A Tale of Two Seal Hunts: Contesting the Conflation of Canadian Sealing Activities

Abstract The Canadian commercial seal hunt that occurs annually in Atlantic Canada has attracted international criticism for decades, primarily due to animal welfare and wildlife conservation concerns. Although the Atlantic sealing industry is an entirely separate and distinct activity from Inuit sealing occurring in Canada’s Arctic, the two practices are regarded by many as one and the same. The conflation of Inuit and commercial sealing has been a deliberate effort on the part of industry, government, and interest groups that have propagated a misinformation campaign on the subject. This article compares Inuit and commercial hunting activities, highlighting the differences between the purpose, practices, and scale of these hunts. With the distinctions between the two practices made clear, it explores the historic and ongoing ways in which the commercial sealing industry and federal government have perpetuated the conflation of the two. By failing to acknowledge the differences between Inuit and commercial sealing practices, special interest groups have been complicit in perpetuating this conflation as well, although several of these groups have recently worked to clarify the distinction between the two. As a result of the muddied dialogue on commercial and Inuit sealing, both food security and the survival of culture and livelihoods has been compromised in Inuit communities. Despite these ramifications, some Inuit support the commercial hunt because of how anti-sealing campaigns have adversely affected Inuit hunters. At the same time, other Inuit believe that the industry constitutes a wrongful appropriation of their sacred, cultural hunt, and are seeking to reclaim the practice as their uniquely protected right. This article unpacks the distinctions between commercial and Inuit sealing practices, and explores the historic and ongoing implications of their conflation.