Fish Wars victory still a success for South Sound tribes 40 years later

A chair sat empty on the stage of the Squaxin Island Tribe’s Skookum Creek Event Center near Shelton last Wednesday in front of several hundred Western Washington Indians who gathered to celebrate the Boldt Decision, a federal court ruling issued Feb. 12, 1974, affirming their treaty rights to half of the region’s harvestable salmon.

The chair honored tribal warriors who fought in the Puget Sound Indian Wars of 1855-56. Those warriors deserve credit for helping secure South Sound tribal reservations that are far larger than those initially granted with the signing of the Medicine Creek Treaty of 1855, noted Muckleshoot tribal elder Gilbert King George.

Flash forward more than 100 years from the treaty wars and a new generation of South Sound tribal warriors fought for the right to harvest fish from their ancestral grounds, a right embedded in the 19th century treaties their forbearers and the federal government signed. Chalk it up as ....
http://www.theolympian.com/2014/02/09/2974119/fish-wars-victory-still-a-success.html

Victory?

Thanks, RUNandGUN.