Conviction is a quality I admire in people. I respect the conviction of many people in the Middle East who feel they are being encroached on by the values of outsiders, and who want to take back control of their destiny. There are many good people in Iraq, Israel and elsewhere in the region working hard to maintain their identity.

But when that devotion blinds a person into pursuing their cause at any cost-when Hamas sends out suicide-bombers, when Osama Bin Laden orders the use of passenger jets as bombs-it can no longer be called conviction. It's extremism.

And on April 30, Paul Watson and his Sea Shepherd Conservation Society used the tragic deaths of two young Yupik Alaskans as fully loaded jetliners to smash into the side of the whaling industry.

Eleven-year old cousins Yolanda and Leonard Nowpakahok, from Gambell, Alaska, drowned on April 27. The whaling boat Yolanda's father Jason was captaining capsized, and Nowpakahok and James Uglowook also lost their lives in the accident.

Inuit know all too well that accidents happen. Our perilous existence in the Arctic means we face much misfortune, and the loss of many loved-ones. We even have a word to help in healing for these occasions-ajurnarmat: "It cannot be helped."

Nowpakahok had been doing what he knew best. He was continuing the millennia-old tradition of hunting bowhead whales, a tradition that helped some of his ancestors to move east thousands of years ago to become Canada's Inuit. And he was carrying out a basic duty: educating his young daughter and nephew about their ancient Yupik roots.

But just three days after their tragic deaths, Yolanda and Leonard were used by Paul Watson in a most appalling way. Watson's society issued a news release headlined, "Alaskan Whalers Kill Two Children and an Endangered Whale."

Watson's blind conviction to "saving" the whales kept him from seeing that he was insulting not just the Nowpakahoks (Yolanda was already an avid hunter and an excellent marksperson), but an entire circumpolar community of Inuit who all struggle to maintain a connection with the ways of the past.

Watson and his society's stated goal is to protect the world's marine wildlife, not to protect children from accidents. But his at-any-cost strategy to attract funding permitted him to use this grave tragedy to advance his agenda.

Watson used the Gambell accident not to shed light on local safety concerns, but to cast a pallid gloom on international whaling, and to blind others into helping his cause. In his release, Watson drew a comparison between the reaction to the Gambell accident and the explosive reaction we would see if two 11-year olds died on a commercial Alaskan crabbing boat.

But a more informed parallel would be to consider the reaction to a child dying in a school bus crash. Jason Nowpakahok did not take his daughter and nephew on a boat to kill them anymore than a British Columbian father puts his daughter on a school bus to kill her.

Despite all safety measures, despite the training of drivers, despite the checking of brakes and fuel-lines and nuts and bolts-despite all of these precautions, school buses carrying children to their education sometimes crash. We don't blame the father for having put his daughter on the bus in the morning. Ajurnarmat.

For Watson to use such an accident to further his mission is odious extremism. What he did is despicable, and may have caused irreparable damage to his organization and, unfortunately, to the worldwide effort to "save the whales."

Meanwhile, our thoughts are with the families of the children who passed away, and the community. This column and a letter was sent in May to the community of Gambell, Alaska.