When the United States Constitution was signed, it named three sovereign entities: the federal government, states, and indigenous nations. Despite the ongoing project of American settler colonialism, the indigenous nations acknowledgement allows – in theory – any tribal government to negotiate treaty rights with The United States and these negotiations “shall be the supreme law of the land.” Unfortunately, states and the federal government have historically ignored Article VI’s mandate in acknowledging indigenous peoples’ treaty rights but these treaties have been integral as tribes have successfully fought back.
In the 1850s, Isaac Stevens served as the settler representative in what was “claimed” as the Washington territory, now known as Washington state. He was supposed to secure land rights from the indigenous nations of the area and hurriedly signed a series of treaties stating that tribes would sign over their land in exchange for a permanent guarantee to fish.
Like nearly every other treaty signed with indigenous nations, these treaties were roundly broken when they were seen as inconvenient to the State’s “progress.” The federal government’s treaty “termination” policy of the mid 20th century opened the door for a series of laws to be passed in Washington and other Western states that banned indigenous nations from accessing their sacred foodways. Tribes began to protest this flagrant violation of their treaty rights by organizing a series of “fish-ins” and a wider PR campaign that took advantage of the non-native public imagination of indigenous folk to bring attention to the government’s illegal activity. The Survival of the American Indian Society and the explicitly non-integrationist National Indian Youth Council were some of the organizations at the forefront. Some folks took up the tactic of civil disobedience by going to go fish without permits and were arrested for doing so, while others guarded their fishing boats openly with arms.
Meanwhile, in partnership with civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and ACLU, Northwestern nations successfully pressured the federal government to sue the state of Washington to restore fishing treaty rights. In what became known as the Boldt decision of 1974, Washington state was forced to honor the Stevens treaties under Article VI and tribes were guaranteed half of all harvestable fish in the state’s waterways. While this was not the end of confrontations with settler violence, tribal nations have since had indisputable legal standing to threaten litigation whenever their fishing rights are infringed. The approach of grassroots movement, civil disobedience, armed resistance, savvy PR, and a robust legal strategy makes this movement a rich one for abolitionists today to study and draw inspiration from.
