It's fascinating that, in 2023, to figure out who gets to take some salmon from a given river in Washington, we have to try to figure out as best we can the particular places that a very tiny group of Native American with no written history occasionally went to go fishing back in the early 1800s.
Or, more accurately, what a particular federal judge thought a half-century ago about the report of a particular anthropologist (Dr. Barbara Lane) who tried to figure out even earlier than that where that tiny group occasionally fished approximately two centuries ago.
The Ninth Circuit concludes today that members of the Sauk-Suiattle Indian tribe occasionally fished on various upper tributaries of the Skagit River, but not on the actual Skagit River itself. As a result, pursuant to the Treaty of Point Elliot in 1855, members of this tribe only get to take the salmon that actually make it up the river that far, without being caught by members of the Upper Skagit tribe or the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community -- who have the right under that same treaty to take salmon from Skagit River itself.
I also thought it was especially sad that the relevant tribes couldn't negotiate a resolution of this dispute on their own, rather than wasting what I strongly suspect is precious and far-from-prevalent money on federal litigation amongst the parties.
