How Europe’s ban on seal products turned frontier communities into pariahs

• Main Author: Burke, Danita Catherine
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: The Conversation 2021
• Subjects: Anti-sealing movement; Newfoundland and Labrador; Canada; Cultural violence; Arctic; Harp Seal; Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/da/publications/e9ff236c-498b-43f1-b7d5-2edf6a188a67; https://theconversation.com/how-europes-ban-on-seal-products-turned-frontier-communities-into-pariahs-161730

In the 1970s, a sustained campaign convinced much of the world that protesters were saving cuddly seals from murderous killers near the Arctic Circle. Before long, people outside the region became accustomed to seeing images of hunters with clubs, looming over a fluffy white-harp seal pups. The result was the EU import ban which lumps commercial and subsistence hunting by non-Indigenous peoples together. As this article argues, the anti-sealing cause has left deep wounds in Canada and the human costs ensure to this day.