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Soft Gold? - the Northern Fur Industry
by Murray LundbergSeptember 25, 1998As the 21st Century approaches, resource extraction of all types becomes increasingly controversial, even as our demands for the end products of that extraction become inextricably linked to "progress" and the modern lifestyles. Animal rights activists in particular use a wide array to tactics around the world to demonstrate their concern over what they feel are abuses of Nature, from writing children's books, to peaceful nude sit-ins in Oslo, splashing paint on fur-wearers in New York, and fire-bombings in Sweden. Is this controversy a result of increased sensitivity to Nature, or a decreased recognition of the importance of the process? I don't have the answer to that question, but the Internet is certainly full of opinions...
"The Fur Trade" is often spoken of as a relatively short period of time in history - in the North, however, trapping fur-bearing animals ("the harvesting of furs," to use the delicate terminology) has been going on as long as people have lived here, and continues to this day. While agricultural societies were able to evolve in the temperate zones, hunter-gatherer societies would remain the only viable ones in the colder regions. In historical recent times, the exploration and development of much of the North was driven largely by the riches to be gained through the sale of furs. Without the profits from furs, Russia would have left Siberia alone, and the trading posts of the Russian American Company's settlements in Alaska, and the Hudson's Bay Company in northern Canada, would never have been built.
The original peoples of the North have always lived in close spritual contact with the land and the animals that live there. Once the combination of fashion dictates and monetary values of urban dwellers were introduced to those who lived in the wilderness, however, one of history's most colourful, and most exploitative, periods began. The tools of survival for the Athapaskans, the Inuit, the Chukchi, the Sámi and other Northern people began to lose their spiritual significance as they became tools to gather material riches of types they had never known. Clothing, jewelry, cooking utensils and rifles were all quickly adopted into the indigenous cultures - in the case of clothing, it usually replaced traditional garments which were far superior. The blessings given to canoes and kayaks to connect them with the water and land became hollow as they were filled to overflowing with furs to fill the endless hunger of the trading companies.
The animals which have been the most important to trappers include beaver, rabbit, mink, muskrat, Arctic fox, squirrel, lynx, wolf and wolverine.
The changes in society which followed the Second World War mark the end of overall high prices for furs, and thus of any prosperous days for trappers. While temporary declines in fur prices haven't been unusual during this century (there were serious 'adjustments' in 1921-22, 1931-32 and 1939-41), the drop in 1947 was more dramatic than any seen before, and to a large degree prices never did recover. A change in women's fashion, which no longer featured long-haired furs such as lynx and fox was largely responsible, just as the garment industry had been responsible for the high prices. The main species which went against this tide was mink, which became extremely popular (and thus expensive) in the United States. Most trappers were hard hit by the changes, in much more than a financial way - in the Yukon,
Only those men using good equipment and working districts with mink and muskrat in relative abundance could afford to continue trapping. Those without merely set a few traps along the new roads, never more than a day's travel from their ordinary residence, in a desperate and usually futile attempt to earn a few extra dollars. Others would go out with their .22s hoping to get a few squirrels, worth scarcely twenty-five cents each to indifferent buyers. For men who had sold large number one silver fox pelts in the twenties for hundreds of dollars each, the new poverty must have carried a crushing burden of humiliation, all the more galling because it was beyond their experience and understanding. (Robert G. McCandless, Yukon Wildlife: A Social History)
The effects of industrialization and modern life on traditional Northern lifestyles continues to be the focus of extensive research, but it seems that efforts to ease the difficulty of the situation are largely ineffective. Throughout the Northern wilderness, cabins that used to shelter trappers lie abandoned. The cultural dislocation that has occurred in the past 50 years in particular is widely blamed for the high incidence of alcoholism, crime, and even suicide in many Northern communities.
Death of a Culture "A culture is being lost in the icy graves of the old men."
Richard K. Nelson, Hunters of the Northern Ice
Some current anti-fur legislation such as European trade barriers are widely viewed as being motivated much more by political than environmental concerns - that view is reinforced by the fact that such legislation is in most cases not supported by objective scientific data. The first major legislation of the type was Directive 83/129/ECC, enacted by the EEC in October 1983 to halt the importation of sealskins and products made from the skins. It has been called "the most impressive victory ever achieved by the international animal rights movement." (Wenzel, Animal Rights, Human Rights).
In Scandinavia, the trapping of wild animals has largely been replaced by fur farms, which range in size from a farmer with a dozen mink in a shed, to impressive commercial operations with several hundred animals in specially-constructed buildings. Small operators have joined co-operatives to allow for effective operation and marketing, but dozens of them have been targetted by animal rights activists who turn their animals (generally mink) loose. Having never learned to fend for themselves, most of those freed mink will die slowly of starvation.
What is the future of the fur industry in the North? Well, despite the lobbying, the publicity, the educational programs and the terrorism, the market for fur garments is steadily growing from a low point reached in the mid-1980s. With ever-increasing demands by indigenous peoples to be allowed to return to traditional lifestyles, there is little likelihood that it will disappear.
References & Further Reading:
Richard G. Condon - Inuit Youth: Growth and Change in the Canadian Arctic (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, 1988) Julie Cruikshank - Reading Voices (Vancouver, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 1991) William W. Fitzhugh and Aron Crowell - Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1988) Harald Gaski, editor - Sami Culture in a New Era: The Norwegian Sami Experience (Seattle, WA: University of Washington, 1998) Robert G. McCandless - Yukon Wildlife: A Social History (Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta, 1985) J. M. Roberts - A History of Europe (New York, NY: Allen Lane, 1997) Maja van Steensel, editor - People of Light and Dark (Ottawa, ON: Department of Indian Affairs, 1966) George Wenzel - Animal Rights, Human Rights : Ecology, Economy and Ideology in the Canadian Arctic (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto, 1991)
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