In an April 10 email press release, the Chinook Indian Nation announced that they are actively seeking a new legislative champion to support their efforts for federal recognition. The pivot is due to a June 2024 amendment proposed by Congresswoman Gluesenkamp Perez to the Chinook Indian Nation Restoration Act language that would strip all resource access rights from the nation, including hunting, fishing, shellfish aquaculture, trapping, gathering, and water rights. 

Federal recognition was granted in 2001 when the U.S. government formally acknowledged the Chinook Indian Nation as a sovereign nation. The Quinault Indian Nation appealed to the Department of Interior’s Board of Indian Appeals, and just 18 months later in 2002, the decision was rescinded. The Department of the Interior justified the decision by claiming the Chinook had failed to “establish a substantially continuous tribal existence from treaty times until the present.”

Without federal recognition the Chinook people don’t have access to federal services available to federally recognized tribes through the Bureau of Indian Affairs including health care, education, housing, economic development, and social services critical to healing from generational trauma caused by the American government and surviving modern disasters. Recognition would also ensure that Chinookan children be kept with their people through the protections of the Indian Child Welfare Act. 

Another incredibly pressing issue for the Chinook nation is the revised Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation rules that were finalized in 2023. Tony Johnson, Chinook Indian Nation chairman, told Underscore + ICT that they need support from the strong Washington and Oregon delegations for successful federal recognition that doesn’t rob them of their sovereign rights and their ancestors’ dignified rest on their homelands. 

The Chinook Indian Nation consists of five different bands: the Clatsop, Wahkiakum, Kathlamet, Willapa, and Lower Chinook, all of whom signed treaties in the 1850s that Congress never ratified. 

“We’ve never left this place,” Johnson told Underscore + ICT. “This is where our sovereignty springs from. We literally use the words in our trading negotiations, ‘staying with the bones of our ancestors.’ We don’t use the word time immemorial because there is not a time we don’t remember. Our stories tell us exactly how it happened. We know exactly where we came from and how it was for us at the very beginning, and how it is for us now.”

The nation spent decades petitioning the U.S. government for federal recognition and have been working since 2002 to regain federal recognition. 

“This congressional route could happen in very short order if our entire delegation would become single minded and work together to make it happen,” Johnson told Underscore + ICT. 

“I worked in good faith with Chinook Chairman Johnson to develop a bill that had the consensus of the community,” Gluesenkamp Perez told Underscore + ICT in an email statement. “While I expressed to Chinook that I had heard concerns in Southwest Washington about natural resource rights and I needed to provide clarity for my community in bill text, I stood ready to work with them on the specifics of this language. I also expressed the necessity of repairing and upholding multinational relations with others in Indian Country in order to proceed with the bill.”  

The Chinook Indian Nation started working with Congresswoman Gluesenkamp Perez in 2022 to write the Chinook Indian Nation Restoration Act which would be introduced to Congress for federal recognition. The press release shared that during the 2022 midterm election, Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez committed to championing federal recognition and acknowledged that, “federal recognition of the Chinook Indian Nation will have a positive impact on the local economy, health care, housing availability, and public safety of rural Southwest Washington” and that “federal recognition of the Chinook Indian Nation is also a simple matter of right and wrong.”

Chinook Indian Nation Restoration Act

According to the press release, while working alongside the Congresswoman, the Chinook Indian Nation Restoration Act was supported by the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation, the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe, and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.

Underscore + ICT reached out to each nation for comment and did not hear back from the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation and the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe in time for publication. The Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe has shown support for the Chinook Indian Nation in other reporting by Underscore + ICT. 

“We worked really hard on draft legislation that was amenable to our neighbors,” Rachel Cushman, Chinook councilwoman, told Underscore + ICT. “All of our closest neighbors had reviewed that draft legislation and were in support of it.”

“They know the crime that’s being committed against the Chinook people,” Johnson said. “Those are the voices, ultimately, that ought to carry the most weight in this conversation.”

The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde have been supportive of Chinook’s efforts for federal recognition, according to Chris Mercier, Grand Ronde tribal council vice chair. Grand Ronde has sent council members to testify on their behalf in DC, speaking on their behalf regarding land claims, sending a delegation to Chinook when they have their winter gathering, and for their first salmon ceremony in June. They are in close relation.

Grand Ronde includes over 30 Tribes and bands from western Oregon, northern California, and southwest Washington. These include tribal bands from the Kalapuya, Molalla, Chasta, Umpqua, Rogue River, Tillamook, and Chinook. According to Mercier, there are a lot of Grand Ronde citizens who are also of Chinook descent, including at least one past council member. They may not be able to enroll as Chinook due to blood quantum but there are ancestral ties.

In fact, Johnson worked for Grand Ronde for over a decade supporting their cultural revitalization efforts in their cultural resources department. 

“He was very instrumental in getting us to revitalize our Chinook language program here, and some of our fluent speakers here in the community were probably taught by Tony,” Mercier said.  

Mercier remembers him speaking with elders to document the language, helping to author a Chinook dictionary teaching carving – even carving entire canoes out of cedar logs, making his own tools, and passing on that knowledge within the community.

“So a lot of people who worked under Tony retain that knowledge, retain those customs and engage in that practice, so it’s not just historically, our connections with the Chinook tribe, and then we have a lot of tribal members who have Chinook blood,” Mercier said. “Tony himself made a lasting contribution to this community.”

When Johnson left Grand Ronde to focus on leading the Chinook, Mercier says he completely understood and they continue to maintain a close relationship. 

“As far as federal recognition is concerned, I consider it a huge injustice that the Chinook nation is not federally recognized,” Mercier said. 

“I just, for the life of me, don’t understand the arguments anyone would have against why the Chinook shouldn’t be federally recognized,” Mercier continued. “I really don’t get it. And I know there’s some other tribes that aren’t particularly in favor of it, but there’s so much benefit that comes with federal recognition, and I just don’t get why there’s not more support for them and why they haven’t been recognized.”

Johnson believes the tribal nations who oppose Chinook recognition do so out of a fear that other unrecognized tribal nations in their neighborhood would see Chinook federal recognition as a win for every unrecognized Native nation. 

Cowlitz Indian Tribe Chairman William B. Iyall expressed a similar experience and support for Chinook Indian Nation federal recognition in an email statement to Underscore + ICT. 

“The Cowlitz Indian Tribe knows firsthand the long, difficult road to federal recognition. For decades, we faced immense adversity – including from neighboring Tribes – as we worked to prove what we have always known: that we are a sovereign people with deep roots in our ancestral lands,” the statement reads. “Federal recognition, when it finally came in 2000, was a formal acknowledgment of our existence, unlocking opportunities that have allowed us to provide for our people and community in ways that were previously out of reach.”

“Every Tribe deserves the same opportunity,” Chairman Iyall continued, “particularly those with clear, historically documented lineage and continuity of government that ties them to their aboriginal lands. We wish the Chinook People success in demonstrating their connection to the Chinook homelands, lands of modern-day Pacific County, as they pursue federal recognition. These fights are not just about status or respect – they are about the right to pursue self-determination and drive further prosperity for a Tribe’s people and continue existing within its historic homelands.”

Ultimately, much of the opposition to recognition comes down to the federal government not fulfilling their constitutional trust obligations to Native nations and underfunding critical resources like housing, health care and education. This has created a tension between nations since new federally recognized nations could result in stretching what little the federal government returns to them, even further. 

Also, many Native nations’ traditional homelands overlap and the way that western governments perceive land rights conflicts with this fact, sometimes resulting in concerns about shared land and other resource rights. But it has traditionally been how close relationships were built between communities. 

Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe is an example of this. Located just across the Shoalwater Bay from Johnson, he can look out his window and see a seven-mile expanse of water and mudflats on the Shaolawater Bay Reservation.

“They know that there will be some types of impacts on their reality, but they actually know us well enough to know I want to have positive impacts on their reality,” Johnson said. “We are a close family. Our elders have grown up together. We have traveled across this bay on a mail boat, and lived for three months over a summer, or for a year or more in each other’s homes. This is the kind of really beautiful connection and relationship that Native country makes. I want Shoalwater Bay’s voice to outweigh the voice of somebody from a state away, or, a region away.”

