Celilo Wy’am guest Mole Lana Jack interviews Yakama fisherman and fishing rights activist Andy Sohappy about resisting and navigating a gauntlet of colonial agencies, jurisdictions, and police that collectively criminalize, impoverish and imprison Native fishers exercising their treaty-protected rights on the Nc’wana, “the Big”–or Columbia–River. Sohappy reports that police with the Columbia River Intertribal Enforcement attacked the family camp on July 15 in the middle of the night, yelling and repeatedly tasing his 34-year-old son James in front of his 11-year-old daughter. Sohappy’s father David Sohappy, Sr. and his brother David, Sohappy, Jr. both served prison time in the 1980s when they were arrested for 28 salmon as part of an FBI multi-agency sting known as “Salmon Scam.”
Image: Fish Wheel and Indian Snagging Salmon at Celilo Falls on Columbia River, Oregon. Indians have perpetual fishing rights at the falls. Linen texture color postcard. Public Domain, via wikimedia commons.
- KBOO