The simple economics have been shown to argue forcefully for breaching, yet these arguments pale when measured against the power of the Indian treaty. No one in the Northwest wields more political clout than the region's four governors. No one wields more legal power than the four Columbia River Indian tribes. When push comes to shove, as push inevitably will, the difference between politics and the law will be the difference between a slingshot and a tank. When representatives of the four Columbia River tribes met in March to discuss the salmon crisis with White House officials of the Department of Environmental Quality, everyone sitting around that table understood who was holding the aces.
Treaties have the power to trump all other law.
The tribes, backed by data of fisheries science and scientists of federal agencies, have vowed to take any action necessary to save native salmon from extinction. The tribes did not create this crisis. The tribes did not create this crisis. It's the result of political and economic policies pursued with blind zeal by the non-native society that colonized this region a century and a half ago. For good reasons, the states seldom prevail when they challenge Indian treaties.