Abstract

Few controversies have raised the emotions of American Indians to the fever pitch recently attained in the continuing fight over Indian hunting and fishing rights. In the State of Washington a group of Indian tribes banded together, in what was popularly coined a "fish-in," to fish several off-reservation rivers in defiance of the state's conservation laws. These protesters contended that Washington had unjustifiably restricted their natural right to pursue their livelihood as outdoorsmen:

[B]efore it [the "fish-in"] had ended the hundreds of Indians had swelled to thousands. There were Fish-Ins on half a dozen rivers. There were dozens of arrests, war dances on the steps of the capitol rotunda, 'an Indian protest meeting of several thousand at the state capitol. There were Treaty Treks on the streets of the cities and Canoe Treks, of sixty miles, through Peugot Sound. There was a gathering of more than one thousand Indians from fifty-six tribes throughout the country who came to join…

Participants in this same movement also came to the Nation's Capital for last summer's Poor Peoples' Campaign and demonstrated at the steps of the Supreme Court in protest of alleged discrimination, and to air their furor over the case of Puyallup Tribe v. Department of Game, discussed infra.

As state populations continue to grow, conservation laws will become increasingly necessary to the preservation of wildlife and natural resources. Therefore it may be expected that the tempo of the states' attack on Indian hunting and fishing rights will be intensified. Because of the value of these rights to tribal Indians, representing in some communities the backbone of their economy, the courts should tread carefully in allowing assertion of state control over Indian hunting and fishing rights.

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