United States v. Washington

United States v. Washington, 384 F. Supp. 312 (W.D. Wash. 1974), aff'd, 520 F.2d 676 (9th Cir. 1975), commonly known as the Boldt Decision (from the name of the trial court judge, George Hugo Boldt), 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.

As the time went by, the State of Washington had infringed on the treaty rights of the tribes despite losing a series of court cases on the issue. Those cases provided the Indian tribal members a right of access through private property to their fishing locations, and said that the state could neither charge the Indians a fee to fish nor discriminate against the tribes in the method of fishing allowed. Those cases also provided for the Indian tribes rights to a fair and equitable share of the harvest. The Boldt decision further defined that reserved right, holding that the tribes were entitled to half the fish harvest each year.

In 1975, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Judge Boldt's ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. After the state refused to enforce the court order, Judge Boldt ordered the United States Coast Guard and federal law enforcement agencies to enforce his rulings. On July 2, 1979, the Supreme Court rejected a collateral attack on the case, largely endorsing Judge Boldt's ruling and the opinion of the Ninth Circuit. In Washington v. Washington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Ass'n, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that "[b]oth sides have a right, secured by treaty, to take a fair share of the available fish." The Supreme Court also endorsed Boldt's orders to enforce his rulings using federal law enforcement assets and the Coast Guard.

The American Indians of the Pacific Northwest had long depended on the salmon harvest, a resource that allowed them to become among the wealthiest North American tribes. The salmon harvest for the Columbia River basin was estimated at 43,000,000 pounds (20,000,000 kg) annually, which provided sufficient salmon not only for the tribes' needs but also to trade with others. By the 1840s, tribes were trading salmon to the Hudson's Bay Company, which shipped the fish to New York, Great Britain, and other locations around the world.

In the 1850s, the US government entered into a series of treaties with the American Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest. In the Treaty of Olympia, Territorial Governor Isaac I. Stevens agreed that the tribes had rights, including:

The right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations is secured to said Indians in common with all citizens of the Territory, and of erecting temporary houses for the purpose of curing the same; together with the privilege of hunting, gathering roots and berries, and pasturing their horses on all open and unclaimed lands. Provided, however, That they shall not take shell-fish from any beds staked or cultivated by citizens; and provided, also, that they shall alter all stallions not intended for breeding, and keep up and confine the stallions themselves.

Other agreements with area tribes included the treaties of Medicine Creek, Point Elliott, Neah Bay, and Point No Point. All of them had similar language on the rights of the tribes to fish outside the reservation. While the tribes agreed to part with their land, they insisted on protecting their fishing rights throughout the Washington Territory.

Initially, the federal government honored its treaties with the tribes, but with increasing numbers of white settlers moving into the area, the settlers began to infringe upon the fishing rights of the native tribes. By 1883, whites had established more than forty salmon canneries. In 1894, there were three canneries in the Puget Sound area; by 1905, there were twenty-four. The whites also began to use new techniques, which prevented a significant portion of the salmon from reaching the tribal fishing areas. When Washington Territory became a state in 1889, the legislature passed "laws to curtail tribal fishing in the name of 'conservation' but what some scholars described as being designed to protect white fisheries." The state legislature, by 1897, had banned the use of weirs, which were customarily used by Indians fishermen. The tribes turned to the courts for enforcement of their rights under the treaties.