Native American Environmental Justice as Decolonization

Introduction

Arguably, one of the most transformative rulings in the long history of litigation defining the parameters of Native American treaty rights in the United States celebrated its 40-year anniversary in 2014. The decision in United States v. Washington (1974), which is commonly known as the “Boldt Decision” in reference to presiding Federal District Court Judge, George Boldt, took an unprecedented stand of upholding both the content and the spirit of long-neglected treaties by recognizing sweeping fishing rights for 14 Indian tribes in Washington State. The Boldt Decision marked a climactic moment in a century long struggle between tribes, non-Indian commercial and recreational fishers, and State government over valuable and dwindling salmon resources. While only governing a relatively small number of people and defining rights to a single resource in a distinct region of the country, the ruling’s impact has been revolutionary for not only catalyzing Native American political and cultural revitalization in the Pacific Northwest but also facilitating the resumption of Indigenous systems of authority over culturally vital natural resources nationally. According to legal expert, Charles Wilkinson (2000), the Boldt Decision remains one of the two or three most important Indian Law rulings in American history.

The struggles for Native American fishing rights in the Pacific Northwest have been well chronicled by historians and Federal Indian Law scholars (see Boxberger, 2000; Brown, 1994; Cohen, 1986; Wilkinson, 2000). These stories provide rich narratives of conquest and resistance, domination and resilience, and marginalization and revitalization. Although not explicitly acknowledged, the historical narratives also provide a convincing lens for comprehending the inherently political and cultural dynamics of colonization. They highlight the intentionally multifocal strategies of conquest through which valuable Indigenous resources (in this case, salmon and steelhead trout) were systematically appropriated through legal formalities, such as State licensing laws banning tribal fishers from accessing their traditional fishing grounds or using conventional fishing methods. They also reveal how Indigenous disempowerment was justified and intensified by the systematic dismantling of cultural systems on which native societies were built. The cultural oppression of Northwestern tribes was accomplished, first and foremost, by methodically separating tribal communities from the salmon—the single species that provided the focal point for tribal cultural identities and customary codes—while devaluing and dismantling the traditional cultural systems that evolved in conjunction with native peoples’ long-standing stewardship of the fish.

As powerful as the historical accounts are for revealing the fundamentally cultural and political dynamics of colonization, the story of where the treaty fishing tribes have come in the 40 years since the Boldt Decision is equally compelling for making the case that decolonization is also an inherently political and cultural affair. In this article, we will revisit the story of United States v. Washington to expose a different account of conquest and revitalization than has been told before—one with broader implications for the ways scholars consider the mechanisms through which social inequality is both produced and resisted. The majority of scholarly work on racial inequality focuses narrowly on contemporary or historical manifestations of inequality, or on the legal, political, or cultural expressions of racism. This case suggests, however, that existing systems of racial stratification cannot be disentangled from their historical roots, and that the political and cultural foundations and consequences of inequality are similarly intertwined. A more holistic and nuanced understanding of social inequality production requires that scholars take history seriously, while paying particular attention to the ways that legal, political, and cultural mechanisms interact to reinforce systems of stratification or to reveal opportunities for meaningful resistance. In this case, we were able to apply a more historically sensitive and multifocal framework to help us tease out the fundamental ingredients of decolonization by intentionally connecting theoretical insights about racial formation to those pertaining to environmental injustice (Pellow, 2005).

This case of Indigenous decolonization also suggests the importance of foregrounding the agential dynamics of counterhegemonic change. Our findings reveal that, despite entrenched legal and ideological barriers, Native American people have been able to successfully identify political and cultural opportunities and deploy a host of innovative strategies to secure recognition of their fishing rights. This was not a case where the tide of public opinion eventually turned in favor of greater Native American rights. Rather, like most civil rights victories, it was hard fought on the ground and orchestrated by the people whose lives depended on fishing rights the most.

In the section that follows, we set the stage by providing an overview of the events surrounding the Boldt Decision and its aftermath. We then draw from the literatures on racial formation, colonization, and environmental justice to highlight the structural and cultural dynamics of colonization and decolonization. Drawing from archival and interview data and integrating key insights from these literatures, we examine the central strategies through which the Northwest tribes’ have asserted their fishing rights in the region. It is our contention that, when taken together, these strategies present valuable insights into the multifocal means through which Native American political actors work to decolonize State institutions that continue to regulate their interests and undo the discriminatory colonial logics that legitimate oppressive laws, policies, and practices.

