Franks Landing Essay -- Sociology, The Nisqually Culture

Fishing and hunting have been at the core of numerous American Indian cultures like the Nisqually since precontact. Indian hunting, seeking and gathering were conducted thusas they argon nownot for sport, but for food and for a livelihood. This was well understood by the early colonists and later by the U.S. government. Thus, numerous of the treaties (e.g., Medicine Creek, 1854) negotiated between the federal government and Indian tribes in the nineteenth century contained provisions guaranteeing proper(a)s to hunt and fish. In the treaty negotiated by Isaac Stevens, the tribe ceded to the U.S. any(prenominal) of the Nisqually villages and prairies, but Article Three reserved the tribes right to fish at all usual and accustomed grounds and sendin 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, dr astically curtailed the Indians ability to arrest on these activities. Charles Wilkinsons thesis declares that the messages from Franks Landing are messages about ourselves, about the natural world, about societies past, about this society, and about societies to come. (FL 6) billy club affectionately described his homeland (the key component of peoplehood i.e., the Nisqually watershed on South Puget Sound of the Nisqually River, creeks (Muck Creek), rolling prairie and forestland as well as the foothills of the cascade Mountains and Mt Rainier) as a magical place where his family never wished for anything fish from the watershed, vegetables up on the prairie, medicines, shellfish, and huckleberriesclean water, clean air. He describes the reaching of L... ...s preferred by them or by the state. In 1974 Judge Boldt command that a fair share meant Indian fishers are entitled to half(prenominal) (50%) of the harvestable catch of salmon. (FL 50) After a short-term negative b acklash, the long-term proceeds has been cooperation between federal, state and tribal governments over fish harvests and resource heed 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 with the arresting Boldt decision. (FL 56)He became chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission in baffle to speak for the salmon on behalf of treaty tribes in Western Washington. down the stairs his leadership, and through his exceptional skills as a negotiator, the tribes gained a reputation for beingness unsurpassed in their abilities as natural resource managers.