PETA crosses line with Olympic anti-sealing campaign: Inuit leader

A prominent animal welfare group's campaign linking the 2010 Winter Olympics with the Canadian seal hunt is offensive, an Inuit leader says.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has launched a website called Olympic Shame 2010, features the stylized inukshuk — a figure of a person made out of stones, traditionally used by the Inuit — that was created as the symbol for the upcoming Vancouver Winter Games. In an animation, though, the inukshuk is swinging a club at a seal in a pool of blood.

As well, another animation on the site also shows Olympic mascots with seal blood dripping from their hands and mouths, wielding Stone-Age clubs.

Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit organization, said the campaign insults traditional hunting culture, and is filled with misinformation.

"It just goes to show you to what extent these animal right activists will go to try and convince people that this is somehow wrong," Simon told CBC News.

Simon said she wants to know how the meat Inuit use for food is any different from meat used by other cultures.

"Domesticated animals that are being killed in very inhumane ways — they don't attack those. They're very selective in how they pander to the public emotion," said Simon, adding that Europeans who oppose the Canadian seal hunt are hypocritical.

"These are organizations that will do anything to fundraise for their own activities and they're very selective in what they attack," she said.

"They live in countries where there [is] culling because they don't hunt seals, they cull them instead."

Herb Jacques, who heads the Inuit community government in Makkovik, on Labrador's northern coast, said he was outraged when he saw the PETA site, showing bloodthirsty hunters chasing seal pups.

"To me it's a mockery. It's degrading to the Inuit," he said.

"That's not the way of life. The Inuit depend on the seals for food purposes. To me, that's giving the wrong message."

Simon said she has written to PETA, asking that the organization not use Inuit people in its campaigns.