Colonization, Fishing, and the Recognition of Treaty Rights in the Pacific Northwest

Native Americans, like other Indigenous groups throughout the world, have deep-seated traditions linking their spiritual, material, and social well-being to the natural world. Sometimes, a single animal species encapsulates all of the most vital functions of tribal welfare. For Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest, this animal is the salmon. Tribal people have depended on salmon for their livelihoods for thousands of years. To them, the fish are more than another commodity—they are life sustaining, they are food. Anthropologists estimate that, at the time of European contact, Indigenous families in the Puget Sound area consumed about 500 pounds of salmon per year (Wilkinson, 2000). But to assume that native people view salmon as simply a material necessity, much the way that modern Americans view meat, grains, and other foodstuffs, would be a gross understatement. On the contrary, salmon are at the core of fundamental systems of traditional knowledge and are essential to the cultural identities of tribes and individual native people. Northwest tribes’ creation stories, which continue to be passed between generations, contain essential lessons about the interconnectedness of humans and nature and instructions to native people about how to care for the earth to ensure that salmon, and other life-sustaining species, are always protected.

Whether for subsistence, customary, or economic purposes, Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest were engaged in highly developed and widespread salmon fishing enterprises at the time of European contact. Lewis and Clark noticed this in their travels to the area, commenting on the magnitude of native fishing activities (Cohen, 1986). One account estimates that, at the time of contact, over 50,000 Indians were catching 18 million pounds of salmon per year along the Columbia river alone (Cohen, 1986). Despite the massive volume of their harvests, overfishing was not a problem (Boxberger, 2000). This is likely due to a combination of Indigenous technologies, methods, and values ensuring that tribal communities’ needs were met without wasting the valuable and sacred resource.

Regular interaction between Native Americans and Anglo-Europeans did not begin in earnest until the mid-1800s when missionaries, gold prospectors, and settlers began pouring into the region. Because tribal villages occupied the best real estate along riverbanks and tidelands, Territorial Governor, Isaac Stevens, was pressed to negotiate treaties for the sale of these lands. Recognizing that the tide of White settlement would only increase, 25 tribes agreed to sell 64 million acres in exchange for the guaranteed protection of their reserved lands and most valuable resource rights, including, most important, the right to fish for salmon as they had done for millennia (Boxberger, 2000; Cohen, 1986). According to the late Nisqually Tribal elder and fishing rights activist, Billy Frank Jr. (1998),

[Fishing] was the one thing above all else that the tribes wished to retain during treaty negotiations with the federal government 150 years ago. Nothing was more vital to the tribal way of life then, and nothing is more important now.

Understanding that the tribes would never cede their territory without guaranteeing their traditional fishing rights, Stevens included the following language in the treaties:

The exclusive right of taking fish in all the streams, where running through or bordering said reservation, is further secured to said confederated tribes and bands of Indians, as also the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places, in common with citizens of the Territory . . . . (Stevens Treaty with the Yakama Indians, quoted in Woods, 2005, p. 412, italics added)

When the Stevens Treaties were signed in the mid-1850s, Native Americans did most of the fishing in the region. However, by 1866, with the establishment of the first non-Indian commercial fishing operations in Washington, the balance of power began to shift at the expense of the tribes and the salmon (Boxberger, 2000). By the turn of the century, technological advancements in fishing and canning resulted in a situation where more salmon were thrown away than could be canned (Boxberger, 2000). The efficiency of non-Indian fish traps, and their strategic placement above tribal reef sites and at the mouths of rivers, resulted in the decimation of Indian reef netting by 1915 and the destruction of salmon runs in the rivers abutting Indian reservations. The mechanization of the fishing industry in the early 20th century, combined with the placement of hydropower dams on many major rivers beginning in the 1930s and a post–World War II population boom, caused rapid decline of the salmon fishery and created urgent pressure for State regulation.

As the ill effects of overfishing became an undeniable reality, it was Indian fishermen, rather than the overwhelming numbers of non-Indian fishers who swarmed the harbors, bays, river mouths, and banks, who were targeted by State regulations to reduce their take. This was despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s previous ruling, upholding the Stevens Treaties and finding that Washington state licensing laws did not apply to Native American on- or off-reservation fishing activities. In a now famous statement, the court acknowledged that the right to fish was “not much less necessary to the existence of the Indians than the atmosphere they breathed” (United States v. Winans, 1905). The Washington Supreme Court, however, ignored the high court decision, rationalizing its findings by degrading the tribes:

At no time did our ancestors in getting title to this continent ever regard the Aborigines as other than mere occupants and incompetent occupants of the soil . . . Neither Rome nor sagacious Britain ever dealt more liberally with their subject races than we with these savage tribes who it was generally tempting and always easy to destroy and whom we have so often permitted to squander vast areas of fertile land before our eyes. (State of Washington v. Towessnute, 1916)

