Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Winter snows are melting up in the mountains and soon the only white stuff we’ll see floating in the air will be cottonwood fluff, a sign that the salmon are beginning to return and a reminder that it is time to celebrate the fish that sustains us as a people.

In gatherings large and small, tribes throughout western Washington will celebrate First Salmon ceremonies this spring …

Indian tribes in western Washington have long been using our treaty rights to protect and restore the salmon resource to the benefit of everyone who lives here. A good recent example is the federal court’s March 29 ruling in the culvert case brought against the state by the tribes back in 2001.

The state of Washington must fix fish-blocking culverts under state-owned roads because they violate …

Medical experts say eating a Mediterranean diet that’s high in fruits, vegetables, nuts, olive oil and fish is one of the best things we can do to reduce our risk of heart attack and stroke. Eating more fish and other seafood is a healthy choice as long as those foods don’t come from polluted waters. We think the state of Washington needs to make sure our …

We’ve been hearing a lot about Abraham Lincoln in recent months after the release of the movie about how he abolished slavery by pushing the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution through Congress.

Not many people know it, but Lincoln’s birthday on Feb. 12 also holds a special place in the hearts of the treaty Indian tribes in western Washington.

It was on that day in …

Allocation is being confused with conservation as the states of Oregon and Washington move to restrict non-Indian commercial gillnet fisheries on the lower Columbia River.

The states’ plan to move gillnetters off the main stem and prioritize sport fishing by reallocating their wild chinook salmon harvest impacts to anglers. Of course the states can allocate their share of the salmon resource however they like, but true …

I’ve met a lot of people in my life, but no one like Sen. Daniel Inouye. A soft-spoken son of Japanese immigrants, he rose to become a war hero and represented Hawaii in Congress from the time it became a state. But I always believed he was an Indian at heart.

My good friend for more than 30 years, he died Dec. 17 at 88. He …

Treaty Indian tribes in western Washington are calling on governor-elect Jay Inslee to reset the process of updating the state’s unrealistic fish consumption rate that is supposed to protect us from long-term exposure to poisons in our waters.

The fish consumption rate is important because it is one of the factors that the state uses to determine how much toxic pollution that industry is allowed to …

I love this time of year. The chinook, coho and chum are coming back and we’re filling our smokehouses and freezers for the coming winter.

I am proud to say that a good number of those returning fish came from our tribal hatcheries. We produce more than 40 million young salmon every year. Last year we released about 14 million chinook, 6 million coho, 20 million …

Treaty Indian tribes know the watersheds of western Washington better than anyone else because we have always lived in them.

Over the past three years we have been looking at those watersheds to gauge progress toward salmon recovery. The result is our recently released State of Our Watersheds report that confirms we are losing the battle for salmon recovery. Habitat is being lost faster than it …

Habitat is the key to salmon recovery, but ongoing loss and damage of salmon habitat is driving down salmon populations across western Washington and threatening tribal treaty rights. No matter how well we manage harvest and hatcheries, if there is no habitat, both the salmon and our treaty-reserved rights are lost.

Unfortunately, the state of Washington continues to ignore its obligation to enforce one of the …