Possible Plan Texts

1) The United States federal government should fulfill its treaty

obligations to the Makah Indian Tribe in the area of cultural
whaling.
2) The United States federal government should fulfill its treaty
obligations to the Makah Indian Tribe in the area of subsistence
hunting of gray whales
3) United States federal government should eliminate restrictions on
whale hunting by the Makah Indian Tribe.
4) The United States federal government should fulfill its 1885 Treaty
of Neah Bay obligations to the Makah Indian Tribe in the area of
cultural whaling.

1AC

The 1885 Treaty of Neah Bay granted the Makah Tribe the right to
subsistence hunting of gray whales, but a complicated and frustrating
legal history has continuously undermined those rights. Currently, the
Makah are waiting for an Environmental Impact Statement to be drafted
to grant them the right to whale.
Gottlieb 12, Penninsula Daily News, Paul, US halts Makah whaling study after seven years over new scientific
information, Penninsula Daily News, http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20120523/NEWS/305239987/us-halts-
makah-whaling-study-after-seven-years-over-new-scientific)//ED
NEAH BAY A 7-year-old study on the potential environmental impact of Makah
whaling is being ditched, the federal government announced. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service and Department of
Commerce issued a notice to terminate the draft environmental impact statement
Monday. This is the latest development in lengthy legal battles over the Makah tribe's
treaty right to hunt whales and comes only days after the 13th anniversary of a
Makah whaling crew legally killing a gray whale off Neah Bay. The agencies said
they will start again, based on new evidence indicating that what opponents call
resident gray whales off the Washington coast may be a genetically distinct, smaller
cetacean subpopulation that needs to be managed and protected separately from the overall population of Eastern North
Pacific gray whales. A new study will be prepared in light of substantial new scientific information, the notice said. The new
draft environmental impact, which will replace a draft begun in 2005 and completed in
2008, likely will not be completed until 2013, NOAA spokesman Brian Gorman said Tuesday. I'm sure the Makah
are tapping their feet, saying, 'When is this going to end?' Gorman said. Tribal Chairman Micah
McCarty said Monday the Neah Bay-based tribe may release a prepared statement about the federal notice. Scrapping the
draft EIS may further delay a determination on the tribe's 2005 request for a limited
waiver of a whaling moratorium imposed under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
The waiver would allow the tribe to exercise its right to hunt whales under the 1855
Treaty of Neah Bay. The Makah are the only tribe in the United States with a treaty expressly guaranteeing the right to
whale. The tribe's whaling tradition dates back at least 1,500 years. Tribal members
voluntarily stopped hunting whales in the late 1920s when they became endangered.
When the animals came off the endangered species list in 1994, the tribe again sought
to exercise its right to whale. On May 17, 1999, Makah tribal members in a cedar canoe successfully harpooned a 30-
foot gray the tribe's first whale in more than 70 years amid anti-whaling demonstrations. There was an
unsuccessful whale hunt in 2000 before court cases put the tribe's hunts on hold
indefinitely. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2002 that in order to hunt
again, the tribe needed a waiver from the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The ruling was
reaffirmed in 2004. An illegal hunt in September 2007 resulted in the death of gray whale,
federal prison sentences for two Makah tribal members and demands by some
wildlife and animal-rights groups that the tribe be forever banned from whaling. The
new federal notice includes five alternatives: no action; waive the moratorium; allow hunting in offshore waters at least 3 miles
from shore; a June 1-Nov. 30 hunt only; and an adaptive management hunt that would allow flexibility in permit terms, hunting
seasons, allowable levels of whales struck and lost, and flexibility in landed whales up to the levels proposed by the tribe.
NOAA's notice is simply giving more information to the public on how the agency
is going to respond to the waiver application, Seattle attorney Brian Gruber, representing the tribe, said
Tuesday. The notice does not make any conclusions about any of the science, he added. But
whaling opponent Margaret Owens of Joyce, a co-founder of Peninsula Citizens for the Protection of Whales, said the new studies
prove there are resident whales that ply the Washington coast that must be protected. They are genetically distinct, which means
those mothers have been bringing their calves here for so many untold generations, Owens said. They are a legitimate
subpopulation that needs to be managed separately from the main group, she said. New scientific evidence
regarding the whale population that would be hunted by the Makah also might force
the tribe to reapply for the whaling-moratorium waiver, Gorman said. The tribe wants to
harvest up to 20 gray whales from the Eastern North Pacific gray whale population in
any five-year period to a maximum of five whales annually. But a new feeding group has entered
the picture: the Pacific Coast Feeding Group of whales. It is a subgroup of Eastern North Pacific whales that Gorman said was not
known to exist in 2005, when the Makah applied for the waiver.
In addition to denying them the right to whale, the history of the Makah
tribe is weighted with an onslaught of cultural oppression and
assimilation by the United States federal government.
Miller 01 Robert, Exercising Cultural Self-Determination: The Makah Indian Tribe Goes Whaling, American Indian Law
Review, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2000/2001), pp. 165-273, University of Oklahoma College of Law,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20070661.)//ED
D. Federal Cultural Oppression and Assimilation The Anglo/American view of property, culture and
religion differs radically from Native American viewpoints. Not surprisingly, the
culture of the United States clashed with the Makah culture.181 In fact, the Makah
suffered through overt cultural oppression under the guise of the various federal
Indian policies adopted by the United States and through other policies which were
specifically aimed at the Makah. In the first instance, the extent of the Makah
territory and sovereign rights were limited under its treaty with the United States.182
Second, under the federal policy of assimilation, the Makah suffered an active and
direct campaign to destroy their culture, religion, families, and government because
those were the goals of the United States in the allotment and assimilation era.183
Finally, the Makah suffered specific actions by the federal Indian agents located at the
Neah Bay Agency on the Makah Reservation to destroy the Makah language,
families, culture and traditions.184 These types of federal actions were a serious and
common problem throughout Indian country because only in the 1930s and even up
to the 1950s did the federal government and the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA) rescind regulations prohibiting reservation Indians, who supposedly were
living on their own lands, from wearing long hair, performing their religious
ceremonies, and living their own lives.185 And it was well into the 1950s before the
government stopped trying to eradicate Indian languages.186 In essence, the federal
government did not act like Indian tribes were living on their own lands and
according to their own cultures and religions. Instead, the United States acted more as if
Indians were in prisons where the government could control every aspect of their
lives.187 1. Cultural and Religious Oppression For over one hundred years, the federal government
purposely tried to alter every aspect of Makah culture. The ultimate goal of the
United States "was the complete assimilation of the ... Makahs into American society
in as short a time as possible."188 The government wanted to transform the Makah
culture and substitute its way of life with the American culture. The reports of the
Commissioners of Indian Affairs demonstrated that the "official policy . . . [of] ruthless benevolence"
was designed to extinguish the "Indianness" of all Indians and teach them "civilized"
ways.189 As an example, notwithstanding Governor Stevens' promise to assist the Makah in
their whaling and fishing economy, federal pressure was placed on the Makah to
become farmers.190 The federal government tried to "civilize" the Makah Tribe by
taking its culture, its religion, and its traditions.191 In a concerted and calculated
strategy the federal agents stationed at the Neah Bay Indian Agency tried to wipe out
the Makah language, and tried to withdraw the children from their culture and
families and raise them as "white" children.192 The federal agents worked to completely change even the
most basic parts of Makah life. The agents discouraged the longhouse style of communal living
and helped Makahs build single family homes and tear down the remaining
longhouses.193 Agents would visit Makahs in their homes to observe and to correct
perceived deficiencies, such as encouraging the Makah to dress like white citizens.194
The federal agents tried to control every single aspect of Makah life, outlawing tribal
games and dances and setting standards for Makah sexual life, and punishing any
violators.195 Furthermore, the American legal system, with courts, judges and police, was
imposed on the Tribe.196 The federal agents even interfered with the Tribe's internal
class and governmental system by selecting the men who would serve as chiefs.197
The agents also tried to alter Makah ownership rights regarding coastal and ocean
fishing sites.198 Even the Makah traditional healing methods were banned by the
agents and Makah doctors were threatened with imprisonment.199 The government
suppressed other cultural activities, such as the traditional Cloqually dances, because
the agents considered them "heathenish and barbarous."200 The government even tried
to end the tribal tradition of potlatching. The Indian agents tried to stop this activity because they thought it
was not a good tradition.201 "Activities of a ceremonial or ritual nature were discouraged or
prohibited. . . . Potlatches, gambling games, the performance of Indian dances were
usually forbidden. The ceremonies of the secret religious and curing societies were . .
. banned altogether."202 In Washington State in the 1880s, the United States made a special attempt
to civilize Indians by "banning traditional native practices" and public gatherings,
including dancing, gambling, and spiritual activities, and by requiring reservation
Indians to carry identification cards.203 The Makah resisted the denial of their political, religious, and First
Amendment rights by going underground with some potlatch and cultural and spiritual traditions or by reorganizing their
traditional ceremonies around American holidays like Christmas, birthday parties, and Independence Day or by incorporating them
into Christian practices.204 The Makah also resisted this oppression by traveling to Tatoosh Island, just off the tip of Cape Flattery,
to hold ceremonies notwithstanding the threats of imprisonment.205 2. Attacks on Makah Families The United States
agents at the Makah Reservation "concentrated their efforts on isolating the children
from contact with tribal life and on indoctrinating them with American culture."206
The government literally tried to destroy Makah family life as part of its attempt to
alter Makah culture and assimilate them into white society.207 The federal agents at
Neah Bay wanted to segregate tribal members over fifty-five from the rest of the
families because the agents thought that younger Indians would never learn civilized
ways if they were being influenced and taught by their elders.208 At school, children
were punished for speaking the Makah language and were taught to ridicule and to
be ashamed of their own families, culture, and language.209 Boarding schools were
used at Makah from roughly 1870-1940 the same as in the rest of Indian country to teach Indian children
civilized ways and to eradicate Indian culture.210 Makah families were forced to send
their children to the boarding school at Neah Bay or the parents would be arrested.211
The mandatory schooling at Neah Bay is the main reason why some of the other Makah villages came to be abandoned because
families wanted to be near their children at school.212 In addition, in 1874, the Makah boarding school was
purposely moved and located further away from the nearest village to stop any home
influence of Makah culture on the children and to take the children "entirely out of
barbarous surroundings and put them in the midst of a civilized Christian home."213
Makah children were then forced to attend school from seven to fourteen years of age, and the schools were usually conducted year
