Expoiting Natives to Sell Fur

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Forwarded Message

 

The article below describes a pro fur ad campaign

highlighting fur trapping carried out by Native

Americans in Canada. It is sickening that the fur

industry is exploiting Native Americans to sell a few

fur coats.

 

Native trappers produce less than 1% of the fur that

is sold worldwide. Furthermore, fur farms produce fox

skins in huge numbers and this depresses the value of

arctic foxes that Native Americans trap. If the

furriers truely carry about Native Americans then they

should stop raising animals in captivity, thereby

boosting prices for the Native Americans.

 

Lastly, many of these Native American communities have

grocery stores, snowmobiles and Super Nintendo's.

That does not sound like a subsistence based culture

to me.

 

Then of course there is the question of what right

does one have to put an animal through prolonged

suffering, in a steel jawed leghold trap, just to

produce a luxury product?

 

Send letters to:

 

Letters

The Wall Street Journal

200 Liberty St.

New York, NY 10281-1003

Fax: 212-416-2658

letter.editor (edit.wsj.com)

 

May 8, 2001

Americas

Canada's Fur Industry Ad Campaign

Centers on Plight of Native Trappers

By ELENA CHERNEY

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

MONTREAL -- The animal-rights movement has scored one

success after another persuading consumers to shun

furs. But in Canada at least, the fur industry thinks

it may have finally found the perfect allies for

fighting back: Indians.

In a new marketing campaign, the Fur Council of

Canada, an industry group, is pitching fur as a means

of supporting Canada's native people, who trap many of

the animals that are turned into coats. At the same

time, some Fur Council members are joining forces to

launch a new brand that they are promoting in glossy

U.S. fashion magazines.

For the fur industry, help can't come too soon.

Besides coping with animal-rights activists,

manufacturers here have been undercut by low-cost

producers such as China. And a few years of mild

winter temperatures in North America left many

companies desperate.

" The business went downhill and never came back, " says

Betty Balaila, Fur Council treasurer and a partner in

Zuki Furs, a maker based in Montreal.

Canadian fur-garment exports increased last year,

thanks to the global economic boom at the time, but

they had dwindled for years and were still below the

level of five years ago, the Fur Council says.

To strike back at the activists, the Fur Council last

February started placing full-page ads in Canadian

newspapers featuring a native trapper stretching a

pelt with leather thongs over a wooden frame. " When

you buy and wear fur, you are supporting aboriginal

and other Canadians who live in some of the most

remote regions of the country, " the ad reads. " Many

Canadian families rely on beaver, muskrat and other

fur animals for food as well as income. "

The group plans to place the ads internationally in

the fall, says Alan Herscovici, the Fur Council's

executive vice president.

The campaign has the Virginia-based animal-rights

group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, up

in arms. While PETA doesn't oppose sustenance

hunting, the fur trade " is a sophisticated industry, "

says the group's president, Ingrid Newkirk. " The

furriers in Toronto and Montreal are not living like

First Nations people. They are the profiteers. "

Only about 40% of Canada's approximately 70,000

trappers are natives, Canada's native affairs ministry

says. Trappers as a whole account for only half of

the pelts Canada exports annually, while fur farmers

generate the other half, the Fur Council's Mr.

Herscovici says.

But animal-rights campaigns threaten more than

trappers' income, says Thomas Coon, president of the

Cree Trappers Association. " It's our way of life

that's at stake, " says the official, who represents

about 3,500 native trappers in Northern Quebec.

In recent years, pelt prices have been so low that

James A. Gunner, a

50-year-old trapper and member of the Cree tribe who

speaks little English, says he must sometimes work as

a manual laborer to support his family. " I am hurt by

the antifur campaign, " he says through a translator.

" When you've never been to school ... you wonder, how

are you going to survive in the future? "

If telling consumers they're supporting native

trappers doesn't revive sales, furriers hope a new

line of trendy fashions will do the trick. To shake

the sometimes-dowdy image of Canadian fur fashions, a

dozen manufacturers joined to hire a Parisian

designer, Richard H. (he doesn't use a surname).

Their new line, FurWorks, includes smaller pieces,

such as jackets and vests, dyed in unconventional

colors. The manufacturers share marketing costs and

promote FurWorks as a single brand. Sorota, a

buyer for her brother's New York store, Peter

Elliot/Women, placed orders for a sheared-beaver

duffel coat. " It is absolutely a dynamite piece, " she

says of the pumpkin-colored garment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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