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Treaty Rights of the Muckleshoot Tribe During the approval process of the Habitat Conservation Program, the Tribe accused State of Washington’s Department of Ecology of overstepping its boundaries by approving the plan put forth by the City of Seattle to protect fish, timber and wildlife in Cedar River Watershed. The State apparently had discretionary power to determine Cedar River water rights and regulate streams flows. The State gave up this discretionary power for the next 50 years to the City. Lawyers for the State claim this was done in return for the City agreeing to maintain certain minimum river flows for the salmon. The Muckleshoot are currently developing a Chinook Recovery Plan for the Cedar River Watershed. CommenEnSpace, a nonprofit organization specializing in spatial analysis and mapping assisted the Muckleshoot tribe in their Chinook Recovery Plan for Water Resource Inventory Area (WRIA) 8, the Lake Washington/Sammamish Watershed. Analyses include a Land Cover analysis based on spectral mixing techniques to evaluate pervious/semi-pervious land type by sub-watershed. Analysis also involves production of new shoreline data for the two lakes and ship canal to evaluate docks and other built structures. Muckleshoot tribal biologists, who track fish runs in the Puget Sound basin, say about 100,000 sockeye are in the river right now. The run is expected to peak at 350,000 in the entire Lake Washington river system, with about 90 percent going to the Cedar River. The Muckleshoot Reservation is located south and east of the City of Seattle on a rising plateau between the White and Green Rivers. This land was designated to through the Treaties of Point Elliott and Medicine Creek. It is located at a place called Muckleshoot Prairie. The six square-mile Muckleshoot Reservation, which is laid out diagonally, has 20 miles of boundaries. Population of approximately 3,300. Descendants of the Coast Salish peoples. The people who settled there were from the Stkamish, Yilalkoamish, Skopamish, Smulkamish and Tkwakwamish tribes. Eventually, they all took on the name "Muckleshoot." Duwamish and Snoqualmie were absorbed into the Muckleshoot Tribe, as well as other neighboring federally recognized Tribes such as the Tulalip and Suquamish. Muckleshoot, explicitly laid out in the treaty, was able to take Salmon at all of their "usual and accustomed" fishing sites was explicitly guaranteed in the treaties, and efforts to reassert those rights led to the so-called "Fish Wars" of the 1960's and 70's. The subsequent Boldt Decision, which reaffirmed the Tribe's treaty fishing rights, had a vast impact on the Muckleshoot Tribe, resulting in improved economic conditions and an opportunity to serve as co-manager of regional salmon resources. On December 13, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit announced its decisions in four cases pertaining to tribal fishing rights in Washington State. In three of the cases, the Court narrowly interpreted certain tribes' usual and accustomed fishing areas as defined by Judge Boldt in the 1974 United States v. Washington decision ("Boldt decision"). In the case of the Muckleshoot, "The Court held that the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe's saltwater (non-shellfish) usual and accustomed fishing area (U&A) is limited to Elliot Bay and does not extend elsewhere into Puget Sound. " Muckleshoot Tribe City of Seattle State of Washington Various Organizations Associated with Indian Affairs |