round with only a few hours a week at home.214 "Where possible, [children] were prevented from
acquiring the culture of their elders."215 The children were dressed in American
clothing, taught the English language and American games, and forced to accept the
Christian religion.216 This deliberate attack on Makah family life succeeded in
weakening Makah culture because it alienated these generations of Makah children
to some extent from their culture and families.21
The Treaty of Neah Bay grants the Makah rights to cultural whaling that
should not be denied on any basis
Huelsback and Pine, 07 Huelsbeck has worked with the Makah for 30 years on archaeology and educational
projects. Working with the Makah Cultural and Research Center, he has brought PLU students to Neah Bay to learn about Makah
Culture January for the last 12 years. Pine has taught anthropology for 9 years. She took a class to Neah Bay last January to learn
about the heroic efforts being made by the Makah Language Program to restore their language to health. Both are faculty at Pacific
Lutheran University.(Huelsback and Pine, Respect the Makah Culture and the Whales
http://www.plu.edu/anthropology/Makah--Neah-Bay/Respect-Makah-Culture/home.php
http://www.plu.edu/anthropology/Makah--Neah-Bay/Respect-Makah-Culture/home.php)//ED
All humans view things through the lens of culture, and no one has a monopoly on
the right way of looking at things. Some non-Makah feel that hunting whales is
wrong. They have every right to feel that way. In our society, however, we expect
vegetarians to accept the dietary practices of those who eat meat. We do not prohibit
the consumption of pork or seafood because some of us believe these foods should
not be consumed. Prohibiting Makah whale hunting would be a much more extreme
than a mere dietary prohibition, it would deny the Makah a central element of their
cultural heritage. For thousands of years, Whale has nourished the Makah. Excavation at
the Makah village of Ozette revealed that whale accounts for as much as 85 percent of all of the food
represented by the recovered food remains. Few sites older than Ozettes 1500 years have been sampled, but
whale bones are common in sites of human activity as much as 4,000 years old.
Makah Culture is alive. Their identity as whalers is an important part of the living
culture. Although more than 70 years had passed since the last whale hunt in the 1920s, members of whaling families knew
what they were supposed to do physically and spiritually to prepare for the revived hunt in 1999. The tribe selected the
image of Thunderbird carrying a whale for the Tribal flag. Thunderbird hunts
whales like an eagle hunts salmon and in the distant past, Thunderbird taught the
Makah how to hunt whales. Traditional belief holds that if whale hunters are properly prepared both physically
and spiritually, then Whale will give itself to them. To characterize Whale offering this gift as a victim
asking for it (Bergman TNT 9/16) betrays a complete lack of cultural understanding and is
deeply offensive. For the Makah, Whale is not a subordinate species under the
dominion of Man, but rather a powerful, intelligent, generous entity who graciously
provides food and material for various uses to the Makah people. The hunt on 9/8 violated
tribal law, taking place without the required tribal authorization. It will be dealt with in Tribal Court where the penalties for
violating tribal hunting regulations can be severe. Hunting gray whales is legal, a right that existed
before the 1855 treaty with the U.S. that is guaranteed to the Makah by the treaty. The
1994 amendment to the Marine Mammal Protection Act states that Nothing in this
Act is intended to alter any treaty with Indian Tribes. The gray whale no longer is
endangered; the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission
estimated in 2002 that more than 400 whales a year could be sustainably harvested
annually. The Makah are proposing to take no more than 5 whales per year. The
tribe has a strong record of managing their natural resources to enhance the resource
base, including timber, fish, and wild life. The continued practice of many important
aspects of Makah Culture requires a healthy natural environment. These efforts help
to protect the marine environment of the region. It is not in the Makahs interest to
harm the gray whale population; they have a detailed management plan based on
strong natural resource conservation principles. Non-Makah are in no way obliged to
adopt Makah practices or to become Makah, but neither are the Makah in any way
obliged to cease to be Makah. Once, not all that long ago, Europeans did attempt to oblige the
Makah and other Native Peoples to cease to exist. The continued existence of Native
Americans is powerful evidence of the importance of identity to human beings. An
assertion that the Makah should change their culture springs from an assumption
that cultural difference is cosmetic, a stage dressing under which lies one universal
way of being in the world. Anthropological research has taught us that, although we are universally
human beings, members of the same species, there is no one universal human way of
being in the world.
Refusal to let the Makah people execute their cultural whaling practices
is a violent form of Western colonialism
Keshena 13 Canada-based Indigenous comrade of the Menominee Nation of Wisconsin and a member of the Uhuru
Solidarity Movement. (Enaemaehkiw Tpac, The Makah Whaling Conflict and Eco-Colonialism,
http://bermudaradical.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/the-makah-whaling-conflict-and-eco-colonialism/)//ED
To a disturbing extent, whaling opponents have relied on colonialist or even racist arguments
to develop opposition to the Makah whale hunt. These arguments follow themes that
have existed since colonial times to maintain unequal power relationships between
native and non-native peoples. Colonialism is not the immediate goal of anti-whaling organizations, and such
arguments do not invalidate the other points raised by whaling opponents. As well, the actions and rhetoric of a few individuals
and organizations cannot represent the beliefs and attitudes of an entire movement. However, I raise these arguments for criticism
because I have not in my research come across a condemnation of the use of such colonialist arguments by whaling opponents, or
even an indication that these arguments will not be used in the future.Native American political activity must
be incited by outsiders because they cannot act by themselves. Whaling opponents
such as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have frequently suggested that the Japanese are
responsible for the Makah whale hunt. The only Japanese involvement in west coast
whaling has been a $20,000 start-up grant for a Nuu-chah-nulth whaling
organization, the World Council of Whalers. The Makah are not members of this
organization. Ben Johnson (Makah Tribal Council) has said that Japan wanted to give us money, to help us buy boats, to
show us how to kill the whales, everything.We said no because we knew it would be very controversial, and we want to do
everything by the book. However, this lack of involvement has not stopped Sea Shepherds Paul Watson from explaining: The
truth is that it is not the Makah who are our enemy. We were in Neah Bay to oppose the Japanese and the Norwegians, who
manipulated the Makah into this situation. Sometimes strategy means having to fight an elusive enemy that takes on another guise
in order to benefit the primary opposition. In this case, the Makah are pawns in a global Japanese chess game. Watson has
not even accorded the Makah the status of co-conspirators in his chess match, instead
drawing directly on an image of the Makah as a passive people easily manipulated
by non-natives. This contradicts the statements of many Makah people, including
Makah opponents of the hunt, about the importance of whaling and the reasons the
Makah desire to hunt. Native American society can be reduced to a conflict between tradition and assimilation.
Whaling opponents have extended their arguments about subsistence versus
commercial whaling by speaking of a division between the Makah into traditional
and assimilated camps. They suggest that Makah traditionalists oppose the hunt as
something non-traditional, while the tribal council reputedly wants the hunt only for
its economic potential. The Progressive Animal Welfare Society writes that though the tribe is divided
over whaling, pro-whalers are in control of the tribal government. Opposition to
whaling includes tribal elders. Strictly speaking, this is true, but the failure to note that elders
also support the hunt clearly intends to feed into romantic stereotypes about
traditional versus assimilated Indians. Non-natives know better than Native Americans what counts as
authentic Indian culture. Whaling opponents have also opposed the hunt by suggesting that
Makah cultural aspirations are inauthentic, usually in the process of telling the
Makah what their culture was, is or ought to be. I really doubt that [the Makahs]
ancestors would respect this modern day version of whale hunting, one woman
writes. She continues: It is my understanding that native americans [sic] in the past have always taken (killed)
animalsOnly [sic] as needed for survival and then in great respect and deep appreciation of the animal. This wanton act of killing
certainly does not seem to be motivated by survival, respect for all of earths life forms, nor spirituality. This kind of
romantic condemnation has been common historically in colonialist discourse about
Native Americans. This opponent of the Makah hunt dismisses what the Makah say
about themselves and their own experiences as if she possessed superior knowledge
about the values and motivations of Native Americans. Technological change is cultural assimilation.
Another favorite theme among animal rights activists is the assumption that
technological change demonstrates the cultural assimilation of indigenous peoples.
Speaking of the Makah, one whale tour operator writes: If they are so hell bent on
going back to their roots, why the hell do they insist on: driving cars, using internal
combustion engines, fibreglass, aluminum, roads, shopping centres, all the other
stuff that has improved their lives since the coming of the White Man. Few people would
confuse Americans and Japanese just because we share a fondness for Sony Playstations, yet the Makah are told their
modernity proves they are no longer authentically Makah. More importantly, the
Makah have a right to perpetuate their culture, adapting it to meet new needs. The
Makah should not have to choose between putting their culture under glass, or
abandoning it entirely in order to participate in American society and the world
economy. If Native Americans disagree with non-natives, it is because they are barbaric. Whaling opponents
often explain that the Makah must accept the progress and evolution of society.
By this they mean the Makah must accept the forced end of whaling as the natural
outcome of social evolution along with fibreglass and shopping centers. Sea Shepherd
explains: A society can never evolve by adopting archaic or inhumane rituals. Progress affects everyone living in this new era of
the Global Village. No legitimate argument can be made that the Makah, or any other ethnic group, can move their culture forward
through ritual killing. This argument would be quite familiar to nineteenth century Americans, or to the European colonizers of
any continent. It is exactly the same argument made under the banners of Manifest Destiny, assimilation policies, white supremacy
and social Darwinism. Non-natives set a standard for cultural behavior in these arguments that only a small fraction of westerners
follow (one estimate of vegetarians in the US places them at 12 million out of 248 million Americans). To lecture the Makah on ritual
killing, while our society thinks nothing of killing chickens, cattle and pigs (with all the ritual precision of factory farms) seems
hypocritical. Keith Johnson, President of the Makah Whaling Commission, calls this moral elitism. In short, whaling opponents
frequently make colonialist arguments that delegitimize the Makahs right to whale by comparing the Makah unfavorably to an
ahistorical and idealized portrait of Native Americans. Many non-natives appreciate in vague terms that Native Americans were in
harmony with their environment. With our concern to create a environmentally sound culture and society, Native Americans form
a ready target for the projection of our fears and fantasies. Just as long, of course, as real Native Americans with real needs do not
intrude on these representations. Then an elaborate arsenal of colonialist arguments can be raised to suggest that it is not our own
stereotypes but modern Native Americans who are wrong. Whatever one believes about the morality of whale hunting, these
arguments are themselves an injustice to the Makah.
The United States federal government should fulfill its 1885 Treaty of
Neah Bay obligations to the Makah Indian Tribe in the area of cultural
whaling.

