Suggestion: Inuit could use PETA logo of seal being clubbed to mark the best hunting sites

An animal rights group's "perversion" of the Inuit inuksuk image just shows their own disrespect and lack of compassion for Inuit people, an Iqaluit-based sealing activist has said.

"It's a disgrace to them," said Aaju Peter, a lawyer and graduate of the Aqitsiraq program who organized last weekend's Celebration of the Seal in Iqaluit. "It's very disturbing to see the inuksuk perverted like that."

But she added her daughter has a better idea about how to use the PETA image.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), a radical animal-rights group, is using a distorted image of the the Olympic inuksuk logo to promote its own anti-sealing campaign.

The PETA version shows the colourful Olympic inuksuk in the act of clubbing a baby seal to death with a hakapik, in parody of a harvesting technique used in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by Newfoundland and other sealers – but not at all by Inuit.

The logo includes a white-coat seal pup in a pool of blood – even though white-coat pups are no longer harvested even in southern Canada.

PETA is using it to promote a letter-writing campaign to end seal hunting in Canada.

PETA connects the quintessential Inuit inuksuk symbol with a practice it describes as bloodthirsty, barbaric, orchestrated, merciless and horrifying.

Using inflated rhetoric, the online campaign calls the annual Newfoundland spring seal hunt "Canada's annual war on seals."

Other phrases in the emotion-laden appeal refer to seals being "barbarically killed," and having "their skulls smashed in" by hunters "driven by profit and greed."

PETA is well-known for its shock tactics, but Peter said her daughter helped her see just how ridiculous and even humorous this latest campaign is.

"My first reaction was disgust, but my daughter just laughed," Peter recalled.

"Then she suggested why don't we make the logos into signs and post them to mark the best seal hunting spots."

Peter also recalled that when the inuksuk logo was unveiled as the Olympic symbo, Inuit Tapirit Kanatami president Mary Simon "had said how great it was. "

The Nunavut Development Corp. has also signed a deal to have Inuit carvers produce thousands of licenced soapstone inuksuit as official souvenirs – providing potential work for thousands of artists in the territory.