What does it say about us, that we treat them this way? The tortured life of Tokitae | Opinion

The Pacific Northwest lost one of its most iconic and tragic residents in its long Salish history. An orca named Lolita, known to the Lummi Nation as Tokitae, was held captive for 57 years, ever since her family was attacked by abductors in Penn Cove off Coupeville, Washington in 1970. The abductor responsible for Tokitae’s tortured life is Ted Griffin who, from the heights of amorality, commented upon her death that he had no regrets.

He sold her into slavery for $6,000, after which she was kept in a tank the volume of a bathtub relative to her size and forcibly trained as a performer at the Miami Seaquarium, where she died last week of renal failure.

The Lummi Nation of the Pacific Northwest, which has fought for her release for years along with many animal protection groups, knows something about families ripped apart from loved ones. Christian missionaries separated Lummi children from their parents in the 19th Century when the Lummi were removed from the San Juan Islands and sent to a reservation near Bellingham, Washington. The Lummi revere the orca and for years advocated for her return to home waters.

In one of the most eloquent statements of man’s respect for the orca, Raynell Morris, an elder of the Lummi Indian Tribe in Washington and board member of Friends of Toki said, “Until she’s returned to her family, our family is broken. When she comes home, the web of life will be repaired and restored, and our people will be repaired and restored.”

Who’s responsible for Toki’s mistreatment?

Who imprisoned and eventually killed this majestic creature? Don’t fall for the simplistic answer that it was the Miami Seaquarium and leave it at that. That lets the business owners of the aquarium over the years off the hook for their insensitive and cruel decision to hold Lolita captive in a tank 80 feet long, 35 feet wide and 20 feet deep, hardly enough room for a 7000-pound, 20-foot-long Orca to maneuver.

For years, the Arthur Hertz family, who owned Seaquarium from 1960 until 2014, paraded around Miami as the charitable heroes of the town, throwing their wealth gained from Lolita’s performances on donations to education, health and other community initiatives. Andrew Hertz, who succeeded his father as CEO of the company, said the release of Lolita was not even up for discussion. He was so clueless about the injustice of holding her captive that he once responded to a plea to release her by saying that he and Lolita “are about the same age, so when I’m having a bad day, I look to her, and if she’s doing OK, I know I can’t complain.” Hertz’s bad day was not confined to a small tank for over 50 years and having to perform for his food.

The Hertz family sold Seaquarium to Palace Entertainment which was in charge of Tokitae when a 2021 report was released by the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. A marine researcher on the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee called it “one of the worst inspection reports” she had ever seen on a U.S. marine mammal facility. The report documented that Tokitae was underfed and undernourished and suffered from wounds incurred when forced to do tricks no longer tolerated at her age. It is no exaggeration to say that Palace Entertainment participated in the death of Tokitae.

A Mexican entertainment company, The Dolphin Company bought the Seaquarium in 2022 and announced its intention to release Lolita. Don’t throw any bouquets at a company that names itself after the animals it holds in captivity and uses and abuses as entertainment tools.

Owners like Hertz, Palace Entertainment and now The Dolphin Company are propped up by a free enterprise system with few guardrails to protect animals from the kind of egregious behavior that allows these owners to blow off serious concerns over the life and health of orcas.

Reforming whale captivity

Although there are now federal protections such as the Endangered Species Act that in 2005 listed the Southern Resident Orcas as endangered, which would have prevented Tokitae’s capture, there is nothing in current federal law that prohibits owners from breeding, owning, incarcerating and training them to perform. That would change if Congressman Adam Schiff, D-California, has anything to say about it. He introduced legislation last year that prohibits the capturing, importing, exporting or breeding of orcas, beluga whales, false killer whales or pilot whales for the purpose of public display. Unfortunately, too little too late for Tokitae.

Customers who bought tickets to see Tokitae perform are complicit in the captivity and death of Tokitae. Owners were unwilling to release her for the simple reason that she was a cash cow for their business. Until animal welfare advocates can spread the message widely enough that marine animals belong in the sea not on a platform with a trainer forcing them to perform, marine animals will continue to suffer and die at the hands of business owners with only one thing in mind — their bottom line.

Major discoveries in animal sentience research can now verify that certain animals experience a range of emotions and feelings, such as pleasure, pain, joy and fear. Anyone who has ever owned a cat or dog should know something about animal emotions and how they can take on so many human traits that suggest there is more intelligence and emotion at work in the animal than science can account for today.

Humans and animals

Tokitae’s life and death should cause us to reexamine our existing relationship to creatures like whales, dolphins and other sentient animals that we have taken for granted for centuries and to make the necessary adjustments in policy and practice to set us on a course of expanded and well-funded research that will upgrade the measures we use to protect sentient members of the animal kingdom. Sentience is a word that has barely crept into our understanding of animal behavior, but it is likely to play a major role in animal welfare research and practice in the future.

Science fiction peers into the future and imagines what life will be like when those of us who inhabit this planet are gone from this earth. Read Aldous Huxley’s 1955’s “Brave New World” for a full appreciation of the predictive power of the genre to take us to places yet discovered. I have no doubt that the day will come when certain sentient creatures will be given agency for the purpose of protecting them from greedy and cruel human behavior.

Consider the herculean efforts of animal protection groups such the Orca Network led by Howard Garrett of Greenbank, Washington. These animal protection groups advocate for a kinder and gentler day when Tokitae’s descendants will be fully protected and respected, much as the Lummi people have done for centuries.

If Tokitae’s life and death are to have any meaning and impact beyond the cramped tank of her existence, let it be a legacy that points her humans in the direction that explores how to improve the lives of sentient creatures and change the nature of man’s relationship to its animal brethren.

Bob Kustra served as president of Boise State University from 2003 to 2018. He is host of Readers Corner on Boise State Public Radio, and he writes a biweekly column for the Idaho Statesman. He served two terms as Illinois lieutenant governor and 10 years as a state legislator.