Defense of treaty rights is VITAL to reclaiming indigenous sovereignty
here and around the world and is the *cornerstone* of any effective
struggle against other forms of oppression
Churchhill 97, (Ward, Suppression of Indigenous Sovereignty in 20th Century United States, Z MAGAZINE,
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/may97churchill.html)//ED
The route leading to an alternative destiny for native people is just as clear as that prescribed for us in the newly revised
Draft Convention. By relentless and undeviating assertion of the basic rights of treatied
peoplesat all levels, through every available venue, and excluding no conceivable
means of doing sowe can begin to (re)secure them, restoring to ourselves and to
our posterity our/their rightful status as sovereign and coequal members of the
community of nations, free of such pretense as IRA-style "self-governance" and subterfuges like the 1975
"Indian Self-Determination" Act. Only by achieving success in this enterprise can we
eventually position ourselves to tangibly assist our relatives in other quarters of
the globe, untreatied and thus presently unrecognized as being imbued with the same self-determining rights as we, to overcome the
juridical/diplomatic quandary in which this circumstance places them. Any such
progression, of course, serves to incrementally disempower nation-states even as
it steadily (re)empowers those upon whose subordination statism depends most
heavily and directly for its very existence. This, for its part, undermines a cornerstone
on which that rapidly metastasizing malignancy described by U.S. President George Bush in 1991 as constituting a
"New World Order" is designed to rest. The inestimable benefit to all humanity
deriving from a trajectory of this sort should be readily evident to anyone not already vested in
the perpetuation of planetary business as usual, and may serve to explain why the agenda of
indigenous liberation deserves the broadest imaginable prioritization and support among
those who profess commitment to constructive sociopolitical and economic
change.
Failure to decolonize ensures our extinction
Churchill 99, (Ward, A Breach of Trust: The Radioactive Colonization of Native North America, AMERICAN INDIAN
CULTURE AND RESEARCH JOURNAL v. 23 n. 4, ASP.)//ED
It is worth observing that the ensuing decolonization of Native North America would offer
benefits to humanity extending far beyond itself. Every inch of territory and
attendant resources withdrawn from U.S. "domestic" hegemony diminishes the
relative capacity of America's corporate managers to project themselves outward
via multilateral trade agreements and the like, consummating a New World Order
in which most of the globe is to be subordinated and exploited in accordance with
models already developed, tested, and refined through their applications to Indian
country.(FN220) Overall, elimination of this threat yields the promise of an across-the-board recasting of relations
between human beings, and of humans with the rest of nature, which is infinitely more equitable and balanced than
anything witnessed since the beginnings of European expansionism more than 500 years ago.(FN221) In the alternative, if
the current psychopolitical/socioeconomic status quo prevails, things are bound
to run their deadly course. Felix Cohen's figurative miners will inevitably share the fate of their canary, the
genocide they so smugly allow as an "acceptable cost of doing business"
blending perfectly into their own autogenocide until the grim prospect of species
extinction has at last been realized. There is, to be sure, a certain unmistakable
justice attending the symmetry of this scenario ("What goes around, comes around," as Charles
Manson liked to say).(FN222) But, surely, we--all of us, settlers and Natives--owe more to our
future generations than to bequeath them a planet so thoroughly irradiated as to
deny them the possibility of life itself.

Independently, the aff sparks global decolonization movements that are
critical to averting environmental collapse and extinction
Tinker 96 (George, Iliff School of Technology, 1996, Defending Mother Earth: Native American Perspectives on
Environmental Justice, ed. Jace Weaver, p. 171-72)//ED
My suggestion that we take the recognition of indigenous sovereignty as a priority
is an overreaching one that involves more than simply justice for indigenous communities
around the world. Indeed, such a political move will necessitate a rethinking of
consumption patterns in the North, and a shift in the economics of the North will
cause a concomitant shift also in the Two-thirds World of the South. The relatively
simple act of recognizing the sovereignty of the Sioux Nation and returning to it all state-held lands in the Black
Hills (for example, National Forest and National Park lands) would generate immediate international
interest in the rights of the indigenous, tribal peoples in all state territories. In the
United States alone it is estimated that Indian nations still have legitimate (moral and legal) claim to some two-thirds of
the U.S. land mass. Ultimately, such an act as return of Native lands to Native control would
have a significant ripple effect on other states around the world where indigenous peoples
still have aboriginal land claims and suffer the ongoing results of conquest and displacement in their own territories.
American Indian cultures and values have much to contribute in the
comprehensive reimagining of the Western value system that has resulted in our
contemporary ecojustice crisis. The main point that must be made is that there were and are cultures that
take their natural environment seriously and attempt to live in balance with the created whole around them in ways that
help them not overstep environmental limits. Unlike the Wests consistent experience of alienation from the natural
world, these cultures of indigenous peoples consistently experienced themselves as part of the that created whole, in
relationship with everything else in the world. They saw and continue to see themselves as having responsibilities, just as
every other creature has a particular role to play in maintaining the balance of creation as an ongoing process. This is
ultimately the spiritual rationale for annual ceremonies like the Sun Dance or Green Corn Dance. As another example,
Lakota peoples planted cottonwoods and willows at their campsites as they broke camp to move on, thus beginning the
process of reclaiming the land humans had necessarily trampled through habitation and encampment. We now know that
indigenous rainforest peoples in what is today called the state of Brazil had a unique relationship to the forest in which
they lived, moving away from a cleared area after farming it to a point of reduced return and allowing the clearing to be
reclaimed as jungle. The group would then clear a new area and begin a new cycle of production. The whole process was
relatively sophisticated and functioned in harmony with the jungle itself. So extensive was their movement that some
scholars are now suggesting that there is actually very little of what might rightly be called virgin forest in what had been
considered the untamed wilds of the rainforest. What I have described here is more than just a coincidence or, worse,
some romanticized falsification of Native memory. Rather, I am insisting that there are peoples in the world who live with
an acute and cultivated sense of their intimate participation in the natural world as part of an intricate whole. For
indigenous peoples, this means that when they are presented with the concept of development, it is sense-less. Most
significantly, one must realize that this awareness is the result of self-conscious effort on the part of the traditional
American Indian national communities and is rooted in the first instance in the mythology and theology of the people. At
its simplest, the worldview of American Indians can be expressed as Ward Churchill describes it: Human beings are free
(indeed, encouraged) to develop their innate capabilities, but only in ways that do not infringe upon other elements
called relations, in the fullest dialectical sense of the word of nature. Any activity going beyond this is considered as
imbalanced, a transgression, and is strictly prohibited. For example, engineering was and is permissible, but only
insofar as it does not permanently alter the earth itself. Similarly, agriculture was widespread, but only within norms that
did not supplant natural vegetation. Like the varieties of species in the world, each culture has contributed to make for
the sustainability of the whole. Given the reality of eco-devastation threatening all of life
today, the survival of American Indian cultures and cultural values may make the
difference for the survival and sustainability for all the earth as we know it. What I
have suggested implicitly is that the American Indian peoples may have something of values
something corrective to Western values and the modern world system to offer
to the world. The loss of these gifts, the loss of the particularity of these peoples,
today threatens the survivability of us all. What I am most passionately arguing is that we must
commit to the struggle for the just and moral survival of Indian peoples as
peoples of the earth, and that this struggle is for the sake of the earth and for the
sustaining of all life. It is now imperative that we change the modern value of acquisitiveness
and the political systems and economics that consumption has generated. The key
to making this massive value shift in the world system may lie in the international
recognition of indigenous political sovereignty and self-determination. Returning
Native lands to the sovereign control of Native peoples around the world,
beginning in the United States, is not simply just; the survival of all may depend
on it.
Indigenous struggles must be the starting point for liberation its the
only way to truly undermine worldwide capitalism and colonization
Churchill 97 (Ward, Suppression of Indigenous Sovereignty in 20th Century United States, Zmag Online
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/may97churchill.html)//ED
The route leading to an alternative destiny for native people is just as clear as that prescribed for us in the newly revised Draft
Convention. By relentless and undeviating assertion of the basic rights of treatied peoplesat
all levels, through every available venue, and excluding no conceivable means of doing
sowe can begin to (re)secure them, restoring to ourselves and to our posterity our/their
rightful status as sovereign and coequal members of the community of nations, free of such
pretense as IRA-style "self-governance" and subterfuges like the 1975 "Indian Self-Determination" Act. Only by achieving
success in this enterprise can we eventually position ourselves to tangibly assist our
relatives in other quarters of the globe, untreatied and thus presently unrecognized as
being imbued with the same self-determining rights as we, to overcome the
juridical/diplomatic quandary in which this circumstance places them. Any such
progression, of course, serves to incrementally disempower nation-states even as it
steadily (re)empowers those upon whose subordination statism depends most heavily
and directly for its very existence. This, for its part, undermines a cornerstone on which that
rapidly metastasizing malignancy described by U.S. President George Bush in 1991 as constituting a "New World Order"
is designed to rest. The inestimable benefit to all humanity deriving from a trajectory of
this sort should be readily evident to anyone not already vested in the perpetuation of planetary business as
usual, and may serve to explain why the agenda of indigenous liberation deserves the broadest
imaginable prioritization and support among those who profess commitment to constructive
sociopolitical and economic change.
Beginning with the Native populations of North America as a starting
point to dismantle colonialism is key because of how they have been
represented historically as discursively and ontologically Other.
Friedberg 2K, author and political activist with a master's degree in the humanities from the University of Chicago and is
currently a doctoral candidate in Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. (Lillian, Dare to Compare:
Americanizing the Holocaust, http://www.operationmorningstar.org/A_Holocaust_The_American_Brand.htm)//ED
Katz argues that the Nazi Holocaust is "phenomenologically" unique based on the
"merciless, exceptionless, biocentric intentionality of Hitler's 'war against the
Jews.'"[ 22] Katz's argument centers on documented intentionality and
governmental policy in the Nazi period. What Katz does not take into account is
that a twelve-year period in a twentieth-century industrialized society lends itself
more readily to documentation than a five-hundred-year period, most of which is
historically and geographically situated in the midst of a preindustrial "virgin
wasteland," nor does he significantly engage the discourse generated by Native American scholars in recent years.
It does not, however, take a paragon of intellectual prowess to deduce an implied
intent to "destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,"
from the events that transpired in the process of"depopulating" the New World--a
slaughter that Katz patently refuses to define as "genocide" even though it
conforms precisely to the definition of the phenomenon as outlined by Raphael
Lemkin, who coined the term in his 1944 Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.[ 23] The
murder of 96 percent of any given population does not occur "inadvertently,"
especially when members of that group are viewed by their assassins as
belonging to a separate (and inferior) national, ethnic, racial and religious order.
Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the introduction of diseases to the
Native populations of North America was anything but an incidental byproduct of
"westward expansion." In what is likely the world's first documented case of
genocide accomplished by bacterial means, Lord Jeffrey Amherst suggested that
smallpox-infected blankets be distributed to the Ottawa and Lenape peoples,
stating in a 1763 letter to his subordinate, Colonel Henry Bouquet, "You will do
well to [infect] the Indians by means of blankets as well as to try every other
method that can serve to extirpate this [execrable] race."[24] This statement
indicates that the annihilation of the Indian population by way of disease was
neither arbitrary nor incidental to the aims of the European settler population and
its government. Even as early as 1763, the settler population and its sovereign
representatives acted in full cognizance of the impact their introduction of disease
would have on the Native populations. Stannard points out, with regard to the "enemy microbe"
argument, that by focusing almost entirely on disease, by displacing responsibility for the mass killing onto an army of
invading microbes, contemporary authors increasingly have created the impression that
the eradication of those tens of millions of people was inadvertent--a sad, but both
inevitable and "unintended consequence" of human migration and progress. This is a
modern version of what Alexander Saxton recently has described as the "soft side of anti-Indian racism" that emerged in
America in the nineteenth century and that incorporated "expressions of regret over the fate of the Indians into narratives
that traced the inevitability of their extinction. Ideologically," Saxton adds, "the effect was to exonerate individuals,
parties, nations, of any moral blame for what history had decreed." In fact, however, the near-total
destruction of the Western Hemisphere's Native people was neither inadvertent
nor inevitable.[25] Survivor testimony and statistical records from the Nazi death
camps reveal that the uncontrolled spread of disease among inmates was also a
major factor contributing to the death toll during the Nazi Holocaust, but that
argument has never been forwarded in favor of exonerating the perpetrators--at
least not in serious scholarship on the subject. If, as Yehuda Bauer contends, "[t]
here was no governmental intention to exterminate the victim population" in the
Americas, how else are we to understand the now well-known statement attributed
to General Philip Henry Sheridan at Fort Cobb in January of 1889: "The only good
Indian is a dead Indian?"[26] While Bauer concedes that "important figures in the
U.S. administration expressed genocidal hopes and intentions," he still insists
that "there was no clear governmental policy of total murder."[27] It would seem
redundant, in this context, to point to the innumerable studies that have been
conducted since 1945 in the attempt to ascertain whether or not Adolf Hitler
himself had issued the order for the Final Solution. The introduction of diseases
to indigenous populations was accompanied by a systematic destruction of "the
indigenous agricultural base [in order to] impose starvation conditions upon
entire peoples, dramatically lowering their resistance to disease and increasing
their susceptibility to epidemics."[28] What is more, the ideology of Manifest
Destiny is itself founded on an implied intent to kill--it is the "central constituent
ideology translated into action" that Bauer posits as the defining characteristic that sets the Nazi Holocaust
apart from all other genocidal campaigns in the history of humanity. Fortunately, pseudoscholarly revisionists who
would deny the Nazi atrocities have been properly (and legally) excluded from legitimate academic and public discourse
in many countries--Germany, Austria, France and Canada among them. But, As Ward Churchill has argued in A Little
Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492--Present: "the ugly enterprise of Holocaust denial has a
flip side--indeed, a mirror image--which is equally objectionable but which has been anything but marginalized by the
academy, popular media, or the public at large."[29] According to Churchill, exclusivists insisting on the uniqueness of
the Nazi Holocaust succeed in "outstripping the neonazis" in terms of denial: Whereas the latter content themselves with
denying the authenticity of a single genocidal process, exclusivists deny, categorically and out of hand, the validity of
myriad genocides. Yet, unlike the neonazis, those holding to the postulates of Jewish exclusivism are not only treated as
being academically credible, but are accorded a distinctly preferential treatment among the arbiters of scholarly
integrity.[30]
2AC Impact Overview

