Franks Landing Essay -- Sociology, The Nisqually Culture

Fishing and hunting have been at the union of many American Indian cultures like the Nisqually since precontact. Indian hunting, fishing and fabrication were conducted thenas they are nownot for sport, but for diet and for a livelihood. This was well understood by the early colonists and later by the U.S. government. Thus, many of the treaties (e.g., Medicine Creek, 1854) negotiated between the federal government and Indian nations in the nineteenth century contained provisions guaranteeing rights to hunt and fish. In the treaty negotiated by Isaac Stevens, the tribe ceded to the U.S. some of the Nisqually villages and prairies, but Article Three reserved the tribes right to fish at all usual and accustomed curtilage and stationsin common with all citizens of the Territory. (FL 12) But the growth of the European American population, and with it the proliferation of fenced lands, the destruction of natural habitat, and often the destruction of wildlife itself, drastically curtail ed the Indians aptitude to carry on these activities. Charles Wilkinsons thesis declares that the messages from Franks land are messages more or less ourselves, about the natural world, about societies past, about this society, and about societies to come. (FL 6) he-goat affectionately described his homeland (the key component of peoplehood i.e., the Nisqually drainage basin on South Puget Sound of the Nisqually River, creeks (Muck Creek), rolling prairie and forestland as well as the foothills of the Cascades Mountains and Mt Rainier) as a magical place where his family neer wished for anything fish from the watershed, vegetables up on the prairie, medicines, shellfish, and huckleberriesclean water, clean air. He describes the arrival of L... ...s preferred by them or by the state. In 1974 taste Boldt ruled that a fair share meant Indian fishers are empower to half (50%) of the harvestable catch of salmon. (FL 50) After a short-term negative backlash, the long resul t has been cooperation between federal, state and tribal governments over fish harvests and resource management since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Boldt decision in U.S. v. Washington (1980). (FL 50) Billys commitment to his traditional way of life did not end up with the stunning Boldt decision. (FL 56)He became chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission in order to speak for the salmon on behalf of treaty tribes in western Washington. Under his leadership, and through his exceptional skills as a negotiator, the tribes gained a repute for being unsurpassed in their abilities as natural resource managers.