The Battle Over Tacoma's Tidelands
Federal court hears closing arguments in the dispute between landholders and those asserting Indigenous treaty rights to the waterfront.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Attorney J. M. Ashton this afternoon held the floor in federal court in the Bedford tideland suit, presenting the cause of the tideland holders against the claims of Bedford and Grosscup for the Indians. Mr. Grosscup in his argument held that the executive order following the treaty had bestowed on the red men the tidelands. Ashton denied every point. He said there was not a word in the treaty to recognize any right of the Indians to the tidelands. All they were guaranteed was the right to have access to the water for fishing purposes, and even these rights must give way to the rights of commerce.
“All they were guaranteed was the right to have access to the water for fishing purposes... even these rights were such as must give way to the rights of commerce.”
This litigation represents a critical moment in the history of Tacoma's industrial development, where the drive for 'commerce' was used to systematically dispossess Indigenous people of their ancestral tidelands. These historical legal maneuvers are the foundation for the current landscape of the Port of Tacoma and continue to resonate in contemporary land-back movements and tribal rights litigation.
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