Native American culture prevents global extinction
Friedberg 2K (Lilian, Executive Director Sojourner Truth Center for Ethnic Diversity, American Indian Quarterly, 24(3),
Summer)
But what is at stake today, at the dawn of a new millennium, is not the culture, tradition, and survival of one
population on one continent on either side of the Atlantic. What is at stake is the very future of the human
species. LaDuke, in her most recent work, contextualizes the issues from a contemporary perspective: Our experience
of survival and resistance is shared with many others. But it is not only about Native people.. . . In the final analysis, the
survival of Native America is fundamentally about the collective survival of all human
beings. The question of who gets to determine the destiny of the land, and of the people who live on itthose with the
money or those who pray on the landis a question that is alive throughout society.57 There is, as LaDuke reminds
us, a direct relationship between the loss of cultural diversity and the loss of biodiversity.
Wherever Indigenous peoples still remain, there is also a corresponding enclave of
biodiversity. But, she continues, The last 150 years have seen a great holocaust. There have been more species lost
in the past 150 years than since the Ice Age. (During the same time, Indigenous peoples have been disappearing from the
face of the earth. Over 2,000 nations of Indigenous peoples have gone extinct in the western hemisphere and one nation
disappears from the Amazon rainforest every year.) It is not about us as indigenous peoplesit is about us as a
human species. We are all related. At issue is no longer the Jewish question or the Indian problem. We must speak
today in terms of the human problem. And it is this problem for which not a final, but a sustainable, viable solution
must be foundbecause it is no longer a matter of serial genocide, it has become one of
collective suicide. As Terrence Des Pres put it, in The Survivor. At the heart of our problems is that nihilism
which was all along the destiny of Western culture: a nihilism either unacknowledged even as the bombs fell or else, as
with Hitler or Stalin, demonically proclaimed as the new salvation.
Colonialism must be rejected its effects are more destructive than even the most
intense warfare
Barsh 93 (Russel, Professor of Native American Studies University of Lethbridge, United Nations Representative, Mikmaq
Grand Council and Four Directions Council, Winter, 26 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 277, lexis)
If there is a fundamental cause of American Indian isolationism, it is 500 years of abuse. Colonialism and
oppression operate at a personal, psychological, and cultural level, as well as in the
realms of political and economic structures. The children of dysfunctional, abusive parents grow up in a capricious world
of arbitrary punishment, humiliation, and powerlessness. They suffer from insecurity, low self-esteem, and a loss of trust
in others. n28 Colonialism is the abuse of an entire civilization for generations. It
creates a culture of mistrust, defensiveness, and "self-rejection." n29 The effect is
greatest on women, who already are suffering from patriarchal domination in some cultures, and in others,
are subjected to patriarchal domination for the first time by the colonizers. n30 This can
produce a politics of resignation, reactiveness, and continuing dependence on
outsiders for leadership. n31Arguably the worst abuse of indigenous peoples worldwide has taken place in
the United States, which not only pursued an aggressive and intrusive policy of cultural assimilation for more than a
century, but also has preserved a particularly self-confident cultural arrogance to this day, denying Indians [*286] the
recognition that they need to begin healing themselves. n32 The negative effects of cultural abuse are
proportional to the thoroughness with which the colonizer intervenes in the daily
lives of ordinary people. Intense warfare can be less damaging than the captivity
and daily "disciplining" of an entire population, which characterized reservation life at the end of
the last century. n33 Under these conditions, the only avenue of escape permitted is to
embrace the habits and values of the oppressor, leaving people with a cruel choice between being
victimized as "inferior" Indians or as second-class whites. In either case, much more was lost than cultural knowledge.
Also lost was confidence in the possibility of genuine self-determination.
2AC Colonialism = Extinction
Try-or-die colonialism makes every impact and extinction inevitable
Eckhardt 90 (William, Lentz Peace Research Laboratory of St. Louis, Journal of Peace Research, February, p. 15-16)
Modern Western Civilization used war as well as peace to gain the whole world as a domain to benefit itself at the
expense of others: The expansion of the culture and institutions of modern civilization from its centers in Europe was
made possible by imperialistic war It is true missionaries and traders had their share in the work of expanding world
civilization, but always with the support, immediate or in the background, of armies and navies (pp. 251-252). The
importance of dominance as a primary motive in civilized war in general was also emphasized for modern war in
particular: [Dominance] is probably the most important single element in the
causation of major modern wars (p. 85). European empires were thrown up all over the world in this
process of benefiting some at the expense of others, which was characterized by armed violence contributing to structural
violence: World-empire is built by conquest and maintained by force Empires are primarily organizations of violence
(pp. 965, 969). The struggle for empire has greatly increased the disparity between states with respect to the
political control of resources, since there can never be enough imperial territory to provide for all (p. 1190). This
disparity between states, not to mention the disparity within states, both of which take the form of racial differences in
life expectancies, has killed 15-20 times as many people in the 20th century as have wars
and revolutions (Eckhardt & Kohler, 1980; Eckhardt, 1983c). When this structural violence of disparity
between states created by civilization is taken into account, then the violent nature of civilization
becomes much more apparent. Wright concluded that Probably at least 10 per cent of deaths in modern
civilization can be attributed directly or indirectly to war The trend of war has been toward greater cost, both
absolutely and relative to population The proportion of the population dying as a direct consequence of battle has
tended to increase (pp. 246, 247). So far as structural violence has constituted about one-third of
all deaths in the 20th century (Eckhardt & Kohler, 1980; Eckhardt, 1983c), and so far as structural violence
was a function of armed violence, past and present, then Wrights estimate was very conservative indeed. Assuming that
war is some function of civilization, then civilization is responsible for one-third of 20th century
deaths. This is surely self-destruction carried to a high level of efficiency. The
structural situation has been improving throughout the 20th century, however, so that structural violence caused only
20% of all deaths in 1980 (Eckhardt, 1983c). There is obviously room for more improvement. To be sure, armed violence in
the form of revolution has been directed toward the reduction of structural violence, even as armed violence in the form
of imperialism has been directed toward its maintenance. But imperial violence came first, in the sense of
creating structural violence, before revolutionary violence emerged to reduce it. It is in this sense that
structural violence was basically, fundamentally, and primarily a function of
armed violence in its imperial form. The atomic age has ushered in the possibility,
and some would say the probability, of killing not only some of us for the benefit of others, nor even of
killing all of us to no ones benefit, but of putting an end to life itself! This is surely carrying
self-destruction to some infinite power beyond all human comprehension. Its too much, or
superfluous, as the Existentialists might say. Why we should care is a mystery. But, if we do, then the need for civilized
peoples to respond to the ethical challenge is very urgent indeed. Life itself may depend upon our
choice.

