Here is the opinion, per Judge Canby — En Banc Opinion
Thanks to A.S.
United States v. Washington
Ninth Circuit to Hear Samish Tribe’s Claim to Reenter U.S. v. Washington En Banc
In an unusual procedure, after oral argument before a three-judge panel including Judge Canby, the Ninth Circuit decided to hear the United States v. Washington subproceeding involving the Samish Indian Tribe’s treaty claims en banc.
Samish Indian Tribe Opening Brief
Ninth Circuit Rules in Favor of Suquamish Tribe over Puget Sound Fishing Rights
Here is the Ninth Circuit’s (crabby) opinion in Upper Skagit Tribe v. Washington.
The briefs:
Port Gamble and Jamestown S’Klallam Tribes Brief
The key holding:
We conclude that it is at least as likely as not that Judge Boldt meant what he said; the Suquamish treaty territory “include[s] the marine waters of Puget Sound from the northern tip of Vashon Island to the Fraser River.” This broad, unlimited fishery is what Dr. Lane described in her report and testimony. Dr. Lane stated that marine fisheries “are far more difficult to delimit than fresh waters.” She repeatedly underlined that her report did not, and could not, list all of the usual and accustomed fishing locations of the Suquamish. She noted that the Suquamish had more limited resources in their home area than most tribes, and thus had to travel more extensively to fish.
Dr. Lane said that she had no documentary evidence that the Suquamish fished in the San Juan Islands, but nonetheless found it likely that they did so. Judge Boldt agreed, deciding in the absence of any specific evidence that the Haro and Rosario Straits were part of the Suquamish traditional fishing grounds. This demonstrates a lack of specific evidence would not have precluded Judge Boldt from including Skagit Bay and Saratoga Passage in Suquamish’s territory.
And why we think the court is being crabby:
Ninth Circuit Rejects Skokomish Bid for Fishing Allocation in U.S. v. Wash. Subproceeding
Here is the opinion in United States v. Washington, though as the court points out, neither the U.S. nor the State of Washington were parties to this one. An excerpt:
The district court granted the Port Gamble and Jamestown Tribes’ motion to dismiss. The district court held that “[t]he dispute here does not arise from the Hood Canal Agreement, and it cannot be settled by looking to its terms. Instead, the Skokomish are asking the court to bypass the Agreement and create an allocation for the parties because they cannot agree among themselves as required by the Agreement.” The court noted that nothing in the agreement “empowers the court to allocate harvest shares in the absence of the agreement of the parties.” The provision in Judge Boldt’s decree retaining jurisdiction for “[d]isputes concerning the subject matter of this case which the parties have been unable to resolve among themselves,” did not apply because “[t]he subject matter of this case is treaty fishing rights, not the equitable rights of any one tribe to harvest a certain allocation of fish…. Nowhere in these decisions is there a finding that inter-tribal allocation (as opposed to allocation between treaty- and non-treaty fishermen) is the subject matter of this case.” As for the catch-all language in Judge Boldt’s order, “[s]uch other matters as the court may deem appropriate,” “[t]his is a discretionary section, and … the Court does not deem it appropriate to take jurisdiction of this matter.” Because the request for allocation did not fall within the purposes of enforcing the treaty or the Hood Canal Agreement, and neither provided for court allocation if the tribes could not agree among themselves, the court exercised its discretion to refrain from granting equitable relief. Though we do not reach, or rule upon, all the conclusions of the district court and the challenges to them, we conclude that dismissal was proper, and affirm.
Douglas Harris on the Boldt Decision in Canada
Douglas C. Harris posted his paper,The Boldt Decision in Canada: Aboriginal Treaty Rights to Fish on the Pacific, part of THE POWER OF PROMISES: RETHINKING INDIAN TREATIES IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, Alexandra Harmon, ed., University of Washington Press, 2008. Here is the abstract:
The Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846 established the forty-ninth parallel as the boundary between British and American interests in western North America. After 1846, Aboriginal peoples to the north of the border negotiated with the British Crown the terms of their coexistence with incoming settlers, those to its south with the United States. As a result, while some of the Coast Salish and Kwak’waka’wakw peoples in what would become British Columbia concluded treaties between 1850 and 1854 with the Crown’s representative, James Douglas, the tribes in the United States settled with the governor of the Washington territory, Isaac I. Stevens, in 1854 and 1855.
Blumm and Steadman on the Judge Martinez Treaty Fishing Decision
Michael Blumm and Jane Steadman have posted “Indian Treaty Fishing Rights and Habitat Protection: The Martinez Decision Supplies a Resounding Judicial Reaffirmation” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In the mid-nineteenth century, as the pace of American westward expansion accelerated and tension between white settlers and indigenous tribes mounted, the federal government convinced many Pacific Northwest tribes to enter into treaties that would facilitate white settlement. In exchange for cession of millions of acres of their homeland, the tribes retained the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places in common with white settlers. In the 1905 case United States v. Winans, the United States Supreme Court explained that the treaty fishing right constitutes a “servitude upon every piece of land.” We have described this servitude as a “piscary profit,” a familiar property right at common law that must be exercised free from unreasonable interference. While the universally shared assumption at the time the treaties were signed was that the salmon resource was inexhaustible, in fact the salmon have been in precipitous decline since the late-1800s. This scarcity bred conflicts, which have forced the tribes to enforce their treaty fishing right in the courts for over a century.
Turtle Talk 