Despite the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs’ obligations to enforce treaty rights, Indian fishermen were largely left to their own devices against the State. When Indians refused to back down, they were threatened by White fishermen and law enforcement officials with arrests and violence. In the face of increasing brutality, Native American activism intensified, with protestors using nonviolent fish-ins as their primary strategy of resistance. They also deployed oppositional cultural identities drawing from native peoples’ long-standing resistance against colonization and their deep connection to the salmon and the natural environment. The symbolic nature of the “fish-ins,” and the often violent responses they provoked, attracted attention from mainstream media outlets and urban-based American Indian organizations, who had only recently begun mobilizing for Native American sovereignty using pan-Indian framing (Cantzler, 2008). In many ways, the fish-ins triggered the Red Power movement of the 1970s by facilitating a more unified alliance between urban and rural Indians in the fight for Native American self-determination and by modeling the use of highly publicized, symbolic protests events, which would become the key mobilizing strategy for Red Power activists.

It was in this climate of State-sanctioned hostility that the tribes were finally able to convince the federal government to sue the State of Washington on their behalf, demanding once and for all that Indian treaty fishing rights be recognized. In the end, Judge Boldt ruled in favor of the tribes giving new life to the treaties. He determined that up to 50% of the fish stock should be allocated to the tribes for their subsistence and commercial uses even though Native Americans represented only about 1% of the population of the State and, at the time of the ruling, caught only about 5% of the salmon (Wilkinson, 2000). He also took the unprecedented step of requiring the State and tribes to work together to manage the resource in a way that would maximize allocation to all parties and ensure the protection of salmon into the future. Thus, through the efforts of Native American activists and the willingness of a sympathetic federal court, equitable distribution of valuable fisheries resources and the regulatory power to protect them, was confirmed.

Within a few years of the historic ruling, institutionally supported tribal organizations were established to manage fish resources in scientifically responsible and culturally relevant ways. Since then, tribal governmental and scientific infrastructures have developed to the point where tribes have become legitimate leaders in State and regional resource protection initiatives. These organizations have used their influence to negotiate cooperative agreements with other stakeholders to maximize allocation of the dwindling salmon resource while prioritizing habitat protection and species’ rehabilitation. Although it took some time, the State of Washington eventually conceded the fight and joined tribes as comanagers of the fisheries. While unimaginable 40 years ago, these management partnerships have become quite functional and now provide a genuine model for State–Indigenous resource management ventures globally.

The legal recognition of treaty fishing rights and the tribes’ increased authority over regional fisheries has expanded opportunities for Native American cultural revitalization within their communities. Tribal leaders consistently acknowledge that protecting treaty fishing rights is essential to enhance the health and well-being of their communities by providing economic and cultural incentives for tribal members who have left the reservations to return home as well as the infrastructure necessary to educate and train a new generation of Native American leaders. Reinvigorating tribal salmon fisheries is also imperative for reinvesting community members with a new sense of purpose that is directly tied to the reinvigoration of cultural, social, and political values. According to the former chairperson of the Upper Skagit Tribal Community,

We, as Indians, have a responsibility to preserve our right, now that it has been secured, just as our elders fought to preserve it. We must preserve that right, for more than the value it carries today, for more even than the value of saving the past. Our obligation is to preserve the right to fish for our future, for the many Indian children who will wake to the far-off sound of the splash of the first salmon of the season. (Cohen, 1986, p. xxvi)

Indeed, the struggle over Indian fishing rights has been a struggle for the very survival of Indian tribes as culturally flourishing, economically self-sufficient, and politically autonomous communities. In this article, we claim that the work of Native Americans to systematically dismantle the legal and political systems that have excluded tribes from salmon fishing, while simultaneously revitalizing their cultures, economies and governments, is nothing short of systematic and deliberate acts of decolonization.

The Cultural and Political Foundations of (De)colonization

These analyses view struggles by Indigenous people to protect traditional resource rights as episodes of contention in broader processes of decolonization. The past 50 years have witnessed a global trend of Indigenous activism, with the goal being to decolonize societies from within (Maaka & Fleras, 2005). Through interaction with state governments, and active engagement with enduring colonial structures of domination, Indigenous activists are able to assert postcolonial alternatives, which promote Indigenous self-determination and governance as necessary to achieve constructive coexistence between Indigenous communities and dominant cultures. Indigenous people’s rights to access and cultivate traditionally harvested natural resources, such as fish and game, are essential components of Indigenous self-determination and, as such, are fundamental to breaking down the vestiges of colonial domination. The acknowledgment of traditionally based resource rights validates Indigenous groups’ governmental autonomy over their territories and legitimates such rights based on alternative cultural and political logics. It also presents Indigenous people with greater opportunities to revitalize their communities through economic development, protect their resources through the activation of jurisdictional authority, and participate in mainstream decision-making regimes.

Environmental Justice as Decolonization

Although analyses of environmental inequality and injustice have skyrocketed recently, less work has focused on the struggles of Indigenous communities to control and protect their natural environments. ¹ This trend has curiously left Indigenous people on the margins of discussions about environmental justice despite the fact that nearly every political struggle that Indigenous people have engaged in since European contact, whether occurring on the battlefield, in the courtroom, or on the streets, has had environmental implications. Oftentimes, these battles concerned land and many times they involved access to and control over culturally significant natural resources, like the struggle over treaty fishing rights in the Northwest.

The environmental justice literature presents a compelling, but underutilized, lens through which to explore the dynamics of racial formation, colonization, and decolonization. Environmental justice scholars have already made an enormous contribution to broader discussions about racism by revealing the environmental implications of racial oppression. Pellow (2005) observes that processes of racial formation, which are vital to assertions of racial domination through colonization, are also relevant for understanding manifestations of environmental racism. Although the environmental justice literature tends to focus on contemporary examples of racial inequality, theoretical assumptions about the dynamics of environmental racism are clearly relevant to understanding the environmental facets of colonization.

What is more, environmental justice scholars have constructed an analytical framework for conceptualizing the central tenets of justice and fairness that are useful for more fully recognizing the dynamics of decolonization. Walker (2012) contends that conceptualizations of justice (“how things ought to be”) are a fundamental component of environmental justice claims making, along with evidence (“how things are”) and process (“why things are how they are”; p. 40). Notions of justice reflect the claims maker’s assessment of exactly what it is required in order for equity to be achieved. Three concepts of justice are prevalent in contemporary environmental justice framing: distributive justice, procedural justice, and justice as recognition (Bell, 2004; Brighouse, 2004; Schlosberg, 2004; Walker, 2012).

Distributive justice is the central concern of environmental justice activists. It defines inequality as the disproportional distribution of environmental harms (e.g., toxic waste, air and water pollution, etc.) and/or benefits (e.g., access to green space, organic food, etc.). For the fishing tribes of the Pacific Northwest, distributive justice is achieved when tribes are guaranteed their treaty rights to harvest 50% of the salmon, shellfish, and other finfish. Lake (1996) and Ishiyama (2003) have argued that while distributive justice is a fundamental component of environmental justice, it is not sufficient in and of itself to achieve meaningful and lasting equity. Procedural justice is also required: “Redistributing outcomes will not achieve environmental justice unless it is accompanied and, indeed, preceded by a procedural redistribution of power in decision-making” (Lake, 1996, p. 169). Procedural justice for Pacific Northwest tribes requires more than just access to decision-making bodies. It requires meaningful shared governance over the fisheries between the treaty tribes, the State of Washington, and the federal government.

A final element of environmental justice is “justice as recognition,” which addresses the cultural dynamics through which certain groups have been devalued by the state and civil society (Walker, 2012). This element of justice requires validation of Native American cultural prerogatives, including their cultural revitalization efforts and their culturally relevant ways of managing their fisheries. It also requires the rejection of discriminatory beliefs that devalue Native American people and their cultures. Taken together, the three elements of justice provide a multidimensional framework that incorporates political, institutional, and cultural factors. This framework is particularly useful for analyzing the 40-year legacy of the Boldt Decision as a transformative episode of Native American decolonization.

Forty Years Since Boldt: Justice for Native American Fishing Rights

This section applies the environmental justice framework to the mobilizing strategies that defenders of Native American fishing rights have used since the Boldt Decision, revealing the tribes’ strategic and multilevel approach to maximizing authority over their fisheries. ² While primarily targeting institutional transformations, these strategies have far-reaching cultural implications in terms of their facilitation of greater recognition for tribal cultural prerogatives by non-Indian stakeholders and enhanced opportunities for cultural revitalization projects at the tribal level.

Distributive Justice

Distributive justice, which requires the equitable distribution of the benefits of Washington’s fisheries, has largely been secured through the Boldt Decision’s formal redistribution of resources. The ruling in United States v. Washington (1974) was historic, first and foremost, for its interpretation of treaty language guaranteeing Indian tribes’ right to fish “in common with” the citizens of the Territory as meaning that the tribes were entitled to 50% of the harvestable fish in the State. For the tribes, equity demanded more than simply equal access to the fish. It requires the right of tribal members to harvest half of the fish in the State, despite Native Americans comprising only 1% of the population. What is more, the judge interpreted the scope of the treaty rights quite broadly, noting specifically that,

The right secured by the treaties to the plaintiff tribes is not limited as to species of fish, the origin of the fish, the purpose or use, or the time or manner of taking, except to the extent necessary to achieve preservation of the resource and to allow non-Indians an opportunity to fish in common with treaty right fishermen outside reservation boundaries. (Mosey, 1974)

This provision enhanced distributive justice by rejecting a static view of Native American treaty rights in favor of one that provides flexibility for meeting the evolving social, cultural, and economic needs of the tribes.

In the context of resource scarcity, however, the tribes have taken the position that the legal right to harvest 50% of a dwindling salmon resource does not, by itself, constitute justice. Recognizing the disastrous impacts of non-Indian commercial overfishing and development on fragile salmon populations and ecosystems, tribes insist that that the State owes an ecological debt to the salmon and the tribes. Repaying this debt, while meeting their treaty obligations, requires the State to prioritize habitat protection over the economic interests of industries, real estate developers, and private property owners. The tribes ultimately pressed the matter in federal court arguing that the State has an obligation under the Stevens Treaties to ensure that activities affecting fisheries habitat do not impinge on the tribes’ allocation. In 2007, the Federal District Court ruled in favor of the tribes (see United States v. Washington, 2007 [W. D. Wash, 2007]). While the ruling was specific to the State’s operation of culverts, it has clear implications for innumerable commercial and recreational activities within fisheries habitats. Most important, the tribes’ victory in this case provided them with another powerful legal tool to ensure the full realization of their allocation.

Procedural Justice

The Boldt Decision has also been the primary source of procedural justice for the treaty tribes of the Pacific Northwest. In order to formally redistribute regulatory power between the State of Washington and the tribes, Judge Boldt incorporated two key provisions in his ruling: (a) Tribes’ reserved fishing rights includes their authority to manage on-reservation fisheries free from State interference and (b) The State and tribes must regulate off-reservation fisheries together, through egalitarian comanagement partnerships.

Judge Boldt provided legal recognition for complete tribal jurisdiction over on-reservation fisheries, but he conditioned tribal management on each tribe’s demonstration of “competent leadership, an organized tribal government, trained enforcement personnel, expert advisers, a membership role and provision for member identity cards” (Waitangi Tribunal, 1988). Rather than resisting the Judge’s conditions as infringing on tribal sovereignty, many individual tribes embraced the requirements and quickly developed their own regulatory agencies that are staffed by biological scientists and utilize Western scientific methods—oftentimes, along with more traditional methods. The tribes understood that demonstrating their scientific expertise on terms that were recognizable and legitimate to other governmental regulators provided them with a great deal of power in dictating the terms of comanagement relationships and asserting greater autonomy over the entire Northwest salmon industry. According to one fisheries expert,

It was obvious to them [the tribes] that he who had the data was in charge. And, they wanted to make sure that they were part of that data collection and analysis so that they weren’t just relying on the State and Federal government to tell them what the state of the resource was. (Interview, September 2, 2008)

While the State resisted comanagement relationships for a number of years, they were eventually embraced by a new cadre of managers who saw cooperation as not only legally unavoidable but also a legitimate and meaningful way to ensure that sufficient salmon and steelhead stocks remained in the waters for Indian and non-Indian stakeholders alike. Over the past 30 years, State–tribal comanagement partnerships have become widely accepted and institutionalized into State regulatory regimes, with many State resource managers now recognizing the benefit of having tribal experts and resources in their camp.

Outside the strict terms of the Boldt Decision, the tribes have been able to maximize their power by preserving tribal autonomy while presenting a unified front in conflicts with non-Indian stakeholders. The ruling in United States v. Washington establishes rights for 20 independent treaty tribes, each with its own governing structure and unique set of aspirations reflecting distinct cultural, economic, and political prerogatives. While Native American self-determination is predicated on the recognition of each tribe’s autonomous, semisovereign status, there are times when tribes benefit from forging a unified front in their dealings with non-Indian stakeholders. Far-reaching procedural justice, therefore, requires a framework that privileges tribal autonomy, while providing a platform for pan-Indian political action when necessary. In Washington, these objectives have largely been met through the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC). NWIFC was established in 1974 to “coordinate an orderly and biologically sound treaty Indian fishery in the Pacific Northwest and provide member tribes with a single unified voice on fisheries management and conservation matters” (Brown, 1994, p. 2 quoting NWIFC, 1987, p. 1). NWIFC does not represent or speak for the treaty tribes, but rather facilitates the coordination of tribal agendas and provides the tribes with legal and technical assistance during the course of litigation, negotiation, and political advocacy. The tribes themselves set the agenda for the Commission, which then provides a forum for them to work toward consensus wherever possible and to speak with one voice on policy matters. Because strong tribal governments have the political sovereignty to integrate their own, unique, cultural concerns into their regulation of tribal fisheries, NWIFC is able to focus on providing scientific, legal, and political support to the tribes without having to coordinate the potentially conflicting cultural prerogatives of the different tribal nations.