That will culminate in endless wars and extinction
Meszaros 03, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Sussex (England), (Estevan, "Militarism and the coming wars,"
Monthly Review, Vol.55, No.2, http://www.monthlyreview.org /0603meszaros.htm)

The dangers and immense suffering caused by all attempts at solving deep-seated social
problems by militaristic interventions, on any scale, are obvious enough. If, however, we look
more closely at the historical trend of militaristic adventures, it becomes frighteningly
clear that they show an ever greater intensification and an ever-increasing scale, from local
confrontations to two horrendous world wars in the twentieth century, and to the potential
annihilation of humankind when we reach our own time. It is most relevant to mention in this
context the distinguished Prussian military officer and practical as well as theoretical strategist, Karl Marie von Clausewitz (1780-
1831), who died in the same year as Hegel; both of them killed by cholera. It was von Clausewitz, director of the Military School of
Berlin in the last thirteen years of his life, who in his posthumously published bookVom Kriege (On War, 1833)
offered a classic definition of the relationship between politics and war that is still frequently quoted: war is the
continuation of politics by other means.This famous definition was tenable until quite recently, but has
become totally untenable in our time. It assumed the rationality of the actions which connect the two domains of politics and
war as the continuation of one another. In this sense, the war in question had to be winnable, at least in principle, even if
miscalculations leading to defeat could be contemplated at the instrumental level. Defeat by itself could not destroy the rationality
of war as such, since after thehowever unfavorablenew consolidation of politics the defeated party could plan another round of
war as the rational continuation of its politics by other means. Thus the absolute condition of von Clausewitzs equation to be
satisfied was the winnability of war in principle, so as to recreate the eternal cycle of politics leading to war, and back
to politics leading to another war, and so on ad infinitum. The actors involved in such confrontations were the national
states. No matter how monstrous the damage inflicted by them on their adversaries, and even on their own people (just remember
Hitler!), the rationality of the military pursuit was guaranteed if the war could be considered winnable in principle. Today the
situation is qualitatively different for two principal reasons. First, the objective of the
feasible war at the present phase of historical development, in accordance with the objective
requirements of imperialismworld domination by capitals most powerful state, in tune
with its own political design of ruthless authoritarian globalization (dressed up as free exchange in a U.S. ruled global
market)is ultimately unwinnable, foreshadowing, instead, the destruction of humankind.
This objective by no stretch of imagination could be considered a rational objective in accord with the stipulated rational
requirement of the continuation of politics by other means conducted by one nation, or by one group of nations against another.
Aggressively imposing the will of one powerful national state over all of the others, even if
for cynical tactical reasons the advocated war is absurdly camouflaged as a purely limited war leading
to other open ended limited wars, can therefore be qualified only as total irrationality.
The second reason greatly reinforces the first. For the weapons already available for waging the war or
wars of the twenty first century are capable of exterminating not only the adversary
but the whole of humanity, for the first time ever in history. Nor should we have the illusion that the existing
weaponry marks the very end of the road. Others, even more instantly lethal ones, might appear
tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Moreover, threatening the use of such weapons is
by now considered an acceptable state strategic device. Thus, put reasons one and two together, and
the conclusion is inescapable: envisaging war as the mechanism of global government in todays
world underlines that we find ourselves at the precipice of absolute irrationality from which
there can be no return if we accept the ongoing course of development. What was missing from von Clausewitzs classic
definition of war as the continuation of politics by other means was the
investigation of the deeper underlying causes of war and the possibility of their
avoidance. The challenge to face up to such causes is more urgent today than ever before. For the war of the twenty
first century looming ahead of us is not only not winnable in principle. Worse than that,
it is in principle unwinnable. Consequently, envisaging the pursuit of war, as the Bush
administrations September 17, 2002 strategic document does, make Hitlers irrationality
look like the model of rationality.
2AC Ethics First

Policymakers must be ethical in their political decisions
Simmons 03, (William Paul, Associate Professor, Social Sciences, Arizona State University, AN-ARCHY AND JUSTICE:
AN INTRODUCTION TO EMMANUEL LEVINAS'S POLITICAL THOUGHT)
Politically, Levinas asks whether politics has its own justification. Does not politics, left to itself,
become tyrannical? Is there not something that stands outside of the scope of the ego, the totality, and history
that can temper the tyranny of politics? Should it not be the goal of political thought to infuse
ethics into the violent realm of the political? Instead of looking at world-historical figures, should we
not look at the history of the widow, orphan, and stranger? He writes, "is it not reasonable from now on
for a statesman, when questioning himself on the nature of the decisions that he
is making, to ask not only whether the decisions are in agreement with the sense
of universal history, but also if they are in agreement with the other history?
2AC Extinction Ethics Bad

Emphasis of extinction level impacts destroy fundamental human rights
and values
Callahan 73, Co-founder and former director of The Hastings Institute, PhD in philosophy from Harvard University,
(Daniel, The Tyranny of Survival, p. 91-93)
There seems to be no imaginable evil which some group is not willing to inflict on
another for the sake of survival, no rights, liberties or dignities which it is not ready to suppress. It is easy,
of course, to recognize the danger when survival is falsely and manipulatively invoked. Dictators never talk about their
aggressions, but only about the need to defend the fatherland, to save it from destruction at the hands of its enemies.
But my point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival,
when that concern is allowed to reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress,
or destroy other fundamental human rights and values. The potential tyranny of
survival as a value is that it is capable, if not treated sanely, of wiping out all other values,
Survival can become an obsession and a disease, provoking a destructive
singlemindedness that will stop at nothing. We come here to the fundamental moral dilemma. If,
both biologically and psychologically, the need for survival is basic to man, and if survival is the precondition for any and
all human achievements, and if no other rights make much sense without the premise of a right to life- then how will it be
possible to honor and act upon the need for survival, without in the process, destroying everything in human beings
which makes them worthy of survival? To put it more strongly, if the price of survival is human
degradation, then there is no moral reason why an effort should be made to
ensure that survival. It would be the Pyrrhic victory to end all Pyrrhic victories Yet it
would be the defeat of all defeats if, because human beings could not properly manage their need to survive, they
succeeded in not doing so.

Toleration of evil in the name of survival destroys the value to life
Callahan 73, (Daniel, The Tyranny of Survival: And other pathologies of civilized life Pg 91-93)
That individuals, tribes, communities and nations have committed so much will, energy and intelligence to survival has meant that
they have survived, and their descendants are present to tell the tale. Nothing is so powerful a motive force, for self or society, as
the threat of annihilation, nothing so energizing as the necessity to live. Without life, all else is in vain. Leaving aside the question
of whether we need more enlightened attitudes toward suicide in our society, which we may. it is still not for nothing that suicide
has been looked upon with abhorrence, whether from a religious or a psycho- logical perspective. It seems to violate the most
fundamental of human drives, and has always required a special explana- tion or justification. The value of survival could not be
so readily abused were it not for its evocative power.2 But abused it has been. In the name of survival, all manner of
social and political evils have been committed against the rights of individuals, including the right to life.
The purported threat of Communist domina- tion has for over two decades fueled the drive of militarists for ever-larger defense
budgets, no matter what the cost to other social needs. During World War II, native Japanese-Ameri- cans were herded, without due
process of law, into detention camps. This policy was later upheld by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944) in the
general context that a threat to national security can justify acts otherwise bla- tantly unjustifiable. The survival of the
Aryan race was one of the official legitimations of Nazism. Under the banner of survival, the government
of South Africa imposes a ruthless apartheid, heedless of the most elementary human rights. The Vietnamese war has seen one of
the greatest of the many absurdities tolerated in the name of survival: the destruction of villages in order to save them. But it is not
only in a political setting that survival has been evoked as a final and unarguable value. The main rationale B. F. Skinner offers in
Beyond Freedom and Dignity for the controlled and conditioned society is the need for survival.3 For Jacques Monod, in Chance
and Necessity, sur- vival requires that we overthrow almost every known religious, ethical and political system.4 In genetics, the
survival of the gene pool has been put forward as sufficient grounds for a forceful prohibition of bearers of offensive genetic traits
from marrying and bearing children. Some have even suggested that we do the cause of survival no good by our misguided
medical efforts to find means by which those suffering from such com- mon genetically based diseases as diabetes can live a normal
life, and thus procreate even more diabetics. In the field of population and environment, one can do no better than to cite Paul
Ehrlich, whose works have shown a high dedication to survival, and in its holy name a willingness to contemplate governmentally
enforced abortions and a denial of food to starving populations of nations which have not enacted popu- lation-control policies.
For all these reasons, it is possible to counterpoise over against the need for survival a "tyranny of
survival." There seems to be no imaginable evil which some group is not willing to inflict
on another for the sake of survival, no rights. liberties or dignities which it is not ready to
suppress. It is easy, of course, to recognize the danger when survival is falsely and manipulatively invoked. Dictators never
talk about their aggressions, but only about the need to defend the fatherland, to save it from destruction at the hands of its
enemies. But my point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is allowed to
reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress or destroy other funda- mental human rights and values. The potential
tyranny of survival as a value is that it is capable, if not treated sanely, of wiping out all other values.
Survival can become an obsession and a disease, provoking a destructive
singlemindedness that will stop at nothing. We come here to the fundamental moral dilemma. If, both
biologically and psychologically, the need for survival is basic to man, and if survival is the precondition for any and all human
achievements, and if no other rights make much sense without the premise of a right to life-then how will it be possible to honor
and act upon the need for survival without, in the process, destroying everything in human beings which makes them worthy of
survival? To put it more strongly, if the price of survival is human degradation, then there is no
moral reason why an effort should be made to ensure that survival. It would be the Pyrrhic victory
to end all Pyrrhic victories. Yet it would be the defeat of all defeats if, because human beings could not properly manage their need
to survive, they suc- ceeded in not doing so. Either way, then, would represent a failure, and one can take one's pick
about which failure would be worse, that of survival at the cost of everything decent in
man or outright extinction.
2AC Standpoint Epistemology

