Designed to Fail: The EU and the Inuit Exception to the Seal Product Ban

Abstract

In 2015, the European Union (EU) implemented an exception to its 2009 regulations banning the trade in seal products on the basis of a moral objection to seal hunting. This exception, referred to by turns as the Indigenous exemption and the Inuit exception, the term we use here, technically permits recognized Indigenous bodies to import seal products into the EU and presents Indigenous hunting for subsistence purposes as not a moral issue compared to non-Indigenous commercial hunting, despite the end result being the same: the seal is dead. So if Indigenous seal harvesting is viewed as acceptable, and imports based on this hunting are permitted, why do many Indigenous and non-Indigenous hunters and advocates believe the exception does not work? Drawing on archival research and interviews with hunters and advocates across the Circumpolar North, this paper argues that the Inuit exception does not work adequately to support Indigenous rights and cultures because it is not really designed to do so. Informed by the literature on stigma and cultural violence, we unpack our argument through an examination of three core interrelated themes, or reasons, that the exception does not work: (1) lack of engagement by the EU to understand what subsistence hunting means for hunters and their cultures; (2) failure to design and support the exception to be operational; and (3) lack of desire for the exception to work.