But Congresswoman Gluesenkamp Perez decided that wasn’t enough to push the legislation forward. According to the Chinook press release, on the eve of introduction of the bill in June 2024, Gluesenkamp Perez informed Johnson that she wanted to amend the bill language to strip all resource access rights from the Nation, including hunting, fishing, shellfish aquaculture, trapping, gathering, and water rights. 

The bill Gluesenkamp Perez supported is more extreme than the language in the bill Washington Congressman Brian Baird introduced in 2009, which was never vetted by Chinook Indian Nation general citizenship, according to Johnson. Although federal recognition would be restored, fishing, hunting, and trapping rights would not be restored. No nonceremonial fishing, hunting, or trapping rights of any nature would be restored. Annual ceremonial hunting and fishing rights for only three occasions are the First Salmon ceremony on the third Friday of June, the Winter Gathering on the third Saturday of January, and funerals of certain tribal members, which would be allowed in their traditional hunting and fishing areas in Pacific and Wahkiakum Counties, Washington.

“Over the years of conversation with Marie Gluesenkamp Perez regarding the bill, resource rights were occasionally discussed and Chinook maintained the position that the bill must not take more than we’ve already given,” Johnson said. “And, at no time prior to the June 2024 conversation did Marie Gluesenkamp Perez express her intent and commitment to stripping the Nation of its inherent rights. Since then, we have pleaded with the Congresswoman to return to benign resource language like virtually every other bill today.”

Chinook is a non-treaty Tribe, meaning they never signed a treaty with the federal government formally establishing a reservation and ceding their lands. Historically Native nations that never signed a treaty may petition the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for natural resource rights after federal recognition is granted. The Chinook Indian Nation is not asking to be granted resource rights through federal recognition, but to leave the language open to be able to petition for them once recognized rather than them being excluded from the start. 

“It’s like killing [the bill] before it ever even has a chance to have discourse,” Chinook councilwoman Cushman said. “We need to be able to go and lobby folks outside of our districts too, right outside of our delegation, so that we can get support. But we can’t even do that until we get the bill introduced.”

Cushman went on to explain that since there has been no transparency about who made or what exactly the concerns were, there has been no opportunity to work together to ease or address and resolve them directly. 

Gluesenkamp Perez told Underscore + ICT she is a strong supporter of recognition and that Chinook’s federal recognition case was long overdue but failed to see that this language was robbing the nation of its sovereign rights, according to the Chinook nation tribal council. 

Sovereign rights

“This feels really extreme and awfully permanent,” Johnson said. “We know how hard it is to get legislation passed through the Congress. The idea that we would preemptively be named as not having water rights is wildly out of line. Another aspect of this bill is the establishment of reservation. Who would possibly preemptively agree that we wouldn’t have water rights on our own reservation? Our members are oyster farmers and clam farmers. We have a significant number of people who are engaged in that work. You can’t take something that’s just inherently who we are and strip it away from us. We have sacred obligations to these plants and animals. We will not accept the United States separating us from that obligation.”

The Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde, which have been supportive of Chinook federal recognition, were forced to give up much of their resource rights under a consent decree in exchange for federal recognition in 1985, and have struggled since because of it. Grand Ronde has been working towards getting their resource rights back legislatively which would restore traditional hunting and fishing rights, with the support of U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley since 2021 with new legislation introduced as recently as Feb. 21.

Which is why the recent amendment was so confusing for Chinook leadership. 

“To have something going completely against the grain of the current moment, of the will of Congress is also just really frustrating,” Johnson said. “Chinook already has less rights than the rest of Native country, right? And they’re asking us to have even fewer rights once we’re recognized.”

“All the government to government meetings that we’ve had with other tribal governments, they’re like, ‘Do not give up any of your rights. Stand your ground,’” Cushman said. 

Standing their ground is important to the Chinook way of life, according to Cushman. Revoking what federal government recognition language calls resource rights threatens the nation’s relationship with their other than human relations and the merit of sovereignty for all nations. 

“When you take those rights, or try to prevent another community from having those rights, it’s an attack on sovereignty as a whole,” Cushman said. 