Understanding the standpoint of the marginalized in specific contexts is
necessary to break down systems that produce oppressive universal
understandings of reality
Lenz 04, Assistant Professor of English at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota (Brooke, Postcolonial Fiction and the Outsider
Within: Towards a Literary Practice of Feminist Standpoint Theory." NWSA Journal 16:2, pp. 98-120)//ED
Feminist standpoint theory has undergone a number of theoretical and epistemological permutations since Nancy
Hartsock first named and defined it in 1983, and it continues to provoke discussion among feminist theorists.2 Along with
Hartsock, a number of scholars from diverse disciplines have contributed to and identified with standpoint theorizing,
including Evelyn Fox Keller, Sandra Harding, Dorothy Smith, and Patricia Hill Collins. These scholars,
working more or less independently of one another, have maintained that
marginalized groups of people have less interest in preserving the status quo and
occupy a unique position from which to view the culture from which they are
marginalized. For these theorists, standpoint refers not to perspective or experience but
to an understanding of perspective and experience as part of a larger social
settingthat is, a standpoint is an intellectual achievement that refl ects political
consciousness. Despite its more colloquial usage, the term standpoint refers not to a rigid or
permanent stabilization of perspective, but rather to a fluid and dynamic
negotiation of experience and point of view that can be temporarily stabilized in
order to interrogate dominant ideologies. Standpoint theorists anchor their
methodology in outsider within positionspositions inhabited by groups who
are included in dominant cultural practices but are nevertheless, and for various reasons,
unable to fully participate in them. The identification and exploration of such
positions as places from which a less false standpoint on social, political, and
historical power relationships originates characterize and motivate standpoint
approaches. This theoretical position provokes a number of questions: What is the
process through which a standpoint is achieved, and how can that standpoint be recognized? Is a stable, categorically
clear identity a prerequisite for a standpoint? Is it possible to have multiple, changing standpoints, and if so, how can the
insights and analyses provided by those standpoints be communicated? Does the outsider within really have a privileged
(i.e., more objective or less false) standpoint? Such questions highlight the tension between
individual and group knowledge, the problematic poles of epistemic relativism
and universalism, that complicate (and often frustrate) both standpoint theory in particular and feminist theory
more generally. On the one hand, feminist standpoint theory seeks to understand social
structures from a variety of locations; indeed, as Susan Hekman reasons in her consideration of
standpoint theory, If there are multiple feminist standpoints, then there must be multiple truths and
multiple realities. This is a difficult position for those who want to change the world according to a new image
(Hekman 2000, 19). This difficulty is addressed by Patricia Hill Collins, who insists in her response to Hekman, [T]he
notion of a standpoint refers to historically shared, group-based experiences. Groups have a degree of permanence over
time such that group realities transcend individual experiences . . . standpoint theory places less emphasis on individual
experiences within socially constructed groups than on the social conditions that construct such groups (2000, 43).3
Because standpoint theory begins from the position of the marginalized, it necessarily posits difference as one of its
operational variablesdifference, that is, as characterized by socio-economic status, race, gender, sexuality, and so on.
And yet, such a focus on difference can foster the tendency to enforce rigid categorizations rather than to interrogate the
social conditions that construct group perspectives, creating boundaries among different groups of women that, while
clearly exposing the falsity of universals, simultaneously obscure the commonalities among women, the shared
circumstances that foster similar and related, if not identical or equal, oppressions. Such a step limits the transformative
potential of womens insights by removing their analyses from the particularities of their circumstances to an abstract,
categorical realm. Such a step, that is, equates women with the categories into which they can be placed, rather than
examining the conditions that solidify rigid categories and thus challenge solidarity among various groups. This move is,
as Jamaica Kincaid so frankly puts it in describing her situation at the typewriter, limited and stupid. Standpoint
theory can, I think, encourage the interrogation of rigid categorizations by
confronting and questioning both highly individualistic and broadly essentialist
claims, both of which discourage communication and solidarity among women who are differently situated.
Though it does begin with the perspectives of marginalized peoples, standpoint
theory acknowledges that individual experiences, and the interpretations of those experiences,
vary among members of any social group. Likewise, standpoint theory recognizes that such
variations, rather than mitigating the possibility for wider application, in fact deepen
and strengthen our understanding of the positions at which various forms of
oppression intersect. As Hekman argues: Feminist standpoint theory defines knowledge as
particular rather than universal; it jettisons the neutral observer of modernist epistemology; it defines
subjects as constructed by relational forces rather than as transcendent. . . . The new paradigm of
knowledge of which feminist standpoint theory is a part involves rejecting the definition of
knowledge and truth as either universal or relative in favor of a conception of all
knowledge as situated and discursive.
2AC Util Bad

Dont evaluate our impacts in a utilitarian frameworksolving
colonialism is never reasonable in the cost-benefit analysis of the
colonizer.
Churchill 03 professor of ethnic studies at University of Colorado, (Ward, Acts of Rebellion, The Earth is Our Mother,
pg. 106-7 published by Taylor & Francis group)
The question which inevitably arises with regard to indigenous land claims, especially in the U.S., is whether
they are "realistic." The answer, of course, is "no they arent. Further, no form of decolonization has ever
been realistic when viewed within the construct of a colonialist paradigm. It wasn't
realistic at the time to expect George Washington's rag-tag militia to defeat the British
military during the American independence struggle. Just ask the British. It wasn't realistic, as
the French could tell you, at the Vietnamese should be able to defeat U.S.-backed France in 1954, or that the Algerians would shortly
be able to follow in their footsteps. Surely, it wasn't reasonable to predict that Fidel Castros's pitiful handful of guerrillas would
overcome Batista's regime in Cuba, another U.S. client, after only a few years in the mountains. And the Sandinistas, to be sure, had
no prayer of attaining victory over Sornoza twenty years later. Henry Kissinger, among others, knew that for a fact. The point
is that in each case, in order to begin their struggles at all, anticolonial fighters around
the world have had to abandon orthodox realism in favor of what they knew (and their
opponents knew) to be right. To paraphrase Daniel Cohn-Bendit, they accepted as their agendathe goals, objectives,
and demands which guided thema redefinition of reality in terms deemed quite impossible within
the conventional wisdom of their oppressors. And, in each case, they succeeded in their immediate quest for
liberation. The fact that all but one (Cuba) of the examples used subsequently turned out to hold colonizing pretensions of its own
does not alter the truth of thisor alter the appropriateness of their efforts to decolonize themselves in the least. It simply means
that decolonization has yet to run its course, that much remains to be done. The battles waged by native nations
in North America to free ourselves, and the lands upon which we depend for ongoing
existence as discernable peoples, from the grip of U.S. internal colonialism is plainly part
of this process of liberation.

Given that our very survival depends upon our perseverance in the face of all apparent
odds, American Indians have no real alternative but to carry on. We must struggle, and where there is
struggle there is always hope. Moreover, the unrealistic or "romantic" dimensions of our aspiration to quite literally
dismantle the territorial corpus of the U.S. state begin to erode when one considers that federal domination of Native America is
utterly contingent upon maintenance of a perceived confluence of interest between prevailing governmental/corporate elites and
common nonindian citizens.

Solely focusing on short term improbable disadvantages is irresponsible
necessitates a sacrifice of justice. The plans push for accountability is a
better path to peace
Bassiouni 03, Distinguished Research Professor of Law, President, International Human Rights Law Institute, DePaul
University College of Law; President, International Institute for Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences (Siracusa, Italy); President,
International Association of Penal Law (Paris, France). (M. Cherif, Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law)
At the end of the Second World War, the world collectively pledged "never again." While the intention of this global
promise may have been sincere, its implementation has proved elusive. There have been over 250
conflicts in the twentieth century alone, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 170 million persons.
Both State and non-state actors routinely commit extra-judicial execution, torture, rape and other violations of
international human rights and humanitarian law. In most cases, political considerations permit
perpetrators of gross violations of human rights to operate with impunity. Yet,
alongside the sad truth of our consistently violent world stands the moral commitment of the post-war pledge and the
related vision of peace, justice and truth. The human rights arena is defined by a constant
tension between the attraction of realpolitik and the demand for accountability.
Realpolitik involves the pursuit of political settlements unencumbered by moral
and ethical limitations. As such, this approach often runs directly counter to the
interests of justice, particularly as understood from the perspective of victims of gross violations of human
rights. Impunity, at both the international and national levels, is commonly the outcome of
realpolitik which favors expedient political ends over the more complex task of
confronting responsibility. Accountability, in contrast, embodies the goals of both
retributive and restorative justice. This orientation views conflict resolution as premised
upon responsibility and requires sanctions for those responsible, the establishment of a
clear record of truth and efforts made to provide redress to victims. The pursuit of realpolitik may settle
the more immediate problems of a conflict, but, as history reveals, its
achievements are frequently at the expense of long-term peace, stability, and reconciliation.
It is difficult to achieve genuine peace without addressing victims' needs and without [*192] providing a wounded society
with a sense of closure. A more profound vision of peace requires accountability and often
involves a series of interconnected activities including: establishing the truth of what occurred, punishing those most
directly responsible for human suffering, and offering redress to victims. Peace is not merely the absence
of armed conflict; it is the restoration of justice, and the use of law to mediate and resolve inter-
social and inter-personal discord. The pursuit of justice and accountability fulfills
fundamental human needs and expresses key values necessary for the prevention
and deterrence of future conflicts. For this reason, sacrificing justice and accountability
for the immediacy of realpolitik represents a short-term vision of expediency over
more enduring human values.

