The Muckleshoot are a Lushootseed-speaking Indian tribe, part of the Coast Salish peoples of the Pacific Northwest. They are descendants of the Duwamish and Puyallup peoples whose traditional territory was located along the Green and White rivers, including up to the headwaters in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, in present-day Washington State. Since the mid-19th century, their reservation is located in the area of Auburn, Washington, about 15 miles (24 km) northeast of the port of Tacoma and 35 miles (55 km) southeast of Seattle, another major port.
The Nisqually River is a river in west central Washington in the United States, approximately 81 miles (130 km) long. It drains part of the Cascade Range southeast of Tacoma, including the southern slope of Mount Rainier, and empties into the southern end of Puget Sound. Its outlet was designated in 1971 as the Nisqually Delta National Natural Landmark.
United States v. Washington, 384 F. Supp. 312, aff'd, 520 F.2d 676, commonly known as the Boldt Decision, was a legal case in 1974 heard in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The case re-affirmed the rights of American Indian tribes in the state of Washington to co-manage and continue to harvest salmon and other fish under the terms of various treaties with the U.S. government. The tribes ceded their land to the United States but reserved the right to fish as they always had. This included their traditional locations off the designated reservations.
The Treaty of Point Elliott of 1855, or the Point Elliott Treaty,—also known as Treaty of Point Elliot / Point Elliott Treaty—is the lands settlement treaty between the United States government and the Native American tribes of the greater Puget Sound region in the recently formed Washington Territory, one of about thirteen treaties between the U.S. and Native Nations in what is now Washington. The treaty was signed on 22 January 1855, at Muckl-te-oh or Point Elliott, now Mukilteo, Washington, and ratified 8 March and 11 April 1859. Between the signing of the treaty and the ratification, fighting continued throughout the region. Lands were being occupied by European-Americans since settlement in what became Washington Territory began in earnest from about 1845.
A fish wheel, also known as a salmon wheel, is a device situated in rivers to catch fish which looks and operates like a watermill. However, in addition to paddles, a fish wheel is outfitted with wire baskets designed to catch and carry fish from the water and into a nearby holding tank. The current of the river presses against the submerged paddles and rotates the wheel, passing the baskets through the water where they intercept fish that are swimming or drifting. Naturally a strong current is most effective in spinning the wheel, so fish wheels are typically situated in shallow rivers with brisk currents, close to rapids, or waterfalls. The baskets are built at an outward-facing slant with an open end so the fish slide out of the opening and into the holding tank where they await collection. Yield is increased if fish swimming upstream are channeled toward the wheel by weirs.
Sohappy v. Smith, 302 F. Supp. 899, was a federal case heard by the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, decided in 1969 and amended in 1975. It began with fourteen members of the Yakama who sued the U.S. state of Oregon over its fishing regulations. The federal court combined the case with another, United States v. Oregon, in which the U.S. federal government sued the state along with the Yakama, Warm Springs, Umatilla, and Nez Perce tribes.
In Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States the term treaty rights specifically refers to rights for indigenous peoples enumerated in treaties with settler societies that arose from European colonization.
United States v. Winans, 198 U.S. 371 (1905), was a U.S. Supreme Court case that held that the Treaty with the Yakima of 1855, negotiated and signed at the Walla Walla Council of 1855, as well as treaties similar to it, protected the Indians' rights to fishing, hunting and other privileges.
Henry Lyle Adams was an American Native rights activist known as a successful strategist, tactician, and negotiator. He was instrumental in resolving several key conflicts between Native Americans and state and federal government officials after 1960. Born on a reservation in Montana and based in Washington state for much of his life, he participated in protests and negotiations in Washington, DC and Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
Billy Frank Jr. was a Native American environmental leader and treaty rights activist. A Nisqually tribal member, Frank led a grassroots campaign for fishing rights on the tribe's Nisqually River, located in Washington state, in the 1960s and 1970s. As a lifelong activist and the chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission for over thirty years, Frank promoted cooperative management of natural resources.
Pan-Indianism is a philosophical and political approach promoting unity, and to some extent cultural homogenization, among different Native American, First Nations, Inuit and Métis (FNIM) groups in the Americas regardless of tribal distinctions and cultural differences.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife v. Klamath Indian Tribe, 473 U.S. 753 (1985), was a case appealed to the US Supreme Court by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The Supreme Court reversed the previous decisions in the District Court and the Court of Appeals stating that the exclusive right to hunt, fish, and gather roots, berries, and seeds on the lands reserved to the Klamath Tribe by the 1864 Treaty was not intended to survive as a special right to be free of state regulation in the ceded lands that were outside the reservation after the 1901 Agreement.
Washington v. Confederated Bands and Tribes of the Yakima Indian Nation, 439 U.S. 463 (1979), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the State of Washington's imposition of partial jurisdiction over certain actions on an Indian reservation, when not requested by the tribe, was valid under Public Law 280.
The Fish Wars were a series of civil disobedience protests in the 1960s and '70s in which Native American tribes around the Puget Sound pressured the U.S. government to recognize fishing rights granted by the Treaty of Medicine Creek. A series of fish-in demonstrations in the Pacific Northwest, that started in 1963, grew to attract celebrity participation and national media attention before the US Federal Government intervened to sue the state of Washington. The 1974 decision in United States v. Washington was upheld by the supreme court in 1979.
The Gateway Pacific Terminal was a proposed export terminal at Cherry Point in Whatcom County, Washington, along the Salish Sea shoreline. It was announced in 2011 and would have exported coal, but was opposed by local residents and the Lummi Nation, who had an ancestral village site at Cherry Point. The terminal project was rejected by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2016, ruling that it would infringe on the fishing rights of the Lummi Nation.
Tulee v. Washington, 315 U.S. 681 (1942), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held the Washington statute prescribing license fees for fishing is invalid as applied to a Yakima Indian convicted on a charge of catching salmon with a net without first having obtained a license, in view of the Treaty with Yakima Indians securing to them the exclusive right of taking fish in all streams running through or bordering reservation and right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places in common with citizens of Washington.
Antoine v. Washington, 420 U.S. 194 (1975), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that treaties and laws must be construed in favor of Native Americans (Indians); that the Supremacy Clause precludes the application of state game laws to the tribe; that Congress showed no intent to subject the tribe to state jurisdiction for hunting; and while the state can regulate non-Indians in the ceded area, Indians must be exempted from such regulations.
Washington v. United States, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding Native American fishing rights in the U.S. state of Washington. In the case, the court deadlocked 4-4, with Justice Anthony Kennedy recusing himself due to his prior involvement in the case as a judge on the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The deadlock left standing a lower court ruling that the State of Washington must redesign and rebuild road culverts to allow salmon to swim upstream, to uphold Native American treaty rights to fish. The issue decided by the federal courts was whether, under the 1855–1856 Stevens Treaties, "the right to fish is the right to put a net in the water or the right for there to be fish to catch"; however, with the 4-4 Supreme Court decision, it may not be binding on future court decisions.
Celilo Fish Committee is a committee formed by the representatives from Yakama Nation.
The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) is a fishery resource for the treaty tribes of the Columbia River. Under the treaty, the native tribes, The Nez Perce Tribe, Warm Springs Reservation Tribe, and Umatilla Indian Reservation Tribe, have to the right to fish in the Columbia River, which means their fishery must be reserve and protect.
