INDEPTH: EAGLE SLAUGHTER
The American Eagle
CBC News Online | February 2,
2006
Originally broadcast on Times Seven June
10, 2005.
 A British Columbia police officer examines the
remains of several bald eagles discovered in North
Vancouver.
The golden eagle of the American Plains was
almost wiped out last century, thanks to egg-thinning
pesticides, loss of habitat and government-sanctioned "vermin
hunts." Its cousin, the bald eagle (found more along
coastlines), was threatened too.
Both the United States
and Canada responded by making the eagles, the embodiment of
potent religious and national symbolism, protected species;
both the U.S. and Canada enacted tough laws carrying stiff
penalties for anyone caught threatening the birds.
 Earlier this year, conservation officers in British
Columbia discovered the remains of scores of dead and
mutilated bald eagle carcasses.
The eagle
feathers are guarded like gold; a single feather can fetch as
much $100 on the black market.
David Hancock, a
biologist, has studied eagles and native issues for more than
50 years. For Hancock, the B.C. eagle slaughter wasn't so much
a "whodunit" mystery, as a mystery of "who wants
it?
"Where were these eagles' parts headed, and why?
Investigators here said the parts were bound for native
Americans in the southwestern United States for religious and
ceremonial use… We thought we'd try to find out ourselves, to
see if we could follow the eagle parts
pipeline."
According to Hancock, the eagle parts
pipeline feeds a commercial market – not a religious
one.
"The suggestion that the bald eagles' feathers and
their parts, their heads and their feet, are being used for
religious purposes is a crock," he insists. "The tradition was
always that the headdresses, the bustles, these were the
feathers of golden eagles."
 Eagle feathers are guarded like gold at the
repository; they’re worth as much $100 for a single feather on
the black market. (Times Seven)
One of the top powwows in North
America occurs at Stanford University, just south of San
Francisco. For three days, people flock to the Stanford Powwow
for singing, dancing and drumming.
But the event is
more social than spiritual. Thousands of dollars in prizes are
at stake. The spectacular outfits worn by participants count
almost as much as the performances. Eagle feathers are
everywhere. Jerome Tsinnajinnie, 25, dances with feathers
given to him by his father. He's in the Men's Northern
Traditional competition, despite the fact he's from the
southwest, and Navajo.
"This style of dance is not
really my original style," he says. "This comes from the
Plains Indians up north, South Dakota into Canada. My style of
dance we do for ceremonies, which is totally different to
this. But this is what I grew up as, because now it's all over
Indian country."
Like many competitors, Tsinnajinnie
has embraced what's becoming a pan-Indian look: the quest to
be the dancer with the most eagle feathers.
Matt Snipp
is also in the crowd. He's Cherokee and Choctaw – and the
chair of Native American Studies at Stanford. Snipp refutes
the notion that native Americans would ever buy eagle feathers
on the black market – the feathers are simply viewed with such
esteemed reverence, that's not a possibility:
"Indian
people are easy targets. They possess these [feathers];
they're not shy about showing people that they own them, that
they have them. This is part of their traditional culture…
They're the most immediate people to blame, but I think the
people who have done that, I think aren't aware of the extent
of the trade you have in Indian artifacts in Europe as well as
in this country."
German Dziebel, a doctoral student in
the Department of Anthropology at Stanford, has been exploring
the lesser-known side of the European love affair with North
American Indian culture. Dziebel says powwows are not
celebrations confined to North America's borders. There are
Russian, Polish and German powwows, attended by what Dziebel
calls "Euro-Indians" or "Indianists" – Europeans seeking a
simpler life. He's quick to add that these Europeans are not
seeking illicit eagle feathers:
"They are poor in
eastern Europe. They don't really have much money, you know.
They try to make all their attire with their own hands… So it
also has to have a spiritual component to it; if you want to
be a real Indian, you have to do everything with your own
hands… trade is not the best way to do [that]."
 An eagle carcass is processed at the National
Eagle Repository, near Denver, Colorado. ( Times
Seven)
The service then parcels out the pieces to
native Americans (the only Americans who can legally possess
them) who have signed up on the repository's waiting list.
Most applicants want a whole bird, and they'll wait
three-and-a-half years to get it.
It's that long wait
that's likely fuelling the eagle parts black market, says Gary
Mowad, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's special agent in the Rocky
Mountains region. Mowad points the blame back towards the
powwow circuit:
"From the cultural and the religion
aspect, we don't have an issue. But for the folks who are
willing to set their cultural and religious beliefs aside and
actually unlawfully purchase eagle feathers and eagle parts in
hopes of enhancing their chances to win money, well, then we
certainly do have an issue."
B.C. eagle expert David
Hancock says the problem begins back at the National Eagle
Repository. "The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service collected all
the dead carcasses of both golden eagles and bald eagles, and
they then turned these over to the natives," he says. "The
natives have now started to incorporate bald eagles into these
big headdresses. Now this was not traditional, it has nothing
to do with religious ceremony, but it has created an
artificial demand for bald eagle feathers.
"Now,
unfortunately, here on the West Coast, our bald eagles are
being shot to provide feathers for the powwow
circuit."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agrees
that may be the case, though it is in a bind: it needed to
find some way to satisfy the demand for eagle feathers; using
bald eagle parts seemed like a natural solution. But now its
admit a bottleneck has been created – supply simply can't meet
demand.
Meanwhile, there's no shortage of native and
non-native buyers eager to fork over cash for eagle parts.
That means bald eagles in Canada, the masters of the sky,
aren't safe from one dangerous predator: anyone bent on making
a quick buck.
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