"Humph," Auntie Joy said.

"Of course, this is federal land only according to the federal government," Kate added. "It wasn't federal land until statehood, and our tribe has subsistence fished here since, hell, I don't know, since forever."

"As long as the water runs and the grass is green, we been here," Edna said. She blushed when everyone looked at her in surprise, and ducked her head.

She had invoked the traditional words included in every treaty the federal government had entered into with the Native American peoples, "so long as the water runs and the grass is green"a phrase that was supposed to imply forever regarding the terms of the treaty, but in reality had meant only until something of value was discovered on the lands the treaty referred to, something like gold or water rights or grazing lands or town sites or uranium, anything Manifest Destiny could be applied to and that therefore could be overrun by wannabe miners and ranchers and settlers and railroad builders.

And national park managers, Kate thought, who wanted to annex every square foot of land they saw and keep it pristine and inviolate, unsullied by human hand. They failed to recall that the indigenous peoples who came across the Bering land bridge during the last Ice Age had had their hands all over anything that had the remotest possibility of nutritional value and were every bit as much a part of the landscape and the wheel of life as the fish and the birds and the mammals. It wasn't until salmon started being taken commercially, in fish traps owned by Outside consortiums based in Seattlefish traps that spanned the entire mouths of creeks and trapped whole schools of fish in their comprehensive mawsthat the fish runs began to suffer their drastic declines.

She waited in case Edna wanted to say more, but the old woman had lapsed into her customary silence. "Like I was saying, Johnny, we've always fished subsistence here, but then the feds selected this creek at statehood, and they closed the fish camp down. Five years ago, Auntie Joy and Auntie Vi petitioned for it to be reverted back to subsistence use. The feds turned them down."

"And?"

"And, they sued."

"It still in court?" Jack asked with the cynicism born of long experience with the legal system.

Kate nodded. "They lost at the state level, big surprise. They're appealing to the supremes."

In sudden realization Jack sat up straight on his log. "You mean we're busting a federal law, fishing on this creek?"

Kate's smile was sardonic. "Oh no, you can sport fish here all you want, so long as you've got a state fishing license and the fish hawks declare the stream open." She nodded at the circle of women. "It's the aunties who aren't supposed to." She hooked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the creek. "That fish wheel's illegal as all hell. Lamar comes upstream every year and tells Auntie Joy so, doesn't he, auntie?"