Colville Tribes Defy State Law Tribal Council Asserts Ancestral Rights, Adopts Deer, Elk Hunting Season Off The Reservation

The Colville Confederated Tribes have established a deer and elk hunting season off the reservation in defiance of state law.

Asserting its ancestral hunting rights, the Tribal Council adopted a esolution permitting members to hunt and kill up to six deer and one elk on the old Moses-Columbia reservation in Chelan and Okanogan counties.

State laws restrict hunters to one deer and one elk within a 13- to 17-day season in October.

The tribal hunting season began this weekend, but the state Department of Fish and Wildlife said it would continue to enforce state regulations on nontribal land.

Steve Suagee, a lawyer for the tribes, said the resolution takes advantage of aboriginal hunting rights never ceded by the Colvilles.

“This is not an expression of protest,” he said Friday. “But times are hard and budgets are lean, and this is a tribal right that has always been there. The tribe needs every opportunity it can get to provide subsistence for itself, and this will help members put food on their tables.”

The new tribal hunting season runs through Dec. 31 on the old Moses-Columbia reservation, which runs west from the Colville Reservation to the Glacier Peak Wilderness and from the Canadian border south along the Okanogan and Columbia rivers to Rock Island Dam.

Diane Turner, spokeswoman for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the state attorney general’s office has reviewed the tribal hunting resolution and determined it has no validity under federal law, which would supersede state laws.

Consequently, “we will pursue criminal prosecution of hunting violations off tribal land which aren’t in compliance with state law,” Turner said.

“We want to find a way to resolve this issue, however, and hope to work through this with the tribe.”

Suagee said that although the bag limits in the resolution are perceived as too high by state game agents, most tribal members will not reach their limit.

“You’re not going to see hundreds of hunters each taking six deer out of the forest,” he said. “If anything, this will help disperse tribal hunting more broadly so one area is not impacted as much.”

Twenty years ago, the Tribal Council adopted a similar resolution opening up the territory north of the reservation to the Canadian border for hunting. The issue was opposed by the state, and the matter was finally taken to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the tribe’s resolution, he said.