Fish Wars

Raymond Mattz was 12 years old when he had first gotten in trouble with a warden for gill netting. As an adult, in September 1969, he was fishing the fall run of the Chinook at a family fishing hole. When a state game warden found Mattz and a group of friends with five gill nets, the state would not return them, claiming Mattz could not legally gill-net in the state of California. That state argued the Yuroks had lost so much of it’s land that it no longer met the Legal definition of Indian Country. At it’s core, Mattz vs. Arnett was a challenge to tribal sovereignty, the ability for tribes to govern themselves. The case went to US supreme court, and the state lost. The court affirmed, in 1973, the Yurok Tribes’s treaty rights to fish by traditional means, including gill-netting, and declared Yuroks were indeed part of Indian country . The case became part of a broader conflict in the Northwest called the fish wars. Triggered by the political momentum of the civil rights era, The fish wars included civil disobedience, such as “fish-ins,” in which fisherman would flagrantly practice their treaty rights, to be arrested. The movement was also galvanized by the landmark Boldt Decision of 1974, which reaffirmed the rights of tribes to co-manage their fisheries and to harvest according to various signed treaties. (source High County News. Anna V. Smith. June 11,2018)