What boundary? What whale? Whose responsibility? - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 165

Figure 9.3 Jamie James, Mowachaht/Muchalaht Fisheries Manager and Tsu-xiit , October
2004.
Source: Photo by Suzanne Chisholm (used with permission).
received, a temporary DFO permit that allowed their Fisheries Officer, Jamie James,
to watch over Tsu-xiit during the fall of 2004 (see Figure 9.3) . During these months
James' full-time job was to “whale-sit” Tsu-xiit , going out to the waters every day.
In 2005, Jamie set up camp in the remote waters, where his sole job was to socialize
with and redirect Luna's “friendly behavior”.
But these boundaries remained fuzzy. Although the DFO reissued a permit to
the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation in the summer of 2005, a stipulation was
attached indicating they could not “initiate contact” with Tsu-xiit . After those initial
DFO permits expired, however, no further permits were allocated. The decision
to once again make socializing with Tsu-xiit “illegal” in the eyes of the Canadian
government reflects power dynamics related to defining categories and privileging
worldviews that materialize in boundary-setting (Sundberg, 2011).