Long-awaited court ruling restores Oregon tribe’s hunting and fishing rights

LINCOLN CITY, Ore. (AP) — Drums vibrated the floor and singing filled the conference room at the Chinook Winds Casino Resort in Lincoln City on the Oregon coast as hundreds danced in a circle wearing tribal regalia.

For 47 years, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians have held an annual powwow to celebrate regaining federal recognition. But this month’s event was particularly significant: It came just two weeks after a federal court struck down restrictions on the tribe’s hunting, fishing and gathering rights – restrictions that tribal leaders had opposed for decades.

“We’re back to where we were before,” said Siletz Chairwoman Delores Pigsley. “It feels really good.”

The Siletz are a confederacy of over two dozen groups and tribes whose traditional homeland includes western Oregon as well as parts of northern California and southwestern Washington state. The federal government forced them into a reservation on the Oregon coast in the 1850s, where they were united as a single, federally recognized tribe despite their different origins and languages.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Congress revoked the recognition of over 100 tribes, including the Siletz, under a policy known as “termination.” The affected tribes lost millions of acres of land as well as federal funding and services.

“The goal was to assimilate the native people and bring them into the cities,” said Matthew Campbell, deputy director of the Native American Rights Fund. “But I also think there was certainly a financial aspect. I think the United States has been trying to figure out how to limit its costs of providing care to indigenous nations.”

The loss of their lands and self-government was painful, and the tribes struggled for decades to regain federal recognition. In 1977, the Siletz became the second tribe to do so, following the restoration of the Menominee Tribe in Wisconsin in 1973.

But to get back a fraction of its land — about 3,600 acres (1,457 hectares) of the 1.1 million-acre (445,000 hectares) reservation established for the tribe in 1855 — the Siletz Tribe had to agree to a federal court order restricting theirs Hunting, fishing and gathering rights. Along with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in Oregon, it was only one of two tribes in the country forced to reclaim tribal lands.

The settlement restricted the ability of tribal members to fish, hunt, and gather for ceremonial purposes and subsistence, and placed caps on how many salmon, elk, and deer could be harvested per year. It was devastating, tribal chairman Pigsley recalled: The tribe was forced to buy salmon for ceremonies because it could not support itself, and people were arrested for hunting and fishing violations.

“Giving up those rights was a terrible thing,” Pigsley, who has led the tribe for 36 years, told The Associated Press earlier this year. “It was unfair back then and we lived with it all these years.”

Decades later, Oregon and the U.S. recognized that the agreement that subjected the tribe to state hunting and fishing rules was biased, and they agreed to join the tribe in recommending that the court lift the restrictions.

“The Oregon Governor and Oregon Congressmen have since recognized that the 1980 Agreement and Consent Decree were a product of their time and a biased and distorted position on tribal sovereignty, tribal traditions, and the Siletz Tribe’s ability and authority to administer and maintain them “wildlife populations that were traditionally used for tribal ceremonial and subsistence purposes,” attorneys for the U.S., state and tribe wrote in a joint court filing.

Late last month, the tribe finally managed to have the court order overturned by a federal judge. And a separate agreement with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has given the tribe a larger role in regulating tribal hunting and fishing.

As Pigsley reflected on those who died before the tribe’s rights were restored, she expressed hope that the next generation would carry on essential traditions.

“There are a lot of youth out there learning tribal customs and culture,” she said. “This is important today because we are trying to raise healthy families, which means we need to go back to our natural diet.”

Among those celebrating and praying at the powwow were Tiffany Stuart, donning a wicker hat her ancestors were known for weaving, and her three-year-old daughter Kwestaani Chuski, whose name means “six butterflies” in the regional Athabaskan language of southwest Oregon. means Northwest California.

With rights restored, Stuart said it was “very powerful for my children to dance.”

“You dance for the people who can’t dance anymore,” she said.