Just finished reading up on the various editorials, posted comments, and raw news stories in the last week at the Kitsap Sun over the Tarboo Bay salmon controversy, if I can call it that.
What we are seeing in action is the notion of ‘fighting over the last fish”. There is a shift beginning from looking at allowing commercial & tribal fishing of ‘aggregate’ runs versus the more ’emerging’ notion of managing wild stocks to the stream level. I say emerging because that is not how the determination of fishing quota is done now, though has been argued for some years. What with a run of wild salmon that may be down to less than 1000, (if that), , we are seeing a shift to true watershed management of the fisheries, going down to the species level. This is being supported by a diverse group, such as the State, some tribes, and active environmentalists like Peter Bahls.
Peter has spent years working to protect the Tarboo watershed(s) from further degradation, attempting to use science to diligently approach all parties on protecting the remaining fish stocks, along with watersheds, and land use. But for now, he has been unable to convince the Skokomish tribe that his plan, agreed upon by other tribes as well as the State DFW, is the right approach. Part of this might be getting the tribe, living in a very poor region of our State, to make short term sacrifices to protect the longer term outcome. The fisheries probably represent a significant income stream for them. Asking them to possibly do without that, could be part of the sticking point.
To be clear, other tribes, like the Jamestown and Port Gamble tribes, mentioned in the article, have agreed to the plan proposed by Bahls.
While you can read the stories yourselves, I thought I’d touch on the comments that came from a wide variety of individuals.
Apparently there is still a lot of misconceptions about both the landmark Boldt decision and what constitutes, “tribes”. While I am not a scholar on this, here’s what I understand.
Boldt’s decision only clarified that the treaty that the U.S. government, (not the State), signed with the tribes, in total, granted them the ability to continue harvesting natural resources (I’m ignoring the details on this for now). Many people still think of ‘the indians’ or ‘the tribes’ as a unified class, but the real truth to the matter is that they were all, and are all, sovereign nations as a matter of law. There was no united states of indians, (at least up in the Northwest, as there was in New York State, etc.), only a vast amount of peoples who were independent hunters and gatherers, living in a tribal manner. It was as arbitrary to deal with them as a whole, as it was to deal with the tribes in Middle East as some kind of unified nation. We, in our 1800’s naiveté (some may say racism), chose to lump them all together, and some of that was for their own protection, against settlers and others who were taking everything they had.
So, by law, the State works with all the tribes to determine how to go about fishing. The state cannot ‘force’ anything at this point on the tribes, we negotiate with them in good faith as they do with our representatives. Overall, the ‘tribes’ seem, to this viewer, to be pretty good at working with the state on this issue. The crab fishery is pretty stable, considered a success. There are exceptions, and we are witnessing one right now over the Tarboo fishery. But, to be clear, this is asking for a change to the methods, and that might take time. The question is, ‘how much time is there’? The stocks are severely depleted, and the Skokomish are in the process of stripping the last stocks from the fishery, if Bahls and the State are correct. Can it be saved?
The tribes ‘usual and accustomed’ fishing/crabbing/etc grounds are real. Tribes do have areas that they are allowed to do this ‘usual and accustomed’ fishing, and as I understand it, cannot be taking commercial or subsistence stocks from outside these areas. If I am wrong on this, I’d like to be corrected. So please feel free to point me to the regs that would clarify it.
Also, I know for a fact that the Tribes do use a good deal of this fish to divvy up between the members, feed the elderly, smoke their own fish for winter use, and other ‘subsistent’ uses, as we Anglos would call them. To the tribes, this is just an extension of how they have always lived, going back hundreds,even thousands of years. So we have a cultural gap, in viewing this as just some kind of greed driven issue.
Given the numbers being fought over at Tarboo, the remaining stocks could probably qualify for the taking just for those subsistence uses. To be clear, it is not up to us non-indians to determine what it means to do subsistence takes. It does fall to all of us, tribal and non-tribal peoples to save the native stocks. If the fish are gone, then the treaties are moot (as it relates to fish). The view of the tribal members I’ve talked to is of someone looking at the problem from the inside out, and we tend to be viewing it from the outside in. They see it as the way they’ve always lived. To many of them, *we* created the problem, and they want to work with us to fix it. But not at the expense of having no catch.
Finally, after being out on native boats with tribes other than the Skokomish, I have been impressed by how many tribal fishermen and geoduck harvesters, are extremely cautious to be legal and follow the agreed upon rules. I would guess that the anger from the non native fishing people, over specific issues they’ve seen, is more the outliers than the norm. And I bet that the same is true from the tribal perspective. The Tribes have been willing to come to the table and work on saving the salmon. I’ve been at those tables. But too often, we only meet at those tables and do not go to the tribes to talk to them one on one. Peter’s letter to the Skokomish seems like a reaching out in that direction. There are real, seemingly intractable issues, like what is the right approach to shoreline management and use. But all too often there is just not enough getting together.
It does no good, to sit back and throw stones, as many of the people did who posted comments on The Sun. If you want to save the fish, then get out into the fray, and work, as Peter Bahls, and many others, along with the Tribes, are doing to save the last of our local wild fish. It’s going to take all of us along the canal to come up with solutions, and it won’t happen overnight. The option of losing the last of the runs, is still very much ahead of us. One of the lights at the end of this fish tunnel is the end of the stocks, one is the restoration of them. We are about to throw what might be the last available switch before that train arrives to choose which one we want to take. We all need to pitch in.