Al Bridges, Vashon-Born Fishing Rights Activist
By Laurie Tucker and Rayna Holtz.
This year we can celebrate Native American Heritage Month by honoring the 100th birthday of a Vashon-born fishing rights warrior, Al Bridges, who was born at Clam Cove (Tahlequah) in 1922.
Alvin Bridges was the grandson of one of Vashon’s first permanent white settlers, Matthew Bridges, and his Duwamish wife Mary. Matthew came to the Pacific Northwest in the 1850s and moved with Mary to Vashon sometime in the 1870s, where Bridges logged. He claimed land at Cove in 1880, logged and sold it, and then did the same thing at Paradise Cove. Later he and Mary settled with their family at Clam Cove. Their son Mark married a Puyallup Native, Mary Squally, and they raised their son Al and his siblings on Vashon Island and in the Gig Harbor area where their Squally relatives lived.
Al Bridges spent much of his life with the Nisqually Tribe, marrying Maiselle McCloud, the older sister of Billy Frank, and living at Frank's Landing with the extended Frank family, including Willie Frank Sr. and his wife Angeline. Al Bridges worked at many jobs, none so important as fishing. Al and Maiselle raised three daughters, Suzette, Valerie, and Alison against the dramatic backdrop of the tribal struggle to secure their ancient fishing rights. When they had been forced by the 1854 Treaty of Medicine Creek to give up most of their land, this right had been protected with the promise that “the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations is further secured to said Indians in common with all citizens of the Territory.” And yet 100 years later they were still fighting to exercise that right.
In the 1960s and 70s, the controversy over Washington State’s right to regulate off-reservation net fishing in the traditional territory of Washington tribes escalated. Al Bridges, Maiselle, and their three daughters, along with the Frank family and others, annually fished the Nisqually River in defiance of state law, asserting their treaty rights, and regularly had their boats, motors, nets and fishing gear confiscated by game wardens. Al was arrested more than 50 times in those two decades, as were other family members and friends. “Her father, Al Bridges, went to jail so often that Alison and her two sisters started fishing in his absence. They would push off from the shore at night dressed in black clothing.”* Things came to a head in 1970 after a violent confrontation between armed agents and Native People at a Puyallup fish camp. The United States Attorney for Western Washington filed a complaint known as United States vs. State of Washington, suing the state for violating treaty rights. The trial began in August of 1973 and concluded in February of 1974 with what has become known as the Boldt Decision. Judge George Boldt ruled that the tribes were due an equal sharing in the resource with settlers, and furthermore he made the tribes co-managers of Washington State’s fisheries.
Credit: "Messages from Frank's Landing" by Charles Wilkinson. Janet McCloud is in the bow, Don Matheson behind and Al Bridges is navigating. All three were active in the group SAIA Survival of the American Indian. SAIA organized the fish ins. This photo is from 1966 and is shared with the permission of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
Alvin James Bridges died September 14, 1982 and was buried in the Leschi Indian Cemetery on the Nisqually Reservation.