Procedural justice has been further secured by the tribes’ careful and intentional approach to shared governance that prioritizes negotiation and relationship building with State and private stakeholders, while keeping litigation in their back pockets when diplomacy fails. Despite the long history of litigation over fishing rights in the Northwest, tribes have generally favored negotiation. The legal status of Indian tribes as sovereign governments provides them with the legitimacy and jurisdictional authority to engage with local, State, and federal officials through government-to-government relationships in order to forge mutually beneficial comanagement agreements. Billy Frank Jr. (1996) understood the benefits of cooperation and negotiation between tribes and the State:

By staying out of the courts and at the government-to-government negotiation table, we can seek common solutions to common problems. We can work together, as a team, to protect and restore salmon habitat . . . Co-management, based on understanding and mutual respect, is the one and only path to progress in natural resource management in the future.

Tribes take negotiations with private stakeholders just as seriously as they do agreements with government officials, however, it sometimes requires a little persuasion from the courts to get these parties to the table. While the tribes always prefer to build partnerships with local community members, whom they see as their neighbors, their strategy has often required using the court to create a judicially enforceable hammer and then working with local communities who come to the table because tribes have that hammer.

Justice as Recognition

Forging functional cooperative arrangements between tribes and non-Indian stakeholders has required much more than a federal court mandate. Ultimately, building viable relationships necessitated overcoming over a century of hostility and mistrust between Whites and Native Americans in the region. Non-Indian responses in the early years after the Boldt Decision revealed the lingering misunderstanding, antagonism, and outright racism that overshadowed Native American–White relations just 40 years ago. On one level, many non-Indian citizens remained ignorant of tribes’ semisovereign political statuses and the legal obligations created through treaties. Viewing Native Americans as simply a racial minority or special interest group, citizens routinely objected to treaty rights as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Beyond reflecting simple lack of understanding, many non-Indian objections to treaty fishing rights contained veiled racist assumptions and more explicitly bigoted stereotypes about Indian people, their motives, and capabilities. This is just one example of such rhetoric in a letter from an angry citizen to State Senator Henry Jackson:

As a sport fisherman, I have thousands of dollars invested in a boat and related equipment; I am not about to see it fall into disuse to provide further drinking money for a pack of Indians. With the amount of money you people and our government squander on useless social programs I think you could afford to buy all those Indians all the cheap wine they could drink and an old beater car a couple times a year. . . . I don’t care how you do it, but we want these Indians off our back and quickly. P.S. Probably not too many Indians bother to vote, but I do. (Price, 1975)

The general antagonism toward Indians and their fishing rights was also widespread among State politicians and natural resource managers who filed lawsuits and passed laws to block the allocation and comanagement provisions of the Boldt Decision. As justification for their lack of cooperation, Washington State officials commonly cited their deep mistrust of tribal management capabilities, as well as their general beliefs that the recognition of Indian fishing rights violated American values of equality and citizenship. State Attorney General, Slade Gorton, made this argument stating that,

It is destructive of social peace to have a policy under which one class of citizens is entitled to special rights in perpetuity by reason of race, or more precisely, by reason of race and the luck of ancestral treaty. (Brack, 1977, p. 4)

Overcoming this hostility has not been a simple task, but it was essential to facilitate procedural justice in comanagement and to achieve broader recognition that tribal fishing rights are both politically and culturally legitimate. While tribes were ready to cooperate since the ruling in 1974, non-Indians did not take any steps toward reconciliation until the early 1980s once the inevitability of tribal involvement in fisheries management became apparent. At that time, the new director of Washington’s Department of Fisheries and the president of a local sports fishers’ association formally committed to cooperation with the tribes, opening the door for more meaningful partnerships between tribes and non-Indian stakeholders, which have since become the norm (Woods, 2005).

Although relations between tribes and non-Indians have improved significantly in the past four decades, achieving non-Indian’s full appreciation of the unique cultural and political underpinnings of tribal fishing rights remains a work in progress. Tribes feel they must constantly reeducate citizens, private landowners, recreational fishers, as well as new generations of State resource managers, about the legal foundations of their treaty rights. To overcome lingering doubts about their capabilities to lead fisheries management programs, tribal leaders also make explicitly cultural claims. They argue that the centrality of salmon to the traditional values and the obligations of stewardship that derive from their spiritual and cultural systems, combined with their continued occupation of remote and ecologically vulnerable territories and their daily interaction with threatened species in their habitats, provides them with the ecological capital necessary to be primary caretakers of the resources. According to Billy Frank Jr. (2004),

Tribes are natural stewards, and the lessons passed along to us by our ancestors carry the wisdom of a thousand generations. None of these are more important than the need to be caretakers of this fragile planet and do all we can to sustain ample clean, free-flowing water to keep our salmon alive and well.

A just model of fisheries management requires not only the tribes’ full and equal participation in the process but also the recognition of the validity of Indigenous traditional practices and perspectives and the space to incorporate these into resource management programs. While Western science has taken center stage in most tribal fisheries management regimes, Billy Frank Jr. (2007) maintains that the integration of Indigenous traditional knowledge is essential for sustainably managing vulnerable salmon species: “I’ve spoken about the traditional knowledge of our ancestors for many years because within its teachings are the answers to the environmental challenges we face today.” Tribes are free to incorporate traditional knowledge into their on-reservation fisheries programs, but integrating them into comanagement partnerships with the State has been more challenging. A prime example of this is the long-standing effort to integrate the tribes’ more holistic approach to salmon rehabilitation that prioritizes habitat restoration, with the State’s more narrow focus on species-by-species and river-by-river regulation. After decades of resistance, and with a little push from the court in the culvert case discussed above, State regulators are finally coming around. According to one tribal fisheries expert,

There has been a 180 degree change since the 1970’s on the part of State managers in their attitude about tribes’ concern about habitat . . . and many feel lucky that tribes and treaty rights are around to ensure that habitat concerns are met. (Interview, September 2, 2008).

This radical shift in thinking is just one example of broader transformations in the attitudes of non-Indian stakeholders in the past 40 years and suggests an increasing recognition of tribes’ expertise in fisheries management and the legitimacy of Native American ways of understanding and interacting with the natural world.

Discussion

The 40 years since the Boldt Decision have been marked by tribes’ continued political action, innovation, empowerment, and revitalization. The tribes’ legal victory in United States v. Washington laid the legal and structural foundations that would reestablish the tribes’ physical connection with the salmon and validate their legal authority to access and care for their sacred fish. But, the Boldt Decision, by itself, does not explain the level of success tribes have achieved in parlaying their legal victory into legitimate political authority and forging meaningful and functional relationships with non-Indian stakeholders, while overcoming deep-seated ideological barriers along the way. Through innovation, diplomacy, and action, tribes have been able to transform entrenched laws, policies, and dominant discourses surrounding Native American fishing rights thereby enhancing tribal governmental sovereignty and creating space for essential revitalization projects within tribal communities.

The legacy of the Boldt Decision provides a compelling example of Indigenous political action and social change in a contemporary context and it offers rich theoretical insights into the mechanisms through which Native Americans have been able to decolonize oppressive institutional structures and their hegemonic underpinnings. First, the legacy of the Boldt Decision reveals that decolonization is fundamentally a multilevel process that involves dismantling the legal and institutional legacies of colonization as well as the ideological foundations that uphold those structures. This conclusion is consistent with the work of Omi and Winant (1994) on racial formation and hegemony and Loveman (2005) on state building. Omi and Winant (1994) contend that manifestations of race include both institutional and organizational forms, as well as discursive and representational meanings and significations. What is more, they link processes of racial formation and the creation of systems of inequality to the “evolution of hegemony” (p. 56), through which dominant group rule is normalized and legitimated. If the construction of racial hegemony and state power are fundamentally institutional and cultural/ideological projects, as theorized by Omi and Winant (1994) and Loveman (2005), it follows that dismantling these systems requires transforming state institutional authority and delegitimating state ideological authority. This is the central task of Indigenous activists seeking to decolonize the institutions and policies that continue to regulate their rights to culturally significant natural resources. By simultaneously emphasizing legal transformation, diplomacy and relationship building, and the broader recognition of tribal cultural perspectives, tribal fishing rights advocates in the post-Boldt era demonstrate a nuanced understanding of the political and cultural dynamics of institutional power and the tactical methods that are most effective in contesting it.

The multifocal emphases of Native American political action since Boldt are also consistent with a model of justice articulated by scholars of environmental inequality. Environmental justice for Indigenous peoples seeking greater autonomy over culturally and economically significant ecological resources requires fair distribution of the benefits of those resources, equitable decision making power over all matters affecting the resources, and the recognition of and respect for Indigenous peoples and their unique cultural orientations toward the natural world, more generally. Taken together, these three elements of environmental justice establish a framework for decolonization that is appropriately sensitive to both the political and ideological foundations of colonial oppression.

