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Spilyay Tymoo, Warm Springs, Oregon
May 19, 2021
Around Indian Country
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2020
Buick
Encore -
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2018
Ford
Escape -
23,012
miles -
$24,995
$27,995
#17762A
#20981C
2017
Jeep
Grand
Cherokee
- 44,116
miles -
$32,995
#38839A
2017
Hyundai
Accent -
56,267
miles -
2017
Buick
LaCrosse
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miles -
2016
Ford F-
150 -
67,420
miles -
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$37,995
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2015
Hyundai
Santa Fe
- 96,639
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2015
Kia
Optima
- 71,530
miles -
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$16,995
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2015
Jeep
Cherokee
- 148,052
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2014
Chrysler
Town &
Country -
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$13,995
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2008
GMC
Acadia -
91,408
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2006
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Wash. court undoes piece of racist past
Apparently, it takes a while
to clear residual bigotry from
a state’s laws and precedents.
This month, the Washington
Supreme Court took the fi-
nal step in overturning a cen-
tury-old racist decision.
The case involved Alec
Towessnute, a member of the
Yakama Nation. In 1915, he
was arrested for fishing in the
Yakima River miles away
from any tribal lands. A lower
court exonerated him be-
cause a treaty between the
Yakama and the federal gov-
ernment guaranteed fishing
rights where he was.
Prosecutors appealed, and
the Supreme Court con-
cluded that there was no na-
tive sovereignty, treaties
weren’t binding, and any
rights to the land and fisher-
ies came from white settlers.
“The premise of Indian
sovereignty we reject. The
treaty is not to be interpreted
in that light. At no time did
our ancestors in getting title
to this continent ever regard
the aborigines as other than
mere occupants, and incom-
petent occupants, of the
soil,” the court wrote in its
shockingly bigoted decision.
“Only that title was esteemed
which came from white
men.”
In 2014, the Legislature
passed a law that gave Na-
tive American defendants and
their heirs the right to have
convictions overturned if
they were exercising their
treaty fishing rights. Many
did, but Towessnute’s heirs hit
a snag. Though his name was
on the Supreme Court case,
no one could find records of
his actual conviction.
So the Supreme Court in-
tervened last year. It issued an
order repudiating that old de-
cision and clearing Towessnute.
This month, it elevated that
order to an opinion of the
court. Now the legal precedent
in Washington is once again
what it should be.
Whale of a controversy for treaty tribe
In exchange for ceding
thousands of acres of land
to the U.S. government in
1855, the Makah, of coastal
Washington state, secured the
right to continue hunting
whales under the Treaty of
Neah Bay.
That treaty established the
Makah as the only U.S. Native
American nation with a whal-
Fire season
The 2021 fire season
officially opened last week.
The limited precipitation
across the region this
spring has affected down
woody fuel moisture con-
tent, as well as the condi-
tion of live vegetation fu-
els and their susceptibility
to fire ignition and spread.
Conditions are unsea-
sonably dry and at an in-
creased risk of fire
spread. The start of fire
season, May 15, is histori-
cally early. Typically
weather and fuels in the
Central Oregon region
begin to warm and dry in
late May or early June,
with fire season usually
beginning in mid-June.
However the lack of
spring rains this year and
the rapid loss of snow-
pack in the higher eleva-
tions has moved this
timeframe forward by
several weeks.
ing right clearly specified in
its treaty—though the tribe
voluntarily stopped hunting in
the 1920s, when the gray
whale population dwindled
dangerously due to overzeal-
ous commercial whaling.
By the 1940s, only a few
hundred eastern Pacific gray
whales swam in the Pacific
Northwest.
The whales have since re-
bounded to a healthy popula-
tion, numbering around 26,000
today. Which is why the Makah
sought an exemption to the fed-
eral ban on whaling.
The Makah are arguing
that this right is already guar-
anteed.