It's hard to say...but my gut feeling is that if we had an Attorney General who wasn't a commercial fisherman, too, he would have tried to figure out some sort of cooperative agreement with the tribes.

This whole mess started with the Puyallup and Nisqually Tribes netting for steelhead on or near their reservations...in the grand scheme of things they, and the other tribes, were taking a very, very small percentage of the fish.

A combination of racist rednecks and a commercial fisherman as Attorney General going to bat for them, starting in 1969, finally ended in 1974 with full implementation of the Boldt Decision, and real tribal harvest started the next day...and that is where we are now.

The fact that it was happening near the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement is what got the Hollywood celebs here for the 'fish ins'...they wouldn't have ever had any reason to be here if it wasn't for the Gorton's Fisherman.



Isn't he just the cutest?

Fish on...

Todd