Turtle Talk

Thomas Stratmann has posted “Ten Years, Three Tribes” on the Rules and Results substack.

Here is an excerpt:

The Tulalip Tribes have been a fishing people for as long as anyone remembers. Their reservation runs 22,000 acres along the eastern shore of Puget Sound, 35 miles north of Seattle. The waters at the edge of the reservation, where the tide goes out and exposes the mudflats, are where shellfish grow, and salmon come to spawn. In an 1855 treaty, the United States agreed that those waters would always belong to the Tribes. The treaty remains in force today.

Today, 73 private docks and 124 private mooring buoys cover the Tulalip shoreline. Many were built without tribal permission. Tulalip’s own Natural Resources Department documents the consequences: water quality has fallen, salmon populations have fallen, and shellfish beds have closed.

In 2019, Tulalip asked the federal government for the authority to manage their own shoreline. The federal government said no.

In 2023, they asked again. The federal government said no.