A new summary of the Boldt 40 event now over at Boldt40.org:
“They gassed us, clubbed us, dragged us, beat us. Those were hard times,” said Puyallup elder Ramona Bennett, recalling the brutal treatment of tribal fishermen and their families by state enforcement officers during the treaty fishing rights struggle of the 1960s and ’70s.
The struggle led to the landmark 1974 ruling by federal Judge George Boldt in U.S. v. Washington. Boldt’s ruling upheld the treaty-reserved salmon harvest right of the tribes, establishing them as co-managers of the resource and affirming the tribal right to half of the harvestable salmon returning to their historic fishing sites.
