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| READ: https://indigenous.boston/federal-district-court-affirms-yakama-reservation-boundaries |
A federal clerk's error put more than 90,000 acres of Yakama Nation land in the hands of Washington state. Because of forced treaties and a clerical error, Yakama reservation is over a million acres — but not all of it belongs to the tribe. Grist >
It was barely a choice. In 1855, a time when the ink of border lines on United States maps had scarcely dried, Yakama Chief Kamiakin (left) was told to sign over the land of 14 tribal nations and bands in the Pacific Northwest — or face the prospect of walking “knee deep” in the blood of his people.
Legend has it that, when he put pen to paper, he was so furious he bit through his lip.
By signing, he ceded over 10 million acres across what is now known as Washington state. In return, the Yakama Nation was allowed to live on a reservation one-tenth the size of their ancestral lands, about 100 miles southeast of Seattle.
But the story doesn’t end there. The treaty map was lost for close to 75 years, misfiled by a federal clerk who put it under “M” for Montana.
With no visual record to contradict them, federal agents extracted even more Yakama land for the nascent state, drawing new boundaries on new maps. One removed an additional 140,000 acres from the reservation, another about half a million, and still other versions exist.
By the time the original map was discovered in the 1930s, it was too late. Settlers had already made claims well within reservation boundaries, carving the consequences of this mistake into the contours of the land. Non-Native landowners remain to this day.
The Yakama want that land back. Most tribal members know the story of Kamiakin and his bloodied lip when he signed the treaty. Ask Phil Rigdon, a Yakama citizen and nationally recognized forester. As the superintendent of the Yakama Nation Department of Natural Resources, he deals with a medley of issues, but his most important work is getting the reservation land back. After working on this for nearly 20 years, he knows that it takes time and an entire community to make the progress they want.
“It’s a family thing for us, as we do this business,” he said.
Pahto, also known as Mount Adams, looms over the western edge of the Yakama reservation. In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed an executive order acknowledging that the mountain had been mistakenly excluded from the reservation.
Maria Parazo Rose / Grist
#LANDBACK 🗺
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