The Tribe is involved in a variety of legal cases and other legal initiatives. Probably the biggest group of those cases has to deal with natural resources, specifically salmon because the Tribe since time immemorial depended on salmon for cultural, religious and other purposes. These cases include litigation against the United States Army Corps of Engineers for the operation of the four dams on the lower Snake River. These dams back up water and make the water very hot and actually violate water quality standards in the state of Washington that are part of the Clean Water Act.

So the Tribe filed a lawsuit with some other organizations basically to require the Army Corps to meet these water quality standards, like anyone else would need to. Any other citizen or anyone else operating a dam would also need to meet those water quality standards. That is one case. Another case is called the Snake River Basin Adjudication. That is a water rights case. In that case the Tribe has claimed water rights that are necessary to protect fish. Essentially those treaty rights to fish would be meaningless unless there was water to have fish there. That is another case the tribe is involved.

Other cases the Tribe is involved in there is litigation going on right now over protection of roadless areas in National Forests. Much of the former territory of the Nez Perce Tribe is within National Forests in Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Montana and those areas much of it is not developed to this day and have no roads and are relatively pristine. This current litigation examines whether or not rules that were promulgated by President Clinton are legal or not. The Tribe has supported those rules. It is important for the Tribe to have that habitat in tact for fish, to protect cultural resources of the Tribe, to protect wildlife and berries and other roots that the Tribe gathers. So the Tribe is involved in that lawsuit.

In addition the Tribe is involved in several other lawsuits against the United States, all related to salmon recovery. The National Marine Fisheries Service who is charge of protecting salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin issued a recovery plan, which is called a biological opinion. The Tribe feels that the biological opinion isn’t sufficient enough to meet the goals of protecting salmon and steelhead. That it is not going to recover these species to a level that is going to prevent extinction and further that it is not going to recover species in a level that is necessary for the Tribe to exercise its treaty rights. It is important to remember that in order for those treaty rights to be meaningful there needs to be enough fish for the tribe and other people to harvest. So it is more than just preventing extinction, it is making sure that there is a healthy run of fish like there were when Lewis and Clark came.