BY THE EARLY 1960S, Washington state had almost extinguished tribal fishing rights. State officers regularly conducted raids, arresting Native fishers and confiscating their canoes, gear and catches. “It was nearly a daily event to get hassled by those guys,” Billy Frank Jr. recalled. “It was a good day if you didn’t get arrested.” Now, some 60 years later, Indian treaty fishing rights stand solidly protected, and tribes play a central role in managing Washington’s fisheries. How did this momentous shift come about?
This is the question the late Charles Wilkinson tackles in his latest, and posthumous, book, , the first comprehensive, book-length account of all that led up to the landmark 1974 case, , commonly known as “the Boldt Decision.”
