Sauk-Suiattle (USA) Tribal Court Case: Tsuladxw (salmon) v. City of Seattle

Summary

On January 6, 2022, the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe filed a lawsuit in Sauk-Suiattle Tribal Court against the City of Seattle on behalf of both the Tribe and Tsuladxw (salmon in the Tribe’s language of Lushootseed). The lawsuit sought declarations of: a) “Tsuladxw (salmon) within the territory of the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe is protected and possesses inherent rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve…These rights include, but are not limited to, the right to pure water and freshwater habitat; the right to a healthy climate system and a natural environment free from human-caused global warming impacts and emissions and the right of access to their ancestral waters”; b) Tribal members possesses a right and responsibility to protect and save Tsuladxw (salmon), and the waters that support salmon within the 1855 ceded territory and beyond; and c) the City of Seattle intentionally interfered with and imperiled the Tribe and the salmon within their aboriginal territory and on the Sauk-Suiattle Reservation. On April 19, 2023, the City of Seattle settled, reaching an agreement that creates a roadmap for the creation of a fish passage system to return salmon to their native ecosystem and restore the lifeblood of the tribes.

The Sauk-Suiattle Tribe, known as the Sahkuméhu, ceded their aboriginal territory to the federal government through the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott. Sahkuméhu homelands were the entire drainage area of the Sauk, Suiattle and Cascade Rivers. As explained in the court filing, despite the Tribe’s treaty-protected right and obligation to protect fish migrating to and from the Tribe’s traditional fishing grounds, the City of Seattle constructed dams on the Skagit River without consulting with any tribe. The lawsuit argues that the dams constructed by the City of Seattle obstruct the passage of adult fish upriver and block nutrients necessary to the health of juvenile fish, all of which contributes to the severe decline of salmon species.