Academic papers, news articles, and books have been published, movies have been made, and songs have been sung about the fish wars—the infamous struggle that resulted in the landmark case, U.S. v. Washington. As the 50th anniversary of the Boldt decision approaches, we are presented with an opportunity to look back and see what has transpired between that historically significant moment and the present.

It's helpful to recall that the struggle to have our treaty rights honored didn't begin with the arrests, beatings, and confiscation of personal property during the civil rights era. By the time the movement leading to U.S. v. Washington got underway, the unjust activities of the state as a means of depriving Indigenous peoples of treaty rights had been going on for more than a century.

With the perfection of the canning process in the 1880s, salmon came to be seen as a valuable commodity. In the 1890s, 40 million pounds of salmon were being taken out of the Columbia River alone by non-indigenous fishers each year. But the absolute devastation came in the 1930s with the construction of hydroelectric dams." Dams were built throughout the region and were responsible in some instances for leading to the total extinction of salmon runs in a river.

"As long as the rivers run, as long as the tide flows, and as long as the sun shines, you will have land, fish and game for your frying pans, and timber for your lodges."—Isaac Stevens, Washington Territorial Governor.

In Whatcom County, the Lummi tribe fought a landmark case against violations of their treaty rights and the abuses leveled against them by the cannery at Point Roberts. In 1897, William Brinker, U.S. Attorney for Washington, filed suit against the Alaska Packers Association on behalf of the Lummi tribe to restore their rights to their fishing grounds. Judge Hanford was given the case and ruled against the provisions of treaty rights for the third time in five years.

During the case, tribal fishers testified to being threatened by the defendant with a revolver if they didn't move off their fishing claims. When they left, John Waller tore down their fishing shacks and used their timber to construct his cannery. He then installed fish traps which depleted fish stocks to the point where they were no longer profitable for tribal reef netters who had been fishing the site for more than 10,000 years[1].

"H.B. Kirby, who was then in the employ of the defendant Association, came to the shack occupied by me on the beach and ordered me to leave and stayed around until I left. He threatened me with injury if I did not leave." Old Polen, Lummi Fisher

In 1913 the Lummi tribe was in the judicial system again when tribal member Harry Price allowed himself to be arrested to make a test of treaty fishing rights. Lummi won the case, but the incensed state fish and game commissioner asserted that he would continue to arrest Lummi fishermen. Lummi sought an injunction against the commissioner to prohibit continued arrests. The injunction was not enforced, and the commissioner continued his injurious actions.

In 1915 Lummi retaliated by conducting a citizen’s arrest on a group of Austrians fishing in Lummi waters. The poachers were held at an undisclosed Lummi residence until news of the arrest reached the Oval Office. President Wilson, wishing to avoid international conflict, instructed the state fish commissioner to cease harassment of Lummi fishers. The Austrians were released, but antagonism of Lummi fishers continued in decades to follow.

March 30 of 2022 marked 80 years since Tulee v. W.A., a court decision handed down in 1942 that would leave "the state with the power to impose on Indians equally with others … as … necessary for the conservation of fish." But it was felt and expressed by Indigenous fishers that the state used the term 'conservation' as a weapon against them to criminalize their way of life. The harvest of the commercial fishery and loss of salmon to hydroelectric dams is evidence of it.

"You know when you speak of conservation; if they're going to conserve, they should start conserving out in the outer waters, particularly in the Puget Sound after the fish leave the straits of Juan De Fuca. You can go out here in the Puget Sound when they're fishing out there and find numerous commercial boats, and their take, one purse seine boat out there in the sound, can take probably more fish in one day than our whole group can take in one season. There's various ways that the Indian has always practiced conservation. This was done almost automatically. Not only did they allow an escapement, but elements of nature provide for escapement." Al Bridges, father of Nisqually activist Valerie Bridges

There are stories in the oral tradition of Indigenous peoples recalling the devastation of seeing salmon piled up dead at the base of dams. There are similar stories of salmon piled up dead on the shoreline because the canneries didn't want them or couldn't process them fast enough.

"They just dumped thousands of them and they were dying since they had been kept in the traps so long: they drifted to shore and died. They had the whole Legoe Bay just covered with dead fish. After they drifted away the rocks were still oily from the fish. The rocks would shine on the beach and they smelled like hell. God. Just thousands and thousands of dead fish. It must have been 1913…." –Ronomus Lear (1972)

The canneries must have realized that it wasn't a good look to have their misuse of the fish washing up on shore, so they began the practice of piling the unused salmon up in great heaps on a barge and sending it offshore to rot. Knowing this, imagine the burn of injustice to be shut out and criminalized for practicing your lifeway on the grounds of conservation.

Sampson Tulee, who brought the court case, Tulee v. Washington, was a Yakima tribal member. At the same time that Tulee's struggle for fishing rights was taking place, the neighboring Wanapum tribe was facing relocation from their fish curing village to make way for the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Today, the Hanford nuclear reactor sits along the stretch of river where the tribal spiritual leader Smoholla once lived. The land around Hanford is more contaminated by nuclear waste than any other site in North America. The reactor was built in the early 1940s to produce the plutonium used in the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"Back in the 40s, the people who lived at Hanford were driven off there and had the land taken from them. My people had a village up there. We had sheds up there for curing salmon, and then in 1943 they moved all them people out of there" –David Sohappy (Wanapum Fisher)

Twenty years later, in 1963, Washington v. McCoy would come along and justify the state's imposition of "reasonable and necessary regulations" on tribes. These impositions would be made in violation of the treaties. Days before Christmas in 1963, tribal members staged a protest at the Washington state capital in Olympia. They carried signs that read "No salmon – No Santa." After inviting them in and hearing their complaints, Governor Rosellini dismissed them, saying, "Nice to hear your problems. Come back again."

Early in 1964, the group founded Survival of the American Indian Association to work toward having their treaty fishing rights honored as the result of uncompromising civil disobedience. Another decade would pass, and tribes would still be in the fight to have the treaties honored. In 1974, U.S. attorney Stan Pitkin filed suit on behalf of tribes.

"The biggest thing that ever happened in our time was we had an encampment on the Puyallup River; there must have been three or four hundred of us and our kids and everything—we had a fire, and we had an encampment. Everyone was living there, and we were fishing on the Puyallup River. They gassed us that day. They gassed all of us. They gassed the U.S. Attorney, Stan Pitkin. We'd been begging Stan Pitkin and all the U.S. attorneys to take our case, you know, 'the state of Washington is beating us up every night and every day there, over treaty rights, and you guys haven't done a thing.' Well, when they got gassed, he took the case, and that's what happened in U.S. v. Washington." –Billy Frank Jr.

On June 4, 1975, Judge George Boldt handed down his decision honoring the right of tribes to 50% of the salmon catch available for harvest after a set amount had been set aside for conservation. But the fight for the protection of the fishery and our rights to harvest was far from over. Though the Boldt decision was handed down in 1975 and finalized in 1979, tribes on the interior part of the state were still fighting to have their treaty rights honored and were facing the backlash of those who disagreed with the Boltd decision.