Photo by Wingspan Media Productions, featured in The Cleanest Line
It is great to see Nez Perce/Nimiipuu treaty rights and efforts to protect the fish of the Columbia River Drainage featured in Patagonia‘s blog, The Cleanest Line. The post, “Free the Snake and Restore Salmon to Honor Treaty Rights” is authored by Julian Matthews, director of “Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment.” This grass roots Nez Perce organization works closely with Friends of the Clearwater and many other regional conservation groups.
The Nez Perce Tribe and other members of the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission and the United Upper Columbia River Tribes engage in a great deal of restoration, native fish protection, and education regarding their traditional “salmon culture.” Some Nonnative sportspersons in the region do not support the tribes’ subsistence rights, established in numerous treaties and executive orders; I suspect some of these people may not realize just how deeply engaged in fisheries protection and restoration the tribes, particularly the Nez Perce, are.
The photos in the Patagonia story feature images of the Free the Snake River Flotilla. A popular event (previously featured in The Cleanest Line) held annually by opponents of four Snake River dams. Prominent in the pictures is Sammy Matsaw, a graduate student at the University of Idaho, who is doing some great work on the intersections of Indigenous and “Western” sciences. Sammy is Shoshone-Bannock and Oglala Lakota, but he has many Nimiipuu and other Native peers at U of I and neighboring Washington State University, who are also doing great work.
The Literary Fly Fisher 
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