“When other people are intervening and taking away from the merit of that sovereignty of that community’s claim, it’s just like it’s going against the natural law of our relationship to our homelands,” Cushman continued.

“A cultural genocide”

Threats to Chinook sovereignty have become even more dangerous after the 2023 NAGPRA revisions. NAGPRA requires all federally funded universities and museums to prepare all remaining ancestors and objects for repatriation by 2029 but it still focuses only on federally recognized nations, so until now Chinook ancestors were labelled as “culturally unaffiliated,” because they were unaffiliated with a currently federally recognized tribe. Chinook leadership believed that once they were able to achieve restoration of federal recognition that they would be able to return their ancestors home. Under the new regulations, and the 2029 deadline, inventories of Chinook ancestors, their grave items, and significant cultural objects can be given to any federally recognized Native nation that claims cultural affiliation. 

Johnson has called this a cultural genocide. 

“We’re seeing in real time other communities make claims of cultural affiliation to Chinook, specific ancestors and artifacts,” Johnson told Underscore + ICT. 

When NAGPRA was passed in 1990 most institutions worked closely with the Chinook because they understood that the ancestors, their grave items, and significant cultural objects came from the Chinook aboriginal lands, even if ultimately they could not directly repatriate to them. That has now changed with at least one institution. The Chinook are being denied even the ability to see or consult on these NAGPRA eligible individuals and objects.

“At least one institution in recent weeks said that we will not even be allowed to visit the individuals or objects in question or that are enumerated on their inventories because of our status,” Johnson said. “Being denied the ability to access or look at some of the objects in question is a wild new step that’s really harmful to us.”

Moving forward

The third congressional district in Washington state is where the previous Chinook recognition bills were introduced by Brian Baird who served as a U.S. representative from 1999 to 2011. Because of this, Johnson believes it has become the default place where other people in the Washington and Oregon delegation look to for leadership on federal recognition. Gluesenkamp Perez even announced her support for Chinook federal recognition while she was a candidate for the position. 

Because Gluesenkamp Perez and the Chinook have been actively working on the bill since she took the role, Johnson believes other delegation folks have stepped back and waited for some resolution. He wants the other delegation leaders, including U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington, and U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and U.S. Reps. Marie Glusenkamp-Perez of Washington and Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon to know that the press release was about letting them know that the Chinook Indian Nation needs them to step up and take the lead. 

“What I would say to any legislative delegation is, ‘Since when will you not introduce a bill because somebody’s opposed to it?” Johnson said. “Somebody’s opposed to every piece of legislation that is passed in Congress, right?”

Until then, the Chinook ask for support from Native nations that have claimed cultural affiliation to their ancestors through NAGPRA and the institutions that are currently housing them. According to Johnson, some neighboring Native nations to the Chinook have already rescinded their claims of cultural affiliation in support of Chinook. 

“We have had recognized tribes regionally rescind their claims of cultural affiliation out of respect for and out of concern for Chinook,” Johnson said. “And the truth of the matter is, we would ask all other nations to do the same.”

Like with Chinook and Grand Ronde’s ancestral relationship, many Native nations have connections and could cast a broad net when recovering ancestors and objects but Johnson asks that to prevent any further harm happening to Chinook, every nation that would consider making a cultural affiliation claim on objects or individuals that come from the territory of the five constituent tribes — the Cathlamet, Clatsop, Lower Chinook, Wahkiakum, and Willapa — to rescind their claims. 

“By far the best short term solution is for no claims of cultural affiliation to be made by any tribe on the objects or individuals from our territory,” Johnson said. 

But Johnson shared that there are other Native nations that will continue to make claims of cultural affiliation which could result in Chinook ancestors and objects being relocated to those nations instead of their true ancestral homelands. 

“Recognition is the only surefire way for us to have the standing we need for institutions to decide who has the strongest cultural claim or cultural affiliation,” Johnson said while adding that they need institutions to also step up and defend the “original intent of the law” whether that’s figuring out a fair way forward or to delay the repatriation process altogether until recognition is restored. 

“We need everyone to do the right thing,” Johnson said.

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