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[[image - drawing of a Wolf howling]]

down at Frank's landing.

The attitude here (on the Quinault Reservation) is we're going to work through the established agencies and try to keep the communication lines open to obtain our necessary goals. We are, even with our ocean beach closure, working through established agencies.

"We will try to work through influential people to try to establish an area of understanding rather than an area of misunderstanding."

PRESSURED

However, McMinds admits this may not be possible with the State Game Department which pressured the University of Washington to dismiss him when he answered an invitation by the Hoh River and Quillayute Indians to speak for them in their off-reservation fishing dispute last year.

The issue at stake was similar to the Frank's Landing controversy -- Indians setting nets at points in the rivers where sportsmen and commercial fishermen insist the supply of spawning salmon will be [[unreadable]].

The Indians argue that there is no proof that such netting causes elimination of a species of fish, that sports and commercial fishermen are not being forced to conform to existing conservation laws and that the state has no jurisdiction over treaty-negotiated historic Indian fishing grounds.

Those claims have bogged down in courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a long series of test cases but no clear definition of Indian fishing rights has yet emerged.

The murkiness swirls around the Supreme Court instruction to state game departments to prove the regulations being imposed "is necessary for the conservation of fish."

The recent Hoh and Quillayute Rivers confrontation which established "an area of misunderstanding" between McMinds and the Stata Game officials was triggered by nets set by the Indians inside the boundaries of Olympic National Park. Frustrated state game wardens have no jurisdiction over the park and the federal officials failed to pick up the cause and fight it for them.

And so the State Game Department took its problem to the Grays County sports columnist, who didn't both to report the other side of the argument.

TWO SIDES

There are two sides. The state says the Indian poses a special threat to salmon because he fishes upstream. With nylon mesh nets the Indian conceivably could catch all the salmon that return to spawn and thus wipe out an entire run.

The Indian replies that the fish was returning to spawn just as much when he was caught by the sports or commercial fisherman downstream or even in the open seas.

McMinds argues the State is not regulating its off-short troll fisheries and until it can get control its sportsmen and off-short troll fisheries it si unfair to regulate the Indians. He argues that the 4,000 troll licensees each year are not following the existing state regulations.

The Indians also point out that 91.4 per cent of all the fish taken in the state are taken by non-Indians and the argument that less than 10 per cent of the entire season's catch landed by Indians threatens the future of fishing for the state is unconvincing.

If the vast commercial and sports fishing and dam construction were restricted first, the Indians say they would be more amenable to curbing their practices.

The state insists that Indians are already getting special treatment ad that piecemeal control of a total ecological problem simply will not work. The fact that Indians have their own conservation regulations only adds to the confusion with two sets of regulations

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[[caption]] COMEDIAN DICK GREGORY JOINED FISH-IN Indians' rights to fish on Nisqually River were disputed [[/caption]]