Docspud,

I can only guess you're making up your assertions about "liberal agenda crap." The federal judges have simply done their jobs when it comes to Indian treaties, if you bother to look any of it up. States have commonly ignored Indian treaties, not that they should have, but there is some logic to it. Most Indian treaties pre-date statehood. That is definitely the case in WA. The treaties are between tribes and the federal government. So when a state acts in contravention of a treaty, the tribes sues the state in federal court, which is the only place a treaty issue has standing. That is, state courts have no jurisdiction over federal treaties, no surprise there.

So then, the judge reads the treaty, tells the state that the treaty is the law of the land, and the state must comply and not run over the Indians' treaty rights. How is that "liberal agenda crap?" It's called following the law. Perhaps that's an alien concept to you.

You write as though every treaty was conceived in the same fashion. That's not how it was. When tribes were not in a position of strength to negotiate from, they tended to get pretty crappy deals from the government. So a lot of the vanquished tribes in the east and midwest got screwed by their treaties.

Here in WA it was different. You say no one knows what they were thinking in treaty times. Perhaps you aren't a history fan. Believe it or not, there were literate people in the 1850s. They wrote down what the whites were thinking and what they understood that the Indians were thinking. It was not precise, because the shared language of both the whites and the Indians was Chinook jargon, kind of a slang, that served mainly as a trade language. However, even then a few Indians spoke some English, but none of them were fluent. The upshot is that we actually have a very good idea of what the parties discussed and what each expected out of the treaties.

The tribes of WA territory negotiated from a position of strength. They were diminishing in number due to diseases brought by the whites, but they still outnumbered whites by 10 to 1 or more. The feds didn't have a very big army presence here until after the Civil War. So Gov. Stevens' job was to try to get the tribes to peacefully give up large tracts of land so that whites could obtain legal title to it because the whites didn't have the means at that time to just take it by force. Stevens was able to obtain the treaties, and legal title of the land for the U.S. by allowing the tribes to retain that which was of greatest value to them. These included the rights to fish, hunt, and gather in perpetuity.

The upshot of this is that treaty fishing rights clearly exist. Only a non-reader or fool couldn't understand that. Where judicial interpretation comes in in US v WA is the allocation formula. Brewer says that the tribes would have settled for 35%. Actually I've heard 25% and lower in some cases, not that it's relevant. Judge Boldt, who was a conservative, BTW, used Black's Law Dictionary to ascertain the 50:50 sharing formula. It's all in the Decision if you wish to read it. Upon review, his decision was largely upheld by the 9th Circuit and the Supreme Courts. But I suppose such studiousness was just all "liberal agenda crap." Like they say, you can always tell a fool, but you can't tell him much.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.