The treaty fishing tribes of the Pacific Northwest have been able to undo the political and institutional mechanisms through which their autonomy over salmon fisheries has been systematically disregarded in two fundamental ways. First, tribes achieved the formal redistribution of salmon resources through successful litigation in United States v. Washington. Second, tribes have realized the formal redistribution of decision-making authority through the terms of the Boldt Decision, through the creation of formidable and scientifically effective tribal resource management agencies, and through the establishment of a powerful pan-Indian organization that promotes a collective agenda while preserving tribal autonomy. The establishment of the NWIFC further cemented Native American tribes as equitable partners in fisheries comanagement by prioritizing diplomacy and relationship building with non-Indian stakeholders while also using the courts to enforce their treaty rights when diplomacy failed. In addition to addressing the political foundations of oppression, tribes have spent decades working to dismantle discriminatory cultural assumptions that devalued native peoples and legitimated their exclusion from salmon fisheries. While this remains a work in progress, the tribes’ tireless leadership in salmon habitat restoration, their continuous education of non-Indian stakeholders about the legal and cultural bases of the Boldt Decision, and their prioritization of relationship building with non-Indian neighbors, has contributed greatly to overcoming decades of entrenched racial antagonism and hostility from non-Indians, while paving the way toward greater understanding and respect between all of the parties involved.

Conclusion

Despite their momentous gains, Indians of the Pacific Northwest confront ongoing threats to their treaty fishing interests. The biggest threat to preserving distributive justice is unrelenting habitat destruction resulting from unchecked population growth, and the ill effects of the logging, agricultural, and hydropower industries. Despite tribal efforts, these developments pose significant risks to the continued viability of entire species of salmon on which tribal social, economic, and cultural systems depend. Other challenges have also emerged and reflect the increasing complexity of comanagement regimes, the state resource managers’ conflicting interests between fisheries protection and the needs of their recreational and commercial fishing constituents and lingering opposition from private property owners and sports fishers who must be continually reeducated on the terms of the Boldt Decision and the cultural prerogatives of the treaty tribes. What is more, a bias in favor of resource exploitation continues to shape state policies and creates friction wherever innovative conservation measures are sought.

These lingering challenges suggest that decolonization remains a process for Native Americans rather than an endgame. But, the past 40 years have revealed a great deal about this process with major implications for the tribes going forward. Beginning with the legal recognition of rights contained in just a few short lines in a handful of treaties negotiated more than 150 years ago, fishing tribes of the Pacific Northwest have laid the groundwork for attaining comprehensive environmental justice. Through innovation, diplomacy, and action, these tribes have forged a path forward by dismantling and decolonizing many oppressive political and cultural legacies of the region’s colonial past. We believe that the broad and malleable framework of justice presented in this instance provides a model of decolonization that is applicable outside the context of this case to Indigenous assertions of sovereignty and self-determination over natural and cultural resources globally.

This case of Indigenous decolonization has more far-reaching implications for the ways that scholars approach the key mechanisms through which social inequality is produced and resisted. First, our analyses highlight the continuing relevance of the past in informing contemporary manifestations of inequality. We conceptualize present-day systems of stratification as part of an unbroken chain that is linked directly to the laws and policies that facilitated colonization, slavery, and other forms of oppression. Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest have been successful in challenging the legal vestiges of colonization by contending directly with the past. By enforcing the legitimacy of their 150-year-old treaty, and by drawing on their historical and continuing cultural connections to fisheries, tribes have been able to transform entrenched laws, policies, and dominant discourses surrounding Native American fishing rights. We contend that social inequality literature can be improved with a renewed focus on how historical processes of racial formation contribute to contemporary systems of stratification. In particular, comparative-historical analyses of systems of racial formation across nations or between racial/ethnic groups hold particular promise for illustrating the mechanisms through which unique historical factors both constrain and enable counterhegemonic challenges.

Second, we present a model of decolonization that is successful specifically because it is sensitive to both the political and cultural foundations of inequality. In this case, tribes were able to effectively target the legal and institutional legacies of colonization as well as the ideological foundations that uphold those structures. We believe that these are the key ingredients of meaningful decolonization and that they are also essential to broader challenges to systematic inequality. Many systems of inequality are perpetuated through legal and political mechanisms, and confronting these mechanisms through lawsuits, political lobbying, and collective action are essential strategies for marginalized groups. Often overlooked, however, are the cultural and ideological mechanisms that facilitate and reinforce hegemonic systems. We believe that the social inequality literature would be enhanced through greater interrogation of the dynamics through which law, politics, and culture interact in the production and dismantling of systems of inequality.

Finally, our analyses highlight the role of Indigenous agency in successfully challenging long-standing legal and cultural foundations of racial inequality. In many ways, this is a story of tribal tactical innovation, diplomacy, and resistance in the face of entrenched political structures and racist ideological belief systems. The tribes’ success has been dependent on their nuanced understanding of existing political and cultural opportunities and their calculation of the benefits and drawbacks of pursuing certain tactics over others. Their experiences in the trenches are similar, in many ways, to those of other political actors seeking greater recognition of their civil rights. As such, the legacy of United States v. Washington contributes to a compelling but underdeveloped area of research at the intersection of the social movements and social inequality literatures that prioritize the role of human agency in episodes of contention between civil rights activists and the state.