Their impact calculus renders life meaningless
Dillon 99 [Political Theory, Another Justice April 164-165]
Quite the reverse. The subject was never a firm foundation for justice, much less a hospitable vehicle for the reception of the call of
another Justice. It was never in possession of that self-possession which was supposed to secure the certainty of itself, of a self-
possession that would enable it ultimately to adjudicate everything. The very indexicality required of sovereign subjectivity gave
rise rather to a commensurability much more amenable to the expendability required of the political and material economies of
mass societies than it did to the singular, invaluable, and uncanny uniqueness of the self. The value of the subject
became the standard unit of currency for the political arithmetic of States and the political economies
of capitalism.34 They trade in it still to devastating global effect. The technologisation of the political has become
manifest and global. Economies of evaluation necessarily require calculability.35 Thus no valuation without
mensuration and no mensuration without indexation. Once rendered calculable, however, units of account are necessarily
submissible not only to valuation but also, of course, to devaluation. Devaluation, logically, can extend to the point
of counting as nothing. Hence, no mensuration without demensuration either. There is nothing abstract about this:
the declension of economies of value leads to the zero point of holocaust. However liberating
and emancipating systems of valuerightsmay claim to be, for example, they run the risk of counting out the invaluable.
Counted out, the invaluable may then lose its purchase on life. Here with, then, the necessity of
championing the invaluable itself. For we must never forget that, we are dealing always with whatever exceeds measure.36 But
how does that necessity present itself? Another Justice answers: as the surplus of the duty to answer to the claim of Justice over
rights. That duty, as with the advent of another Justice, is integral to the lack constitutive of the human way of being. The event of
this lack is not a negative experience. Rather, it is an encounter with a reserve charged with possibility. As possibility, it is that
which enables life to be lived in excess without the overdose of actuality.37 What this also means is that the human is not decided. It
is precisely undecidable. Undecidability means being in a position of having to decide without having already been fully
determined and without being capable of bringing an end to the requirement for decision.
2AC A2 T Development

Counter interpretation - Ocean development is utilization as a
resource
Owen 3 Daniel Owen, Consultant to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Legal And Institutional Aspects Of
Management Arrangements For Shared Stocks With Reference To Small Pelagics In Northwest Africa, FAO Fisheries Circular No.
988, http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y4698b/y4698b04.htm
1.2 The legal regime for management of shared stocks For a stock shared between two or more neighbouring coastal States and not
ranging onto the high seas, the regime of Art 63(1) LOSC is appropriate. It states that: Where the same stock or stocks of associated
species occur within the exclusive economic zones of two or more coastal States, these States shall seek, either directly or through
appropriate subregional or regional organizations, to agree upon the measures necessary to coordinate and ensure the conservation
and development of such stocks without prejudice to the other provisions of this Part. Regarding the term
development, Nandan, Rosenne and Grandy[4] state that: The reference to
development... relates to the development of those stocks as fishery resources. This
includes increased exploitation of little-used stocks, as well as improvements in the
management of heavily-fished stocks for more effective exploitation. Combined with the requirement in
article 61 of not endangering a given stock by overexploitation, this envisages a long-term strategy of maintaining the stock as a
viable resource.
We meet that whales are a resource
Boncheva 11 Msc in International Economic Consulting (Simona Vasileva, Whales as Natural Resources, Masters Thesis,
http://pure.au.dk/portal-asb-student/files/34355886/Whales_as_natural_resources.pdf)//ED
Utilization of whales as resources. What are the key features peculiar for cetaceans as natural
resources and which distinguish them from other types of traded goods? First of all, they
are both scarce and useful (have economical value ) in production or consumption,
either living, in their raw state or after minimal amount of processing (WTR , 2010). Second,
they are renewable: as living organisms they have the ability to reproduce, thus even
if part of the stock is removed the remaining part will replenish, providing an
opportunity for sustainable harvest. However, if overharvested (see explanation notes, Appendix I)
they can turn into exhaustible resource. Third, the postulation that natural resources are
unevenly distributed across countries still hold with the exception that whales are
highly migratory species and they do not reside permanently in any country
territorial waters. Additionally, the production (harvest) and consumption of given
resource involves externalities. As part of the fishing sector whales face common threats of by - catch, pollution and
predator - prey - tie destruction. Their harvest can impose negative externality on other industries (whale - watching tourism) too.
Dr. Rob Tinch and Zara Phang (2009 ) categorize the values derived from the
utilization of whales in direct , indirect and non - use values . Direct use can be
consumptive use where different part of the animal are used for food,
pharmaceutical, agricultural fertilizers and cosmetics, and non - consumptive . Non -
consumptive means use of alive whales in their natural habitat for recreation (whale -
watching), cultural and scientific activities (scientific research programs 12 , TV shows, documentaries,
advertisement etc.).


