By Theresa Novak For many centuries, the native people of the Pacific Northwest based their economy, culture and religion on salmon fishing. In the last century, the tribes saw both their management of salmon and the salmon runs themselves diminish despite treaties that assured their basic cultural rights to salmon. But in the past 30 years, Native Americans have become key participants in front-line salmon management and restoration. |
 Jesse Sampson checks a gillnet just above Bonneville Dam for steelhead. A member of the Yakama Tribe, Sampson has fished on the Columbia River all his life. As a boy he fished at Ceilio Falls, now covered with water backed up from a dam. |
Those early explorers found a thriving population of about 100,000 Native Americans. Salmon runs of up to 16 million fish sustained them.
By 1870, the population of Native Americans was less than 10,000, mostly as a result of the diseases brought along with the westward migration. The non-native population grew to 100,000.
In 1855, the territorial government in the Pacific Northwest negotiated treaties with the Columbia River tribes. Along with assurance against attack and some health care provisions, the main provision of the 1885 treaty assured the native tribes the right to fish within reservations and "all usual and accustomed fishing places...in common with citizens."
For this they signed over to the government control of the 40 million acres that is now Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
But the tribes did not have any power to object when a growing Northwest harnessed the powerful waters of the Columbia River behind a network of dams that drowned about 2,800 miles of fish habitat in the mainstem Columbia and along its tributaries.
Tribal elders such as Delbert Frank, Sr. of the Warm Springs tribe reflected on the change in historic documents of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission:
"I remember the times when the Columbia River was wild and free-flowing. I have seen 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 I camped with my family, and even the places where some of my children were born are all under water."
To make up for the loss of the salmon habitat, Congress allocated money to build hatcheries. But only two of the hatcheries built were in the traditional fishing grounds of the tribes above The Dalles Dam. The remainder were below the dams.
And some tribes not a part of the Columbia River Tribes and not covered by treaty lost their salmon runs without compensation.
In 1968, fourteen members of the Yakama tribe filed suit against Oregon. They said that Oregon's state fishing regulations of native off-reservation fishing violated the 1855 treaty.
The other Columbia River tribes--the Warm Springs, Umatilla and Nez Perce--joined in the suit and won the landmark case in federal court the following year. Judge Robert J. Belloni ruled the tribes were entitled to a "fair share" of the salmon runs and the state had limited powers to regulate them.
A similar court case in Washington state resulted in a ruling that defined "fair share" as half of the harvestable fish destined to pass by the tribes' usual and accustomed fishing places.
Some fisheries organizations reacted by saying that these court rulings amounted to giving native people "supercitizen" status when it came to catching salmon. But Judge Belloni defended his decision this way:
"I did not grant the Indians anything. They possessed the right to fish for thousands of years. The treaties of 1855 simply reserved to the Indians the right which they already possessed. They traded title to most of the land in the Northwest in return for the right not to be dispossessed of their fishing rights.... No one can claim the Indians got the best of the bargain."
These days, salmon fishing experts such as Scott Boley of Gold Beach, the former president of the Oregon Salmon Commission, say the current system of harvest allocation has created a rigid, quirky system that can be unfair to tribal and non-tribal fishers.
While Boley has no argument with native tribes receiving a fish harvest allotment, he said that the tight regulatory system under which that catch is divided sometimes makes equitable solutions impossible.
With their rights to actively govern the management of salmon restored, the Columbia Tribes assumed a greater role in determining the future of salmon after formation of The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
The agency is involved in the Pacific Fishery Management Council and the Pacific Salmon Treaty process and plays a key role in salmon recovery efforts.
The tribes have their own biologists and fisheries experts to assure a steady supply of salmon for economic and ceremonial uses.
The Columbia River tribes have their own salmon restoration plan, called "Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi-Wa-Kish-Wit" or "The Spirit of the Salmon."
The tribal approach to salmon restoration differs both from non-tribal managers and from the recovery plans of other tribes, said Patty O'Toole, the primary fisheries biologist for the Warm Springs tribes.
"We still are fortunate enough to have populations of wild fish to protect, whereas some of the others focus more on hatchery production," she said.
Rather than bolting together logs in streams to give salmon a shaded area for spawning, O'Toole said the focus is less on engineering a solution and more on allowing natural habitat recovery to work.
"We practice some passive restoration techniques and not a lot of bio-engineering," she said. "We'll build a fence, keep the cows out and let (the stream) stabilize on its own."
Tribal members are active in on-the-ground work such as building fences and installing solar-powered water pumps to bring water to the cattle in the fields. They build concrete irrigation dams for landowners, complete with fish passages to discourage construction of temporary earthen water storage dams that block fish migration.
Louie Pitt, the director of government affairs and planning for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, said the emphasis on direct action and direct benefits to fish reflects the philosophy of the tribe:
"We are here for the long run," Pitt said. "We want to see the salmon here for our generations to come."
Alanna Farrow of the Umatilla tribe said many Columbia River tribes see themselves as "salmon people."
"For most tribal people, the salmon is an indicator species not only of the animal world but of the Indian people.... Once the salmon are gone, soon the Indian people also will be extinct."