Before there was a whale hunt; before seven members of the Makah--a small tribe of Native Americans situated at the very northwestern tip of the United States--climbed into a canoe and paddled out into the ocean that first was calm and then swelled like a man drunk with power, oblivious to the paddlers who were singing and praying and carrying a harpoon and a rifle capable of killing an elephant, much less a whale; before the whale came; before that canoe and the men in the canoe paddled after it and a harpoon was launched and the whale dragged the canoe and a bullet was fired and the whale was killed and then nearly lost but then recovered; before the whale was towed into Neah Bay, the tiny and tired little fishing village that is for all intents and purposes the capital of the Makah reservation; before the people of the town rejoiced because it had been so many years--an entire generation, in fact--since a whale had been hunted and killed and because the hunting of the whale is what has for thousands of years made the Makah the Makah, what identified them among the tribes that live along the northwest coast of Canada and the rest of America as the tribe that hunts the whale; before the party that ensued, beore hundreds of aboriginal people came from Canada and all over the Western United States to Neah Bay to sing songs and give thanks and eat whale; beore all that, there were editorials: