Tribes have long recognized that degraded environments mean both depletion and contamination of the salmon and other fish,¹ including shellfish, on which they depend. As tribal leaders contemplated litigation
against the states in the 1960s to defend their treaty-secured² right “to take fish,” they sketched the problems for their attorneys in its multiple layers: tribal fishers were being assaulted and harassed on the waters; the state was discriminatorily “regulating” harvest; the once-abundant salmon runs had declined precipitously; the aquatic environments that support the salmon and other fish had become degraded to the point that they were no longer a fit home.³ As the tribes emphasized in the cases they brought before the courts, each of these affronts is a violation of the treaty promises.
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