Turtle Talk

From Craig Dorsay:

After 44 years, the severe restrictions imposed on the exercise of hunting and fishing rights by the Siletz Tribe have been removed, and the Tribe is now free to claim and assert treaty rights as it sees fit. The original restrictions were imposed on the Tribe by the State of Oregon, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, as the price for the State not opposing Siletz’s restoration as a federally-recognized tribe in 1977 or obtaining a modest reservation in 1980. The State attorney at the time – this was in the middle of the Northwest treaty fishing wars -made sure these restrictions were ironclad and permanent by requiring the Siletz Tribe to enter into an Agreement on the exercise of hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering rights severely restricting those rights, and then incorporating that restrictive agreement in a “friendly” federal court decree as well as the Tribe’s federal legislation restoring a modest reservation for the Tribe. (copy of 1980 Agreement and federal court decree attached).

The State strictly enforced this Agreement until Governor Kate Brown in 2016 agreed that this Agreement and arrangement was unconscionable, and cooperated with the Tribe in getting it lifted. This cooperation resulted in federal legislation in 2023 removing the applicable reference from the Tribe’s Reservation Act, and in a November 2024 Court Order vacating the original 1980 federal court decree. A copy of the legislation, the joint motion to vacate the consent decree, and the Court Order are also attached.

Materials here: