When Tony Johnson walks the beach at Bay Center, a small peninsula that hooks north in Washington’s Willapa Bay, he feels connected to both the past and the present.
First off, it’s called Johnson Beach, after his grandfather who was born nearby. It’s also where he and other members of the Chinook Indian Nation dig for clams and gather oysters when the tide goes out. Nearby, the early 20th Century photographer Edward Curtis took photos of Chinook people.
“Hard to describe exactly what the compulsion is. It’s just being in our place,” Johnson said of why he returns so frequently.
Johnson is the chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation. The tribe once lived in an area that surrounded the mouth of the Columbia River, but today they’re headquartered in Bay Center. They have about 3,300 members.
Johnson is leading the effort to restore federal recognition of the Chinook people in the eyes of the U.S. government. Recognition could bring real benefits to the tribe, like educational grants, local health care services and relief funds like those distributed to tribal nations during the pandemic.
The most recent speed bump came when the tribe announced they’d reached an “impasse” with U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Washington. Despite being the tribe’s best hope through Congressional action, Johnson said she’d made “11th hour” changes to their hunting and fishing rights on the proposed bill, causing them to look for a new legislative champion.
As he stood on the beach in Bay Center, Johnson raised his cellphone level with the surrounding bluffs and shoreline. On the screen a black and white photo showed Chinook people in dugout canoes landing in the same place.
“This is really what’s left of the hundreds of Chinook villages that were on both sides of the Columbia River,” Johnson said.
The Chinook people have been treated with a sort of quasi-recognition by the U.S. government for many decades. Members experienced the horrors of Indian boarding schools after the government sent them there. They received trust land allotments on the nearby reservation of the Quinault Indian Nation. Chinook members have Individual Indian Money accounts, which are managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
And yet, full recognition has remained elusive.
In 2001, the outgoing Clinton administration granted federal recognition to the Chinook Tribe. But just 18 months later, that status was rescinded under George W. Bush, whose administration argued the tribe had not met the criteria to be acknowledged fully. A 2002 statement from the U.S. Department of the Interior said the Chinook had failed to show that they had a “continuous historical existence” by maintaining political influence over members, showing they were a distinct social community, or being seen as an “Indian entity” by outsiders.
The flip-flopped status has led to years of debate.
“Lewis and Clark certainly recognized them as tribal people that they could rely on and dealt with their chiefs,” said Robert Miller, a law professor at Arizona State University and a member of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe. “And yet now today, they just fall into this category of non-recognized.”
Resource rights
Viewed from above, the tidelands of Willapa Bay stretch out in muddy expanses, veined with incoming rivers. The roads that surround the bay are dotted with huge piles of oyster shells, in some places mounded into berms taller than a car. The nearby town of South Bend bears the nickname “oyster capital of the world.” This is the rural setting where the Chinook Indian Nation and Gluesenkamp Perez came to an impasse over legislation for federal recognition.
According to the tribe, things got rocky last June when Gluesenkamp Perez amended the current bill for Congress to specify that it would not restore natural resources rights, including hunting, fishing, shellfish aquaculture or water rights.
“Congresswoman Gluesenkamp Perez gave the Chinook Indian Nation an impossible choice: give up our rights to live as we have done for tens of thousands of years or maintain our status as an ‘unrecognized’ tribe,” Johnson said in an April press release announcing they were looking for a new legislative champion.
But in a region where natural resources are the backbone of the economy, there are concerns about what federal recognition, and associated fishing and aquaculture rights, could mean for local businesses, according to Gluesenkamp Perez.
“From the fishing and the shellfish aquaculture community, folks need clarity,” she said. “They need to know what the impacts on their lives will be.”
OPB contacted several oyster businesses around Willapa Bay but the owners either declined interview requests or did not respond.
