Tribe Files Suit To Restore Treaty Rights

The Samish Indian Tribe won its fight for recognition after federal officials declared the group extinct.

Now the tribe has filed a federal lawsuit seeking restoration of its treaty rights.

While she granted the Samish recognition last fall and agreed they are a distinct band of Indians, Assistant Interior Secretary Ada Deer said they are not successors to the Samish Tribe that lost its lands under an 1855 treaty with the U.S. government.

That finding effectively denies the Samish their historical fishing, hunting and cultural rights, said tribal attorney Russel Barsh, who filed the tribe’s lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

Barsh contends the government wrongly revised an August ruling in the case by Administrative Law Judge David Torbett of Tennessee, who held hearings on the matter after U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly ruled in 1992 that the 600-member tribe could not be declared extinct without a full hearing.

“There’s no evidence to support the revisions,” he said. “It’s just vindictive and political.”

If the Samish win the suit, they plan to sue the government for the wrongful denial of two decades of federal benefits and treaty rights. Barsh estimates that amounts to at least $50 million.

Samish Tribal Chairwoman Margaret Greene said she had hoped the legal battles were over.

“To receive justice, we have to go to court again,” she said.

Torbett ruled last summer that the tribe should receive full recognition. He found that the Samish have continually existed as an Indian tribe since losing their lands in a treaty 150 years ago. Evidence at the hearings indicated the Samish were declared extinct because a Bureau of Indian Affairs clerk dropped their name from a list of recognized tribes in 1969.

The lawsuit seeks to reinstate Torbett’s findings.

Official recognition by the U.S. government gives tribes status as sovereign nations and access to federal money for tribal programs.

The government had argued that the Samish aren’t a tribe because they have been integrated into other tribes and non-Indian society.

In November, Deer held that the Swinomish and Upper Skagits are successors to the historic Samish and thus hold the rights to fish, claim land and manage cultural sites in historical Samish territory, which includes Skagit, Whatcom and San Juan counties.

Without historical rights in their own territory, Barsh said, the Samish can’t exercise self-government. The tribe, which has no reservation, is left with only the right to seek federal financial benefits.

Barsh, an Indian law expert and professor at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, said government officials had no authority to revise the judge’s findings.

That violates the court order that removed the tribe’s case from the BIA and turned it over to Torbett.

The tribe’s lawsuit will be heard by Zilly.

The Samish bid for recognition was opposed by the Marysville-based Tulalips, who cited concerns about competition for salmon and federal aid.