This article is the first part of a two-part analysis that maps out a tribal role in the growing conservation trust movement, which uses transactional property mechanisms to achieve natural resource protection on private lands. Since conquest, tribes have been divested of their traditional...

The legal “cornerstone” of federal Indian law is the federal trust obligation. The duty was formulated by courts long ago to protect native nations against federal actions that harm the retained tribal property and resources. Yet in recent years, courts have diminished the force of the...

Nineteenth century treaties promised Pacific Northwest Indian tribes the right of taking fish in common with the citizens... The meaning of those ten words has produced numerous court decsions in the ensuing century-and-a-half, including a half-dozen from the U.S. Supreme Court. This article...

The Klamath River, draining some 12,000 square miles in southern Oregon and northern California, was once the third largest salmon stream on the West Coast, the life force of Native Americans. The river runs 263 miles from headwaters in Oregon and flows through the Cascades to the Pacific Ocean...

In the mid-nineteenth century, as the pace of American westward expansion accelerated and tension between white settlers and indigenous tribes mounted, the federal government convinced many Pacific Northwest tribes to enter into treaties that would facilitate white settlement. In exchange for...