Washington’s 3rd District representative has long been seen as the champion for stewarding Chinook recognition. In 2009, Democrat Rep. Brian Baird introduced legislation to restore recognition for the Chinook. Baird’s legislation specified that ceremonial hunting and fishing rights would be allowed for the Chinook Nation, but it excluded commercial rights. The bill never made it to a floor vote.
Since Gluesenkamp Perez flipped the 3rd District from Republican control in 2022, she has had to walk a tightrope between appealing to Republicans and Democrats. Representing the sprawling rural district means being tied to natural resource interests, whether that be timber products cut from the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, grain shipped out of the Port of Chehalis or fisheries on Willapa Bay.
“My position has been that this is a historical wrong that needs to be righted,” Gluesenkamp Perez said, referring to Chinook recognition. “And that means a bill that can garner that support. We need the broadest level of support from stakeholders here at home to be able to reach 218 votes in the House and pass the Senate and become the law.”
Neighboring tribes
Besides concerns about fishing and aquaculture rights, other local tribes provided lukewarm support for the Chinook Indian Nation when contacted by OPB. The Chinook had historic tensions with the Quinault Indian Nation, on whose reservation Chinook members received allotments of land. Members of the Quinault Tribe did not respond to an interview request about Chinook recognition.
The Cowlitz Indian Tribe, based in Longview, Washington, received federal recognition around the same time as the Chinook’s short-lived acknowledgement, but theirs was not rescinded. In a statement about the Chinook’s current fight, Chairman William B. Iyall said the Cowlitz Tribe empathizes with the slow road to federal recognition; while also referencing some of the reasons the Chinook were disqualified over two decades ago.
“Every Tribe deserves the same opportunity, particularly those with clear, historically documented lineage and continuity of government that ties them to their aboriginal lands,” Iyall said. “We wish the Chinook People success in demonstrating their connection to the Chinook homelands, lands of modern-day Pacific County, as they pursue federal recognition. These fights are not just about status or respect – they are about the right to pursue self-determination and drive further prosperity for a Tribe’s people and continue existing within its historic homelands.”
The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, which are based near the coastal city of Newport, was granted federal recognition in 1977. Their rights to hunt, fish and gather on their ancestral lands were forfeited in exchange for a reservation a few years later. It wasn’t until March 2025 that the tribes regained their subsistence rights after being denied them for nearly half a century.
“The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians has significant historical, legal and cultural connections to the historic Chinookan bands and tribes in Oregon,” Siletz Tribal Chairperson Delores Pigsley said in a statement. “In the past several years, our Tribal Council has had numerous conversations with the ‘Chinook Indian Nation’ group regarding their legislative proposal for federal acknowledgment. We treat those discussions with discretion and remain open to continued, constructive dialogue regarding their proposal.”
Meeting the requirements for recognition as a tribe under the Bureau of Indian Affairs is difficult, said Miller, the ASU professor.
“What is hard is that these BIA requirements demand that you prove that you and your families have somehow remained sort of a separate, and recognized by the community, tribal group for over 150 years when the United States has been trying to assimilate and destroy tribal communities,” Miller said. “Of course native peoples have dispersed.”
With the Chinook having lost their shot at federal recognition by applying administratively to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2001, they have better odds now through an act of Congress, he said. That’s why they need a champion like Gluesenkamp Perez.
For now, the lawmaker’s draft legislation has not been introduced in Congress. Before doing that, she said, it needs to have more support from local fisheries businesses and neighboring tribes.
“It’s not that we all have to love every part of every bill,” Gluesenkamp Perez said, “but we should be in communication with each other, stay at the table, and not denigrate sovereignty itself in a pursuit of getting something done quickly.”
Johnson, however, described efforts for federal recognition as a race against time. He said the tribe is pursuing support from all members of Oregon and Washington’s congressional delegations.
“This situation is just indescribable,” Johnson said. “It’s like somebody walked out the door and said, ‘That sky is not blue.’ For us, it is that straightforward. The sky is blue. The Chinook Indian Nation is here, not going anywhere and has always been here.”
