You didn't hear because you weren't there.  My family was.  My family was there for the before, the during, the after.  My wife was on the beach singing as the whale was brought in.  Her cousin has traveled many times to testify in front of the IWC to try and protect their treaty rights. The rifle was also used as it was more humane than to prolong the suffering with more harpoon hits.  But who are you to define what their culture and tradition are?  My family comes from whalers. Had the colonists not overhunted the whale making the Makah decide to volunteer to stop hunting, they would have moved on to new technologies along with every other type of hunting.  Anything that could be done to make it faster and safer; and it would still have been traditional. Here are some websites that documented the threats by Sea Shepard and others: http://www.historylink.org/File/5301 http://umich.edu/~snre492/Jones/makah.htm