Rating: 
Summary: Fishing with Wayne and Donnie
Review: Despite a bad cold and a fever and the World Series, I couldn't stop reading A Whale Hunt. Like the books I enjoy most, I found this work to be a great adventure, which I was luckily enough to be a part of. And though it is a beautifully researched piece, the book was fun and touching and didn't treat the entire event as some somber anthropology lesson with the noble savages. I greatly look forward to Robert Sullivan's next book.
Rating: 
Summary: The Makah and the Whale
Review: Having lived in Washington and seriously followed the Makah Tribe and their trials and tribulations, I was facinated by Mr. Sullivan's insight. He is right on and extremely vivid in his descriptions and insights. I found myself taking the trips with him and totally enjoying every minute of his journey.
Rating:
Summary: Vividly Facinating and Incredibly Insightful
Review: Having lived in Washington and seriously followed the Makah Tribe and their trials and tribulations, I was facinated by Mr. Sullivan's insight. He is right on and extremely vivid in his descriptions and insights. I found myself taking the trips with him and totally enjoying every minute of his journey.
Rating:
Summary: Romantic Abstraction vs Native Reality
Review: I couldn't put this book down. It is simply the most honest book I have read about a modern Indian community. I am a white woman and I have been married into a Northwest Native fishing family for fifteen years. Sullivan doesn't romanticize the Indian people in his story but he obviously respects them. He sees their shortcomings but he does not judge them. Sullivan understands that no outsider can ever really know what treaty rights mean to Native Americans. Yet Sullivan takes the reader to the reservation and allows us to experience these tribal people as they live through a profound moment in their history. Every detail in this book rang true, even the fact that Mr. Watson, an anti-whaling protest leader, would claim to be adopted by the Oglala. I have run into many white people who believe that they know more about traditional Indian spirituality than actual Indians. The Makahs in this story don't fit anyones preconcieved ideas of how Indian people should act, feel, speak or pray. This book is about a complex and ambiguous reality. Without preaching, it shows how much we still can learn from Indian communities. I bought a number of copies to give to my friends.
Rating:
Summary: Romantic Abstraction vs Native Reality
Review: I couldn't put this book down. It is simply the most honest book I have read about a modern Indian community. I am a white woman and I have been married into a Northwest Native fishing family for fifteen years. Sullivan doesn't romanticize the Indian people in his story but he obviously respects them. He sees their shortcomings but he does not judge them. Sullivan understands that no outsider can ever really know what treaty rights mean to Native Americans. Yet Sullivan takes the reader to the reservation and allows us to experience these tribal people as they live through a profound moment in their history. Every detail in this book rang true, even the fact that Mr. Watson, an anti-whaling protest leader, would claim to be adopted by the Oglala. I have run into many white people who believe that they know more about traditional Indian spirituality than actual Indians. The Makahs in this story don't fit anyones preconcieved ideas of how Indian people should act, feel, speak or pray. This book is about a complex and ambiguous reality. Without preaching, it shows how much we still can learn from Indian communities. I bought a number of copies to give to my friends.
Rating:
Summary: Badly researched in the part I know about!
Review: I do not know the Makah. I have never lived with them or been along on their hunt so I can not comment on the veracity of that portion of this book. It seems true but then I found such a totally sloppy bit of "research" on the part of the author that it puts the entire book in doubt for me.
The author accepts Paul Watson the racist "captain" of Sea Shepherd on his word when each of his various stories could have been so easily checked out and found to be what they are - lies. In 1973 I was the first Medic into Wounded Knee. I created the clinic and became the chief Medic. Watson claims to have been a Medic at the Knee and to have done many brave and heroic acts. He claims to have had a vision in the Inipi (Sweat Lodge) and to have been given a name by the Wicasa Wakan (medicine men) Crowdog and Black Elk. He bases his credential for opposing the Makah on this vision. Mr. Sullivan believes him. Mr. Sullivan gets an "F" for not doing his homework.
Watson was not a medic at Wounded Knee '73. On several occasions I have personally posed some basic questions about the clinic to Watson, he could not answer any of them. From his lack of knowledge about the layout of the village as it was during the siege and the fact that not one WK'73 veteran can remember him (Last time we had a get together I asked about it in a group of over one hundred WK'73 Vets!) I doubt thay he was there at all. Crowdog and Black Elk both say they do not know him. Both Wicasa Wakan say they did not conduct naming ceremony for him. Both deny any such "vision" occuring or that they interprettted any vision. Rocky Madrid doesn't know him even though Watson claims to have saved his life under fire.
The list goes on and each bit is easily researched. Mr. Sullivan did not bother doing research, instead he relied on Watson's word. Very very sloppy. Having lived on reservations I will say tha the parts about the Makah ring true, but, knowing this much of the book to be fiction put the whole book into doubt for me.
