124 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
tingent of angry fishermen
descended on Olympia to pro-
test the Boldt Decision, John-
son assured them the Attor-
ney General’s Office would
file an appeal and declared
he was confident the decision
would be reversed. To the In-
dians and their attorneys it
was a “disgraceful episode.”^14
Johnson says he was just
doing his job. Fresh out of the
military, he “wasn’t looking
for another war. In those days
I got shot at more in the AG
Office than I ever did in the
Army.” Over the next four
years, Johnson appeared be-
fore Judge Boldt more than
200 times, seeking injunc-
tions to halt on-reservation fisheries after runs had been exhausted.
Someone fired shots at his car on more than one occasion, he says.
Johnson maintains that the five tribes Boldt subsequently barred from
sharing in the treaty harvest weren’t just grasping at straws when they
filed a post-mortem challenge to the judge’s mental competency. Boldt
was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease in 1978, a year before he ruled
against the five tribes, according to his 1984 death certificate. “Anybody
in the courtroom should have known that well before,” Johnson says. “He
used appalling judgment.... Not only would he not listen to my com-
plaints at all... on many occasions Boldt would remember he didn’t like
me but he couldn’t even remember who I was.”
An avid fisherman since boyhood, Johnson was outraged when Boldt
jailed a hundred protesters and made “contemptuous comments” about
white fishermen. Johnson says the tribes hated him because he wouldn’t
be intimidated, and their lawyers were steamed when he succeeded in
denying them what he characterizes as “millions in attorney’s fees.”
The tribes campaigned against Johnson and Gorton with a vengeance
in the decades to come as Gorton moved to the U.S. Senate and Johnson
to the Washington State Supreme Court after representing non-Indian
property owners in a battle over shellfish rights.
An editorial cartoon in The Seattle Times
in 1974 after the Boldt Decision on Indian
treaty fishing rights. Alan Pratt/The Seattle
Times