Kia ora- There can be no exaggeration of the warmth, kindness and skill of our Nelson hosts. We can only express our gratitude for being allowed to share the experience, which set the stage for nearly three additional weeks of travel.

I should like to make several comments about the Nelson sessions and our subsequent stay. I sensed the meeting occurred at two levels.

The first dealt with the role of whales in local cultures, health problems, legal issues, economics, indigenous knowledge - essentially the facts of whaling and its impact on people and whaling communities. By title, each of the talks could easily have fit into any of the scientific meetings I normally attend. However, many of the talks were richly emotive, demonstrating a deep respect for both human beings and the whales. The many cultures gathered at Nelson shared a common bond -the whale- which brought the participants together in a spiritual communion that transcended the typical tones of scientific meetings.

At the second level: in much the way the green community adopted the whale as a symbol of man's destructive role in the environment, the whale has become a symbol for indigenous and other small communities and their striving for respect and equality from the world's power structure.

The term "cultural imperialism" has been used to describe the imposition of a sweeping anti-whaling agenda, largely by an industrial west, on indigenous and small-scale whalers. The issue of sustainability and the absence of proof of the whales' superior intelligence is irrelevant to the argument. Whaling is simply described as barbaric- ergo the whalers are barbarians. This view and its resulting actions have generated a bond among the whalers- a bond that appears to reach beyond whaling to focus on the issue of human rights. This theme permeated most of the Nelson talks, whether they were from native people chastising their countries government, or impacted whalers of Japan, Greenland, the Faroes and Norway being critical of the United States, New Zealand and other countries. The New Zealand government ban, which prevented their expert staff from attending the meeting, only exacerbated the view that the Maori hosts were treated with disrespect, particularly in the face of attendance by high level officials of other governments.

The heated words of the Prime Minister, however, did not prepare us for the joy of travelling in her country. Kiwis, without exception, were unbelievably helpful, kind, welcoming and did everything possible to make us feel at home- even when some of them learned the reason for coming to their country. None could be described as barbarians- despite their strong endorsement of an industry that thrives on the barbaric practice of separating baby sheep from their attentive (and I assume, loving) mothers. -Ka kite ano