Markets, Sovereignty, and Racialization

The 2009 European Union (EU) Seal Regime banning the importation of seal products on moral grounds and the series of cases before the EU courts and World Trade Organization provide an opportunity to understand how capitalism relies on racial categories. The EU Seal Regime is racist since it constructs an Indigenous identity based on abstract European definitions of subsistence hunting. It also has a unique racializing dynamic that proports to protect Indigenous identity from afar but in effect decimates Indigenous communities in their homeland. In this struggle over seals and the trade laws that constitute the global seal market, the concept of sovereignty in this instance helps clarify what is at stake. What is at stake is a contest over who has jurisdiction over seal bodies: whoever has the power to create the market rules that determine the taking and selling of seals in effect determines the sovereign power in the Arctic. Ultimately, what is problematic with the Seal Regime is that the definition of European morals used to justify the ban of seal products relied on a relationship that simultaneously ignored and threatened Indigenous existence.