Rating: 
Summary: A Response from one of the players
Review: I found A Whale Hunt to be an interesting read. It is apparent that the author's sympathies lie with the whalers and that is okay. I do think that he was fair in his portrayal of myself and the other whale defenders and I have no complaint here. My complaint is with the innaccuracies of names and events as documented in the book. There did not seem to be much effort at fact checking. The book states that the two ships that I had at Neah Bay were the "Edward Abbey" and the "Sirenian". The vessel he called the "Edward Abbey" was my ship "Sea Shepherd." The "Edward Abbey" was the previous name for the "Sirenian". Mr. Sullivan spent considerable time with the whaling crew but did not spend any time with my crew and did not board the "Sea Shepherd". Mr. Sullivan writes that my ship "Sirenian" was at Neah Bay when the National Guard was there in 1998. He said that Sea Shepherd flew a banner over the Makah Days event at that time. In fact we were not there at Makah Days in 1998 nor were any other protesters. The event he is referring to was at Makah Days of 1997. The National Guard attended Makah Days in 1998. Mr. Sullivan refers to my maternal Grandfather as Grandfather Watson. His name was Otto Larsen. He states that he was my mother's father so he should have known the surname would not have been Watson. He refers to Costa Rica as Coast Rica. There were many other mistakes that a little fact checking could have prevented. Mr. Sullivan seems to be saying that the cruel slaughter of the young whale was justified because one man, whose behaviour had been shady was redeemed in his community. He did not mention that Wayne Johnson said, "If nothing else, we pissed off the white man." The Makah did not kill that whale. The whale was taken because of the power and support of the U.S.government in supporting the whale hunt. The author does not mention the millions of dollars spent by the U.S.government to kill this whale. I found the story interesting but it was a shoddy bit of journalism and Mr. Sullivan is a journalist. Mr. Sullivan has a responsibilty to history to get his facts right. He did not. Report by Captain Paul Watson Sea Shepherd International
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Memento
Review: I read this book completely ignoring the footnotes that continually compares the parallels to the book Mobey Dick. I was literally in the middle of some of the events leading up to and following the whale hunt, and to see someone capture it and write about it so visually was terrific. There are a few minor errors [Paul Parker was not a part of the crew, and Kleckoh means "Thankyou"], but overall Robert Sullivan conveys a people geographically isolated, rising above the family and tribal bickerings, protesters, personal battles and ocean to bring us a whale we waited more than 75 years for. Even knowing how the book ended I couldn't put it down until it was finished!
Rating:
Summary: Hunt for an editor
Review: In "A Whale Hunt", by Robert Sullivan, the main focus is on the effort -- and eventual success -- of the Makah tribe from Washington State in resurrecting their cultural heritage by hunting whales. The story should be compelling, and Sullivan makes a valiant attempt to share the story from the viewpoint of the tribe. The problem is that Sullivan apparently decided that it would be too expensive to invest in a proper editor, or that the editors at Simom and Schuster had better things to do than edit this book. That leaves the reader with the incomprehensibly difficult task of trying to sort out the grammatical errors. To wit: Page 22, "He is compact and bespectacled, and he was wearing khakis and a polo shirt." The change of tense in this sentence would have been picked up by even the most junior editor. Even worse: Page 28, "Harriette talked of being in the Army and about a dream she had that involved a horse, which, to her, had something to do with Christianity being forced on the Indian people, and which became a poem." It was impossible for me to continue to read this book after trying to sort out the meaning of this sentence. I will save you all the trouble of plodding through this awful book. A group of native Americans overcomes the objections of the "save the whale" environmental whackos, and in the process manages to recapture some of the heritage that was taken from them by European invaders.
Rating:
Summary: Hunt for an editor
Review: In "A Whale Hunt", by Robert Sullivan, the main focus is on the effort -- and eventual success -- of the Makah tribe from Washington State in resurrecting their cultural heritage by hunting whales. The story should be compelling, and Sullivan makes a valiant attempt to share the story from the viewpoint of the tribe. The problem is that Sullivan apparently decided that it would be too expensive to invest in a proper editor, or that the editors at Simom and Schuster had better things to do than edit this book. That leaves the reader with the incomprehensibly difficult task of trying to sort out the grammatical errors. To wit: Page 22, "He is compact and bespectacled, and he was wearing khakis and a polo shirt." The change of tense in this sentence would have been picked up by even the most junior editor. Even worse: Page 28, "Harriette talked of being in the Army and about a dream she had that involved a horse, which, to her, had something to do with Christianity being forced on the Indian people, and which became a poem." It was impossible for me to continue to read this book after trying to sort out the meaning of this sentence. I will save you all the trouble of plodding through this awful book. A group of native Americans overcomes the objections of the "save the whale" environmental whackos, and in the process manages to recapture some of the heritage that was taken from them by European invaders.
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