Sea Otters

Ravalli, Richard

doi:10.2307/j.ctv80cbq5

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Indigenous peoples across the region—including Ainu, Kamchadals, Aleut, Sugpiaq, Alutiiq, Tlingit, Haida, Nuu-chah-nulth, Makah, and groups south to Baja California—have hunted sea otters over thousands of years (Corbett et al 2008; Fedje et al 2005; McKechnie and Wigen 2011; Ravalli 2018; Rick et al 2011; Salomon et al 2011, 2015). Because sea otters have thick, luxurious fur, they were the primary target of the maritime fur trade that originated in northeast Asia in the fifteenth century and that accelerated with the Russians moving eastward to North America following Bering's 1741 expedition (Jones 2014; Ravalli 2018:4). Commercial exploitation resulted in the serial depletion of sea otters across the North Pacific coast and near extirpation of the species (Bodkin 2015; Lensink 1962:9–15).…”

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Did Tlingit Ancestors Eat Sea Otters? Addressing Intellectual Property and Cultural Heritage through Zooarchaeology

Moss

2020

Am. Antiq.

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The maritime fur trade caused the extirpation of sea otters from southeast Alaska. In the 1960s, sea otters were reintroduced, and their numbers have increased. Now, sea otters are competing with people for what have become commercially important invertebrates. After having been absent for more than a century, the reentry of this keystone species has unsettled people. Although some communities perceive sea otters as a threat to their livelihoods, others view their return as restoration of the marine ecosystem. The federal Marine Mammal Protection Act authorizes any Alaska Native to harvest sea otters for subsistence provided that the harvest is not wasteful. Some people are seeking to define “traditional” Tlingit use of sea otters as not only using their pelts but consuming them as food, but some Tlingit maintain they never ate sea otters. This project analyzes the largest precontact archaeological assemblage of sea otter bones in southeast Alaska, with the benefit of insights gained from observing a Tlingit hunter skin a sea otter to infer that Tlingit ancestors hunted sea otters primarily for pelts. The extent to which other Indigenous peoples of the North Pacific consumed sea otters as food deserves investigation, especially as sea otters recolonize their historic range.

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Did Tlingit Ancestors Eat Sea Otters? Addressing Intellectual Property and Cultural Heritage through Zooarchaeology

Moss

2020

Am. Antiq.

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Sea Otters and the Maritime Fur Trade

Loshbaugh

2021

Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Sea Otters and Polar Bears

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China and Japan’s Northern Frontier: Chinese Merchants in Nineteenth-Century Hokkaido

Ivings¹,

Qiu²

2019

Canadian Journal of History

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This article examines the role of Chinese migrants in the development of Hokkaido in the last years of the Tokugawa period and the early Meiji period. The southern part of Hokkaido was the northern frontier of the Japanese realm until the mid-nineteenth century when one of its principal ports, Hakodate, was opened to international trade, and the island as a whole was opened to unrestricted Japanese colonial settlement. Hokkaido’s population ballooned from an estimated 58,000 in 1869 to 1.7 million by 1912 as settlers flooded in. Yet, despite this remarkable population transfer, Hokkaido’s settler colonial history is little known to scholars outside of Japan. Even less known is the role played by Chinese migrants and the China market in Hokkaido’s transformation. Hokkaido’s main economic activity, trade in marine products, developed rapidly (thus luring settlers) based on expanding demand for Hokkaido produce in southern Japan and the distant Yangtze delta. As such, Hakodate developed a thriving Chinese merchant community at least a decade before the Qing established formal trade relations with Japan in 1871–73. This article argues that Chinese migrant merchants were able to dominate Hokkaido’s foreign trade in this period due to a combination of their mercantile talent, market power, and association with (not subordination to) Western firms, which gave them extraterritorial rights. The demand for Hokkaido marine products in China was an important impetus to the expansion of Japanese capital and economic activity into Hokkaido’s frontier areas and hence the merchants involved in this trade played an indirect role in Japanese colonization. This article also briefly touches upon histories of Chinese sailors, agricultural labourers, translators, and technicians who worked in an around Hokkaido in the Meiji period.

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Sea Otters

Cited by 3 publications

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Did Tlingit Ancestors Eat Sea Otters? Addressing Intellectual Property and Cultural Heritage through Zooarchaeology

Did Tlingit Ancestors Eat Sea Otters? Addressing Intellectual Property and Cultural Heritage through Zooarchaeology

Sea Otters and the Maritime Fur Trade

China and Japan’s Northern Frontier: Chinese Merchants in Nineteenth-Century Hokkaido

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