Lummis call orcas “qwe lhol mechen,” the people who live beneath the sea. Kinley says they always refer to them as people.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur history isn’t written,” she said, \u201cit’s told by stories. And in our stories, we say ‘qwe lhol mechen’ are our relatives that put on their regalia and go under the water.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prior to the \u201860s and \u201870s, and films like \u201cFree Willy\u201d and \u201cBlackfish,\u201d many non-tribal residents of the Northwest did not feel such kinship with the now widely-loved creatures, and few protested when they were captured and sent to marine parks.<\/p>\n
Environmental journalist and author Lynda Mapes<\/a> has written extensively about orcas in the Northwest, which many people thought of as menaces.<\/p>\n \u201cFishermen commonly shot them,” she said, \u201cbecause they didn’t want them raiding their nets.\u201d<\/p>\n Those fears had started to shift by the mid-1970s, when the business of displaying orcas in theme parks was thriving.<\/p>\n SeaWorld was running a television ad that featured a mock tribal narrator who talked about \u201cstories told for centuries about visits from powerful and deadly creatures from another world, feared by everything in their domain.\u201d<\/p>\n SeaWorld had worked around loopholes in the Marine Mammal Protection Act, passed by Congress in 1972, to keep capturing orca calves, mainly in waters bordering Washington and British Columbia known as the Salish Sea.<\/p>\n Then, on March 7, 1976, a SeaWorld crew trapped a pod of nomadic orcas in a place called Budd Inlet on south Puget Sound, in view of the state capitol in Olympia.<\/p>\n Ralph Munro worked in the governor\u2019s office, and happened to be there, sailing with his then-wife Karen and some friends.<\/p>\n Lynda Mapes later interviewed Munro<\/a> about that day for The Seattle Times.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a whole pod of whales coming towards us,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were swimming really fast and on the surface. Then we realized that there was a boat chasing them.”<\/p>\n Munro said the crews used a seaplane, boats, and explosives to corral the animals.<\/p>\n \u201cThen the whales realized they were out of space, and they turned and made a run for it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd by that time, the big fishing boat, Pacific Maid, had set a set net across the bay, and so when the whales went back, they ran right square into that set net. As they closed the net ends, it really got gruesome.\u201d<\/p>\n The crew separated calves from their families. Munro said what he saw and heard that day haunted him for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could hear the whales scream to each other, back and forth,\u201d he said. \u201cI can still hear it sometimes. It was awful. It was just disgusting and sick.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Karen Munro Ellick<\/a> remembers staying on the water for hours to witness the details of the captures, and what happened next.<\/p>\n \u201cRalph and I talked about it on the way back, and said, ‘We better call our friends in the press,'” she said. \u201cAnd the next morning, Ralph went out to get the paper real early and said, ‘We’ve won round one. It’s on page one of the Post Intelligencer.’\u201d<\/p>\n Ralph Munro also called his boss, Governor Evans, and the state attorney general, Slade Gorton, who helped spearhead a lawsuit against SeaWorld.<\/p>\n Amazingly perhaps \u2014 at least by today\u2019s standards \u2014 a judge ruled against SeaWorld in just over two weeks. On March 23, 1976, the theme park owners agreed to stop capturing orcas in Washington state.<\/p>\n Years later, Munro remembered it as a groundbreaking moment. <\/p>\n \u201cThis was all new territory,\u201d he said. \u201cTrying to save a whale? We won. And it was the last whale capture in America.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The Budd Inlet Six, members of a species now known as Bigg\u2019s orcas, were released.<\/p>\n The whales were relatively rare visitors to Puget Sound back then, since the state had promoted killing off their preferred prey, seals and sea lions. Now, their population is thriving.<\/p>\n![\"caption:](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/f4efe02d31f7946f9404a67be31b134d.jpg\"\/)
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