Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission
I am a Mid-Columbia River Indian. I grew up along
the river. I have many close relatives and friends who lived their lives
on the river, who died there, and who are buried along its banks. I know
that river well. In my lifetime, I have seen great changes take place on
the river. I remember the time when there were no dams, and the Columbia
River was wild and free-flowing. I have observed the massive destruction
caused by the dams. The lakes created by the dams have covered many of the
places I knew as a boy and a young man. The fishing sites, the places where
I camped with my family, and even the places where some of my children were
born, are all under water.
Delbert Frank, Sr., Warm Springs
A Short Chronology of Treaty Fishing on the Columbia River
Time Immemorial - Indian people have lived in the Columbia
Basin for thousands of years, using salmon as a staple of life and as a
foundation of culture, economy, and a source of religion. According to conservative
estimates, the river's annual salmon returns ranged from 11-16 million fish
before European settlement.
1805 - Reaching the Columbia River, Lewis and Clark
were amazed by the abundance of salmon.
1855 - Treaties with Columbia River tribes were signed.
In these treaties, tribes ceded most of their lands -- but reserved exclusive
rights to fish within their reservations and rights to fish at "all
usual and accustomed fishing places...in common with citizens."
1905 - In the first major fishing
rights case to reach the Supreme Court, U.S. v. Winans, the justices
held that treaty Indians had reserved the right to cross non-Indian lands
to fish at "usual and accustomed" places and that treaties are
to be interpreted the way the Indians had understood them.
1938 - Congress passed the Bonneville Project Act to
market power from Bonneville and other federal dams on the Columbia. Dams
would eventually inundate such important Indian fishing places as Celilo
Falls and block salmon migration to some 2,800 miles of fish habitat. Congress
also passed the Mitchell Act, which promised that fish lost because of the
dams would be replenished with the help of hatcheries.
1942 - The Supreme Court decided in Tulee v. Washington
that because a treaty takes precedence over state law, Indians with tribal
treaty rights cannot be required to buy state fishing licenses. However,
the court also rules that the state could regulate treaty fisheries for
purposes of conservation.
1948 - State and federal fish agencies began implementing
the Mitchell Act by putting almost all of the hatcheries in the lower river,
where mostly non-Indians fish, instead of in the tribes upriver fishing
areas where salmon were being destroyed by the dams. Of the 25 Mitchell
Act hatcheries eventually built, only two are above The Dalles Dam. The
effect is that some 85 percent of the tribes' mainstem fishing area does
not benefit from Mitchell Act releases.
1968 - Fourteen members of the Yakama tribe filed suit
against Oregon's regulation of off-reservation fishing (Sohappy v. Smith).
The United States and the Yakama, Warm Springs, Umatilla, and Nez Perce
tribes also sued (U.S. v. Oregon). The federal court combined the
two cases.
1969 - Judge Belloni, in Sohappy
v. Smith/U.S. v. Oregon (Belloni decision) held that the tribes were
entitled to a "fair share" of the fish runs and the state is limited
in its power to regulate treaty Indian fisheries (the state may only regulate
when "reasonable and necessary for conservation"). Further, state
conservation regulations were not to discriminate against the Indians and
must be the least restrictive means.
1974 - In U.S. v. Washington (Boldt decision),
Judge Boldt mandated that a "fair share" was 50 percent of the
harvestable fish destined for the tribes' usual and accustomed fishing places
and reaffirmed tribal management powers. (Belloni then applied the 50/50
principle in Columbia River fisheries.
1974 - In Settler v. Lameer, the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled that the treaty fishing right is a tribal right,
not an individual right, and that tribes had reserved the authority to regulate
tribal fishing on and off the reservations.
1975 - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the
last of four lower Snake River dams, compounding downstream passage problems
and causing further declines in fish runs. The total number of dams on the
mainstem Columbia and Snake rivers rose to 18.
1977 - The federal court, under its jurisdiction in
U.S. v. Oregon, approved a five-year plan that set up an in-river
harvest sharing formula between non-Indian and Indian fisheries. The plan
failed because it did not include specific controls on ocean harvests or
specific measures to replace fish runs destroyed by development.
1979 - The Supreme Court upheld U.S. v. Washington
(Boldt decision).
1979 - Columbia River, Puget Sound, and Washington coastal
tribes sued the Secretary of Commerce over ocean fishing regulations because
a large percentage of treaty fish were being caught in waters managed by
the Department of Commerce. Columbia River tribes also sued in 1980, 1981,
and 1982 (Confederated Tribes, et. al. v. Kreps; Yakima, et. al v. Klutznik;
Hoh v. Baldrige; and Yakima, et. al. v. Baldrige). As a result, the
federal government was held to have a legal obligation to regulate the ocean
fishery to insure that a reasonable number of salmon reached tribal fishing
places on the Columbia River.
1980 - Congress passed the Northwest
Power Act, which - for the first time - mandated that Columbia River power
production and fisheries be managed as co-equals. It called for a fish and
wildlife program to make up for losses caused by federal water development
in the basin.
1980 - The Federal District Court issued the U.S.
v. Washington (Phase II) decision that affirmed a right to protection
of the habitat that supports fish runs subject to treaty catch.
1982 - The Northwest Power planning Council - the body
charged with implementing the Power Act - adopted a Fish and Wildlife Program
that drew heavily on recommendations made by the tribes. Unfortunately,
the program has been amended at least three times since its inception, effectively
filtering out or ignoring most of the tribes' original recommendations.
1985 - President Reagan and Canadian Prime Minister
Mulroney signed - and Congress later ratified - the U.S./Canada Pacific
Salmon Treaty, which reduced Canadian and Alaskan harvest of Columbia River
salmon and reserved a seat at the table for Indian tribes along with other
government fish managers.
1988 - After five years of negotiation, the states of
Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, federal fishery agencies, and the tribes
agreed to the Columbia River Fish Management Plan, a new, detailed harvest
and fish production process under the authority of U.S. v. Oregon.
Judge Marsh entered the plan as an order of the U.S. District Court.
1991 - Sockeye and spring, summer, and fall chinook
from the Snake River, the Columbia's largest tributary, are listed under
the Endangered Species Act.
1994 - In Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG)
v. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), brought under the ESA,
Judge Marsh ruled that NMFS' biological opinion of "no jeopardy"
regarding hydrosystem operations on the Columbia and Snake violated the
act. He ordered the fish management parties to determine what hydrosystem
changes were needed to restore endangered salmon.
1994 - With spring chinook runs on
the Columbia at record lows, the tribes reopened tribal fishing at Willamette
Falls near Oregon City, Oregon. In recent decades this usual and accustomed
Indian fishing place had been taken over by a large sport fishery supported
by strong runs of hatchery fish.
1994 - The tribes develop their own Columbia River salmon
plan, Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi Wa-Kish-Wit: Spirit of the Salmon.
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