January 6, 2003 In the weeks after the general election, the writing is still on the wall. The tribes are a political force to be reckoned with. This is true here in Washington, just as it is true in other parts of the country. In South Dakota, for example, tribes have been credited with winning […]
October 18, 2002 Treaty Indian salmon fishermen are struggling. There’s no market for our product. We can’t compete with cheaper farmed Atlantic salmon, even though everyone knows that our Pacific salmon is better – better tasting and better for you. All of our salmon comes onto the market in about a six-month period. Then it’s […]
September 24, 2002 Coastal treaty tribes will be especially hard hit by the sharp reductions in groundfish harvests off the Washington Coast this year. Declining salmon runs and poor market conditions have been conspiring against the tribes for the past couple of decades. Now, just when they are beginning to access their treaty-reserved share of […]
August 7, 2002 Here we go again. A second year of big returns of hatchery chinook returning to the Columbia River – coupled with more good returns of coho to Puget Sound – and some folks already are talking loudly again about easing salmon habitat protection measures. Unfortunately, what these returns really amount to are […]
June 24, 2002 Why do rich farmers get all the breaks and poor fishermen get the shaft? The president recently signed the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 into law, increasing federal subsidies to farmers in the United States by at least $83 billion to well over $100 billion over the next ten […]
The State of Washington has a duty to the treaty Indian tribes who have always inhabited this region. That Duty is to not allow salmon habitat to be degraded to the point that salmon are no longer available for harvest by the tribes, who gave up nearly all of the land in what is now […]
This is a time of great change in the management of the salmon resource in the State of Washington. Listings of several local salmon stocks under the Endangered Species Act have required us to re-examine many of our approaches to the way we manage salmon. Our use of hatcheries is one example. Today, the tribes, […]
It has been a little over a year since Governor Gary Locke met with the tribes at the Sleeping Lady Resort in Leavenworth, where three November days of detailed discussion culminated with the signing of the “New Millennium Agreement.” I remember thinking how appropriate it was for all of this to take place at this […]
OLYMPIA (8/23/00)–Let’s face it. The state of Washington has failed to protect the environment of our region from development and natural resource habitat destruction. Nowhere is this more evident than on our shorelines. Damage caused by everything from jetties and bulkheads to gravel mining and dredging have been permitted to run rampant for generations. Even […]
The confluence of the centuries should be like the joining of two rivers. As they merge, the memories of countless moments and places should fold one unto another, and form a deeper, broader flow of knowledge. As the 19th Century merged into the 20th, my father was a young man. He lived his whole life […]
