery.
“The cynic in me makes me think that this is all purposeful on the part of the federal government, to bog our treaty rights through bureaucratic processes,” said Joshua Reid, associate professor in the history and American Indian studies departments at the University of Washington, and author of “The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs.”
“‘Oh, you missed the window for this year. I guess your next window is in two years.’ I mean, that's just insane,” Reid, Snohomish Indian Nation, said.
Treaty rights
To Reid, the bureaucracy of the new permitting requirements and blowing through the October permit deadline are failures of the federal government to uphold its legal obligation to the Makah’s treaty rights.
Micah McCarty, a Makah whaling commissioner whose father was among the first commissioners appointed for the Makah Whaling Commission in the mid-1990s, agreed. He said the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay granted a “trophy” to the United States by allowing settlers to take the land in the northwesternmost corner of the continent, with access to the rich waters of the Pacific Ocean. But their treaty clearly states that they retain rights to whaling “in their usual and accustomed grounds and stations.”
“The U.S. promised to protect our ways of life,” McCarty said. “Therefore we preserved our sovereignty at the point of the treaty, and it was not the United States' authority to give us what we already possess.”
He went on to share that a lot of people misunderstand treaty rights as something granted to the tribes, when in fact they represent the preservation of cultures that were here long before anyone else. Anti-whaling sentiments tend to multiply when people think the government is granting permission, rather than that a small tribe is preserving its culture, McCarty said.
“It's almost a knee-jerk reaction to how successful the anti-whaling communities have been, because you don't have to know anything about whaling, and you automatically believe it's not a good thing because of how it was presented for so many decades," he said.
The Makahs are based in Neah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula, in the northwest corner of Washington state. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Makah people have hunted whales there going back at least 2,000 years.
Makah whaling identity
Continuing the traditional whaling practices is at the heart of Makah citizens' identity, spiritual beliefs, subsistence practices, and ceremonies. Makah ceremonies, songs, dances, art, basketry and traditions are all connected to their whale relatives. Makah citizens are deeply spiritually and ecologically connected to the whales and the ocean — not just hunters, but stewards of the whales in a reciprocal relationship that is honored through ceremony before the whale is hunted and before it is harvested.
The Makah Whaling Commission reconvened this year and consists of more than 20 Makah citizens who have a connection to the whaling families in their history. According to McCarty, had the permit been granted, there were at least two families who were ready to hunt and the commission was working toward putting together a community hunt as well.
The whaling commission has played a major role in revitalizing Makah whaling practices with elder hunters who are still actively participating, sharing their knowledge and supporting the next generations of hunters.
McCarty’s 22-year-old son, Khephen, is one of those new hunters who attends all the commission meetings and practices in the canoe.
“They're staying active, and they're building that team spirit among themselves,” McCarty said.
This August during Makah Days, an annual cultural celebration open to the public where members of the Makah Tribe reunite with citizens who don’t live on the reservation, there was a visible growth in Makah dancers. McCarty said many of them wore whale-bone regalia.
The continuation of this connection to who the Makah are is crucial, McCarty said. And being able to have a whaling potlatch would have fed the community spirit and stoked cultural revitalization. The last time the Makah were able to hold a whaling potlatch and publicly share and distribute the wealth of a successful whale hunt with other Indigenous groups and the wider community was in 1999. The potlatch honors the whale and the hunt, allowing whaling traditions, ceremonies, and stories to be passed on.
The whalers are a big part of those traditions.
“[The hunt] reinvigorates a type of discipline and focus that really created the backbone for the longevity of a culture that still shapes and holds identity for us today,” McCarty said.
Public comments, expert opinions
Twenty five years after the Makah Tribe’s whaling tradition was shut down by violent protests and death threats, many people have learned more about the tribe’s traditions and culture. In the 20 years since the application process started, public opinions have evolved. That showed up in comments supporting the permit application online.
The agency received more than 1,400 comments on the permit application in the seven weeks after it was submitted on March 18. Public review is required under the protection act waiver to ensure that the hunt is carefully planned, safe for people and humane for the whales.
The comments are used to help the Marine Fisheries Service determine an appropriate level of review under the National Environmental Policy Act which can require environmental impact statements. In the past, animal rights activists used the lack of an environmental impact statement under the environmental policy act as the grounds for lawsuits that shut down the hunt in 1999.
Numerous Olympic Peninsula and Puget Sound area Native nations gave their support, citing the Makahs’ treaty right to whaling. Non-Native residents and tourists commented that by reading books and getting to know their Indigenous neighbors, they too came to support the Makah’s desire to resume the hunt.
They say the explicit mention of whaling in the treaty underlines how central it is to the Makahs’ way of life and that compliance with international law and the United States’ trust responsibilities toward the tribe should be a priority.
Many Makah citizens commented, advocating for their treaty rights as well.
“The Makah gave up over 300,000 acres of their traditional tribal land to the US government just so they could keep the right to hunt whales and other marine mammals,” Alex Warner commented.
“Not only does a whale provide food for the entirety of the tribe,” Warner continued, “it brings everyone together, and reaffirms our culture of who we are and always have been. Bringing that culture back into the community is huge, it's a must for our grandchildren and more generations to come. Makahs are whalers!”
But the sentiments of anti-whaling and animal-rights activists persist, along with new concerns about the overall health of the gray whale population, linked to climate change.
Among the long-time opponents are two major national groups: the Animal Welfare Institute and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Both submitted comments against the hunt. They say the hunt is unnecessary, inhumane and not supported by current science. Sea Shepherd launched an online campaign this spring, urging others to join the opposition.
Locally, the Peninsula Citizens for the Protection of Whales has been opposing the hunt since the late 1990s. A big part of its opposition has to do with concerns regarding the Pacific Coast Feeding Group, an aggregation of about 200 gray whales that stop their migration in Canada and points south, rather than continuing to the Alaskan Arctic with the rest of the species.
Margaret Owens, who represents this group, believes the summer hunt will target these whales, especially a smaller group of about 30 among them that appear regularly in the Makah’s unusual and accustomed hunting grounds.
“To us it would be unconscionable to chase these whales off their feeding grounds,” Owens said.
The latest population estimate for eastern North Pacific gray whales is about 13,000 — the lowest number since the 1970s.
A scientist who has studied the whales for decades and seen them rebound at least twice, John Calambokidis agrees that the latest population estimates are alarming. But he said these developments appear to be linked to food availability in the Arctic, driven by melting ice and climate change. And he believes that the Makahs have a legitimate treaty right to hunt whales.
“So I think there are real reasons to be concerned about gray whales,” Calambokidis said. “I do not think the number of animals being discussed, or the Makah hunt, represent a major threat to that.”
Future barriers
Reid also pointed out that as the Makah Tribe continues to navigate the process, the federal employees they are speaking with may also be changing due to complications from the lengthy government shutdown or mass layoffs by the Trump administration.
The West Coast spokesman from NOAA Fisheries who has staffed the protection act waiver and permitting process for years was not able to comment for this story. “Sorry, we will not have anything to offer,” said Michael Milstein, on Thursday, Nov. 13, as the government was re-opening.
“Who knows who's going to be left?" Reid said. “There might be no one for them to be negotiating with, because those people have been let go, and the jobs have not been filled, or they've been actively cut now through the government shutdown.”
But regardless of who the U.S. president is, the Makah Tribe maintains their sovereignty and importance of their cultural practices.
“The fundamental principle of Makah whaling is that it's a sovereign right,” McCarty said. “It's food sovereignty, it's food security, and it's freedom of religion.”