2AC Cultural Relativism K
1-Our 1ac is an impact turn-we believe the Makah tribe should be allowed to
carry out their tribal traditions
2-Permutation do the 1ac and reject all other instances. Our aff in itself isnt
bad, and even if cultural relativism is bad in other instances, we reject those
instances
Batr.org, no date
(Batr.org, Solitary Purdah Cultural Relativism and Ethical Obscurity, no date, http://batr.org/solitary/022413.html, Accessed:
7/11/14, RH)
The article by Gene Howington, Ethical Relativism: A Good Idea or a Path to Anarchy? cites a compelling
example of an indisputable immorality performed that resulted in the deaths of
innocents.
"One of the strongest arguments against ethical relativism comes from the assertion that universal ethical and/or moral standards
can exist even if some practices and beliefs vary among cultures. In other words, it is possible to acknowledge
cultural differences and still find that some of these practices and beliefs
are wrong. Consider that although the Aztec had a society that was in some ways more
advanced that their contemporary European counterparts, that their practice of
human sacrifice is simply wrong."
3-Sequencing DA-We must understand the conditions of other cultures to
truly understand why they make their own decisions-the Eskimos prove-
means that even if some people think its immoral we must investigate the
reasoning means the AFF is a prereq to the alt
Rachel, 1999
(James Rachel, graduated from Mercer University, received Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he taught at
the University of Richmond, New York University, University of Miami, Duke University, and the University of Alabama at
Birmingham, The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, 1999,
http://faculty.uca.edu/rnovy/rachels--cultural%20relativism.htm, Accessed: 7/11/14, RH)
Consider again the Eskimos, who often kill perfectly normal infants, especially girls. We do
not approve of such things; a parent who killed a baby in our society would be locked up.
Thus there appears to be a great difference in the values of our two cultures. But suppose
we ask why the Eskimos do this. The explanation is not that they have less affection for
their children or less respect for human life. An Eskimo family will always protect its
babies if conditions permit. But they live in a harsh environment, where food is in short
supply. A fundamental postulate of Eskimos thought is: "Life is hard, and the margin of
safety small:' A family may want to nourish its babies but be unable to do so.
As in many "primitive" societies, Eskimo mothers will nurse their infants over a much longer period of time than mothers in our
culture. The child will take nourishment from its mother's breast for four years, perhaps even longer. So even in the best
of times there are limits to the number of infants that one mother can sustain. Moreover, the
Eskimos are a nomadic peopleunable to farm, they must move about in search of food.
Infants must be carried, and a mother can carry only one baby in her parka as she
travels and goes about her outdoor work. Other family members help whenever they
can.
Infant girls are more readily disposed of because, first, in this society the males are the primary food providersthey are the hunters,
according to the traditional division of laborand it is obviously important to maintain a sufficient number of food providers. But
there is an important second reason as well. Because the hunters suffer a high casualty rate, the adult men who die prematurely far
outnumber the women who die early. Thus if male and female infants survived in equal numbers, the female adult population would
greatly outnumber the male adult population. Examining the available statistics, one writer concluded that "were it not for female
infanticidethere would be approximately one-and-a-half times as many females in the average Eskimo local group as there are
food-producing males."
So among the Eskimos, infanticide does not signal a fundamentally different attitude
toward children. Instead, it is a recognition that drastic measures are sometimes needed to
ensure the family's survival. Even then, however, killing the baby is not the first option considered. Adoption is
common; childless couples are especially happy to take a more fertile couple's "surplus." Killing is only the last resort.
I emphasize this in order to show that the raw data of the anthropologists can be misleading; it can make the differences in values
between cultures appear greater than they are. The Eskimos' values are not all that different from our
values. It is only that life forces upon them choices that we do not have to make.
4-There is no right and wrong within Cultural Relativism-we must learn to
respect one another
Rachel, 1999
(James Rachel, graduated from Mercer University, received Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he taught at
the University of Richmond, New York University, University of Miami, Duke University, and the University of Alabama at
Birmingham, The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, 1999,
http://faculty.uca.edu/rnovy/rachels--cultural%20relativism.htm, Accessed: 7/11/14, RH)
To many thinkers, this observation"Different cultures have different moral codes" has seemed to
be the key to understanding morality. The idea of universal truth in ethics, they say, is a
myth. The customs of different societies are all that exist. These customs cannot be said
to be "correct" or "incorrect," for that implies we have an independent standard of right and wrong by which they may
be judged. But there is no such independent standard; every standard is culture-bound. The
great pioneering sociologist William Graham Sumner, writing in 1906, put the point like this:
The "right" way is the way which the ancestors used and which has been
handed down. The tradition is its own warrant. It is not held subject to verification by
experience. The notion of right is in the folkways. It is not outside of them, of independent origin, and
brought to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right. This is because they are traditional, and therefore contain in themselves
the authority of the ancestral ghosts. When we come to the folkways we are at the end of our analysis.
This line of thought has probably persuaded more people to be skeptical about ethics than any other single thing. Cultural
Relativism, as it has been called, challenges our ordinary belief in the objectivity and
universality of moral truth. It says, in effect, that there is not such thing as universal truth in
ethics; there are only the various cultural codes, and nothing more. Moreover, our own code
has no special status; it is merely one among many.
As we shall see, this basic idea is really a compound of several different thoughts. It is important to separate the various elements of
the theory because, on analysis, some parts turn out to be correct, while others seem to be mistaken. As a beginning, we may
distinguish the following claims, all of which have been made by cultural relativists:
Different societies have different moral codes.
There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code better than another.
The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many.
There is no "universal truth" in ethics; that is, there are no moral truths that hold for all peoples at all times.
The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society; that is, if the
moral code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at
least within that society.
It is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the conduct of other peoples. We
should adopt an attitude of tolerance toward the practices of other cultures.
Although it may seem that these six propositions go naturally together, they are independent of one another, in the sense that some
of them might be false even if others are true. In what follows, we will try to identify what is correct in Cultural Relativism, but we
will also be concerned to expose what is mistaken about it.
5-Permutation do both-only a method of the AFF and the NEG can truly
solve and is the only real world answer to this complex problem
Stanford University, No date
(Standard University, Relativism, no date web.stanford.edu/~allenw/webpapers/Relativism.doc,
Accessed: 7/10/14, RH)
The moral problems cultural relativism is trying to address are certainly real ones. In some cases it is simply not
obvious what we should do (or even think) when confronted by practices of another culture
that offend our moral sense and contradict our deepest convictions. Some things that
people do to one another in different cultures are quite evidently the results
of wretched superstitions and the brutally unjust distributions of power
and authority that are traditional in those societies. On the other hand, we can often
see that in other cultures certain actions have a different meaning, and we are quite
aware that we lack the capacity to understand and evaluate the practices of alien
societies. If we do nothing in the face of evident moral evil, we completely
forfeit our integrity; but if we act on the basis of convictions held from our admittedly
incomplete perspective, then we run the risk of arrogantly setting ourselves up as
infallible moral judges of people who may know more than we do about what is being
judged. If traditional cultures in other parts of the world are changing so that they
become more like modern Western culture in ways we approve, should we applaud and
support this process as the victory of moral progress, or should we deplore, regret and
oppose these changes because they amount to the violent extinction of that culture's
priceless heritage? What is objectionable about cultural relativism is that it pretends to have found a simple, general, tidy
and unambiguous answer to questions where any answer of that description is almost certainly wrong.
6-Cultural relativism is good-its an ethical belief based off of ones culture.
All cultures see things differently but the Makah tribe believes that their
traditions are ethical and key to their culture.
Stanford University, No date
(Standard University, Relativism, no date web.stanford.edu/~allenw/webpapers/Relativism.doc,
Accessed: 7/10/14, RH)
Cultural relativism: Different cultures have different ethical standards and the standards
by which the conduct of any individual should be measured are the mores of the
community to which that individual belongs.
5. Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism, taken in this sense, deserves a separate discussion all to itself. For it is not really a form of relativism at all in the
sense we have been using that term. If taken as merely a collectivized form of ethical relativism, then it inherits all the other
problems of ethical relativism. But as just stated, cultural relativism does not deny that ethical beliefs are
true. It is a view about which ones are true and why.
Those who subscribe to cultural relativism about ethics are often trying to make a point
that is both correct and important. Ethics or morality itself can, in a certain sense, be seen as a social or cultural
phenomenon. The ethical beliefs by which most people guide their lives and measure
themselves tend to come in systems that are conjoined with cultural practices and
acquired by individuals as part of their socialization. Systems of ethical belief differ
from culture to culture in significant ways that anthropologists may study with profit. When we deal
with people in or from cultures different from our own, not only prudence but also
moral decency requires that we attend to these differences and consider them with care
and sensitivity in light of the respect we owe the members of other cultures simply as
human beings. If that were what cultural relativism or ethical relativism meant, then it would be an (objectively, absolutely)
true doctrine relating to the sociology and anthropology of moral beliefs, and to some of the practical implications of those studies. It
also would have nothing to do with the relativism discussed in the preceding pages.
But sometimes the people who rightly insist on the truths just stated think those truths have the substantive normative implication
that whatever any culture believes is right is right for members of that culture. This is the position I have just named cultural
relativism. In effect, cultural relativism holds that there is a single, absolute,
objectively right answer to any moral question about the rightness or
wrongness of a given action: If you want to know whether an action is right or
wrong, simply find out what the agent's culture believes about it. If they think it is right,
then it is right; if they think it is wrong then it is wrong.
Anybody who holds that there are (absolute) ethical truths must admit that the rightness or wrongness of an act is relative to the
circumstances in which it is performed. Because people's circumstances differ, what is (absolutely,
objectively) right for one person, might be different from what is (absolutely, objectively) right for
another. For instance, even the most extreme moral absolutist might very well hold that it is right for Joe to have sex with Joe's
wife but wrong for Sam to have sex with Joe's wife. Such cases of "right for you, wrong for me" obviously do not support any form of
ethical relativism. Cultural relativism, as we are now considering it, could be understood in a similar
way, as simply a special view about how moral right and wrong vary with the agent's
circumstances. It holds that (absolute, objective) moral rightness and wrongness depend on the prevailing culture's beliefs
about a given action. If you want to know the objectively right answer to the question whether
a given act is right or wrong, just find out what the agent's culture believes on that
question: their belief determines what is objectively true.
Accordingly, a moral judgment such as "Joe's killing Sam was wrong" would be like the judgment "It is raining" in that both have
implicit reference to a context determining their objective truth. "It is raining" always means that it is raining at a certain time and
place (e.g. in Fresno at 6 pm on September 12, 2002). "Joe's killing Sam was wrong" means that Joe's killing of Sam was wrong in a
certain culture at a certain time (e.g. in white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Eastern seaboard American culture early in the 21st century,
where acts like Joe's act of killing are widely disapproved). Cultural relativism then holds that what a
culture believes about an act determines the truth about its objective rightness or
wrongness in something like the way that spatio-temporal location determines the truth
about the weather conditions obtaining then and there.
1AR Cultural Relativism K
There are good and bad things about cultural relativism-thats why the
perm solves
Azadboni, 2012
(Ramezan Mahdavi Azadboni, Assistant Professor at the University of Mazandaran Head of Department of Theology Babolsar in
Iran, Cultural Relativism and the Realistic Approach to Moral Values, January 2012, PDF, Accessed: 7/11/14, RH)
The strength of cultural relativism is that it allows us to hold fast to our moral intuitions
without having to be judgmental about other societies that do not share those intuitions.
If we reject cultural relativism then we face a difficulty: if we are to be
consistent about our moral beliefs then it seems that we ought to condemn those past
societies that have not conformed to our moral code and perhaps even seek to impose
our moral code on those present societies that do not already accept it. This, though,
smacks of imperialism, so makes us uneasy.
Cultural relativism allows us to evade this difficulty. On cultural relativism, our moral code
applies only to our own society, so there is no pressure on us to hold others
to our moral standards at all. On cultural relativism, we can say quite consistently that equality in the work-
place is a moral necessity in our society but is inappropriate elsewhere around the globe. In an age where tolerance is increasingly
being seen as the most important virtue of all, this can seem to be an attractive position.
This strength of cultural relativism, however, is also its weakness. Cultural relativism excuses us from judging the moral status of
other cultures in cases where doing so seems to be inappropriate, but it also renders us powerless to judge the moral status of other
cultures in cases where doing so seems to be necessary. Faced with a culture that deems slavery morally acceptable, it seems to be
appropriate to judge that society to be morally inferior to our own. Faced with a culture that deems ethnic cleansing morally
acceptable, it seems to be appropriate to condemn that society as morally abhorrent.
In order to make such judgments as these, however, we need to be able to invoke an ethical standard that is not culturally relative. In
order to make a cross-cultural moral comparison, we need a cross-cultural moral standard, which is precisely the kind of moral
standard that cultural relativism claims does not exist.
There are different moral codes-no one is right, no one is wrong
Rachel, 1999
(James Rachel, graduated from Mercer University, received Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he taught at
the University of Richmond, New York University, University of Miami, Duke University, and the University of Alabama at
Birmingham, The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, 1999,
http://faculty.uca.edu/rnovy/rachels--cultural%20relativism.htm, Accessed: 7/11/14, RH)
Cultural Relativism is a theory about the nature of morality. At first blush it seems quite plausible. However, like all such theories, it
may be evaluated by subjecting it to rational analysis; and when we analyze Cultural Relativism we find that it is not so plausible as it
first appears to be.
The first thing we need to notice is that at the heart of Cultural Relativism there is a certain form of argument. The strategy used by
cultural relativists is to argue from facts about the differences between cultural outlooks to a conclusion about the status of morality.
Thus we are invited to accept this reasoning:
The Greeks believed it was wrong to eat the dead, whereas the Callatians believed it was
right to eat the dead.
Therefore, eating the dead is neither objectively fight nor objectively wrong. It is merely a
matter of opinion, which varies from culture to culture.
Or, alternatively:
The Eskimos see nothing wrong with infanticide, whereas Americans believe infanticide
is immoral.
Therefore, infanticide is neither objectively right nor objectively wrong. It is merely a matter
of opinion, which varies from culture to culture.
Clearly, these arguments are variations of one fundamental idea They are both special cases of a more general argument, which says:
Different cultures have different moral codes.
Therefore, there is no objective "truth" in morality. Right and wrong are only
matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture.