Tacoma Police Department attacks Puyallup fishing camp

In July of 1970 Ramona Bennett, Bob Satiacum and other Puyallup's established a camp on tribal property adjacent to Cushman hospita for the purpose of providing security and support for their fisherman on the Puyallup river. Maiselle Bridges, a tribal coucilmember at the time came to the camp to support, as well as Hank Adams. The camp received support from Frank's Landing fishers as well as Tacoma IWW, Native peoples from Canada, people from the Alcatraz occupation, and Seattle Radical Women. While the camp was a family affair for most of summer, police repression and racist attacks on fishers came to be a reality as fall approached. On September 9th, police attacked the camp, arresting 55 adults and 5 children and Tacoma Police Chief Lyle Smith ordered the camp to be bulldozed, destroying tribal property, personal property and sacred items. The attack was highly publicized and the police repression was very violent. As the police prepared to cross the railroad bridge to attack the camp, Puyallup warriors lit the bridge on fire. Ramona Bennett was told by a police officer and a report that 550 cops were involved in the raid. A little more than a week later the case that would become the Boldt Decision (U.S. v. Washington, 384 Fed. Supp.) was filed by Stan Pitkin who witnessed the violent raid, which would ultimately grant Washington State 50% of fishing harvest and reaffirm the treaty fishing rights of Native peoples in Washington state, defining the amount as 50% of the catch. Some arrested were facing up to 35 years, but all charges were dropped after Hank Adams produced documents from Department of the Interior showing that the property was Puyallup and Tacoma PD was out of their jurisdiction. The bridge over the Puyallup river there is now called yabuk’wali, meaning “place of a fight” in Twulshootseed, or the Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge.