Indian Reservations in Washington State: 29 Tribes and Treaties

Washington State is home to 29 federally recognized Indian tribes, more than almost any other state, and their reservations stretch from the 1.4-million-acre Colville Reservation in the northeast to small coastal villages on the Olympic Peninsula and urban land bases inside the Seattle-Tacoma metro area. Each tribe is a sovereign nation with authority that predates the U.S. Constitution, and the Indian reservations in Washington State operate under a layered framework of treaties, federal law, court rulings, and formal government-to-government agreements with the state.

The 29 Federally Recognized Tribes

The federally recognized tribes in Washington are:¹

Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation
Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation
Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation
Cowlitz Indian Tribe
Hoh Indian Tribe
Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe
Kalispel Tribe of Indians
Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe
Lummi Nation
Makah Tribe
Muckleshoot Indian Tribe
Nisqually Indian Tribe
Nooksack Indian Tribe
Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe
Puyallup Tribe
Quileute Tribe
Quinault Indian Nation
Samish Indian Nation
Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe
Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe
Skokomish Indian Tribe
Snoqualmie Indian Tribe
Spokane Tribe of Indians
Squaxin Island Tribe
Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians
Suquamish Tribe
Swinomish Indian Tribal Community
Tulalip Tribes
Upper Skagit Indian Tribe

These nations vary enormously in size, population, geography, and economic activity. The Puyallup and Muckleshoot sit inside major metropolitan areas. The Makah occupy the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula, and the Hoh are on the remote Pacific coast hours from the nearest city. Several tribes, including the Cowlitz and the Snoqualmie, were recognized only recently and have small or newly acquired land bases. What they share is inherent sovereignty: the authority to make and enforce laws, operate courts, govern their citizens, and manage their territory.

What Sovereignty Means on a Washington Reservation

Reservations in Washington are not state property or state subdivisions. Each is the land base of a self-governing nation whose legal status is older than the state itself. Tribes possess inherent jurisdiction over their member-citizens and their territory. States generally have no authority over tribal governments or Indian country unless Congress specifically grants it, and in Washington much of what the state once asserted has since been returned to tribal and federal control.

That sovereignty is why the practical experience of a reservation differs from the surrounding county: tribal governments set the laws, run the courts, manage natural resources, operate schools and health clinics, and negotiate directly with the state and federal governments as peers.

Treaties and Reserved Rights

Most of Washington’s reservations were created in a rapid burst of treaty-making in 1854 and 1855. Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens negotiated seven treaties with dozens of tribal nations, collectively known as the Stevens Treaties. Through them, tribes ceded vast tracts of their ancestral territory in exchange for reserved homelands and the explicit preservation of certain off-reservation rights.²

The seven treaties and their principal signatories were:

Treaty of Medicine Creek (1854): Nisqually, Puyallup, Squaxin Island, and Muckleshoot.
Treaty of Point Elliott (1855): Lummi, Nooksack, Stillaguamish, Swinomish, Upper Skagit, Suquamish, Sauk-Suiattle, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot.
Treaty of Point No Point (1855): Jamestown S’Klallam, Port Gamble S’Klallam, Lower Elwha Klallam, and Skokomish.
Treaty of Neah Bay (1855): Makah.
Treaty with the Yakama (1855): the confederated tribes and bands of the Yakama Nation.
Treaty of Walla Walla (1855): Walla Walla, Cayuse, and Umatilla.
Treaty of Olympia (1856): Quinault, Hoh, and Quileute.²

Each treaty contained nearly identical language securing the tribes’ right to fish “at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations” and the privilege to hunt and gather roots and berries on “open and unclaimed lands.”³ Courts have consistently held that the treaties did not grant rights to the tribes but reserved rights they already possessed. As federal law, the treaties are the “supreme law of the land” under the U.S. Constitution and preempt inconsistent state regulation.²

Not every tribe in Washington signed a treaty. The Cowlitz Indian Tribe, for example, never did. It was denied federal recognition by President Calvin Coolidge in 1923 and was not formally recognized until 2000, receiving its first reservation of 152 acres in 2015.⁴ Without a treaty, the tribe has had difficulty asserting the kind of off-reservation fishing and gathering rights treaty tribes exercise automatically. A 2022 Washington appeals court ruling upheld the conviction of Cowlitz members for exceeding recreational clam limits, finding that the tribe’s aboriginal title had been extinguished by historical federal actions.⁵

The Boldt Decision and Fisheries Co-Management

For more than a century after the treaties were signed, Washington routinely restricted tribal fishing in ways that violated treaty guarantees, producing what one federal court called “frequent and often violent controversy.”⁶ That era ended on February 12, 1974, with United States v. Washington, decided by U.S. District Judge George Boldt.

Judge Boldt ruled that the treaty phrase “in common with all citizens of the territory” required equal sharing of the resource. Treaty tribes were entitled to up to 50 percent of the harvestable catch of salmon and steelhead passing through their usual and accustomed fishing areas.⁷ State regulation of tribal fishing was limited to what was “reasonable and necessary” for conservation, and tribes were qualified to regulate their own members.⁶ Backlash was intense. State and local authorities resisted enforcement until the federal government stepped in directly in 1977, and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the ruling in 1979, holding that “both sides have a right, secured by treaty, to take a fair share of the available fish.”⁸

The district court has retained jurisdiction over the case for more than 50 years. A 2013 subproceeding ordered the state to replace salmon-blocking culverts under state-maintained roads, grounded in the treaty duty to preserve fish runs. As of June 2025, the Washington Department of Transportation has corrected 176 barrier culverts and reopened 655 miles of blocked salmon and steelhead habitat within the injunction area.⁹ The 50/50 allocation has been extended to shellfish, and the Boldt framework has been used to halt industrial projects that threaten treaty-protected fisheries, most notably the proposed Gateway Pacific coal-export terminal at Cherry Point, which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied on May 9, 2016 after finding the project would interfere with Lummi fishing rights across at least 122 acres. The Corps stated it “may not permit a project that abrogates treaty rights.”¹⁰

Tribes and the state now manage fisheries together. On the tribal side, 20 treaty tribes in western Washington formed the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC), based in Olympia, which provides technical support for genetics, hatchery monitoring, habitat strategy, and annual harvest negotiations.¹¹ Tribes release about 40 million salmon from hatcheries each year, and many tribal fisheries have voluntarily cut harvests by up to 80 percent in recent decades to protect weak wild runs. The NWIFC identifies habitat loss, not harvest, as the primary driver of salmon decline.¹²

Who Has Criminal Jurisdiction on a Reservation

Jurisdiction on reservations in Washington is a layered patchwork of tribal, federal, and state authority. Tribes possess inherent jurisdiction over their member-citizens. Under the federal Major Crimes Act, the federal government handles serious crimes such as murder, sexual assault, and arson committed by Indians in Indian country.

Washington assumed partial jurisdiction under Public Law 280 in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but only over a narrow list of matters: compulsory school attendance, public assistance, domestic relations, mental illness, juvenile delinquency, adoption proceedings, dependent children, and motor vehicle operation on public roads. For broader criminal jurisdiction, state law lets a tribe petition the governor to opt in. Several tribes have moved the other way, and the state has retroceded criminal jurisdiction over the Quileute, Chehalis, Swinomish, Skokomish, Muckleshoot, Tulalip, and Colville reservations, returning primary authority to tribal and federal systems.¹³

The 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act added another layer, authorizing participating tribes to prosecute non-Indians for domestic violence, dating violence, and violations of protective orders under Special Domestic Violence Criminal Jurisdiction.¹⁴

The State-Tribal Relationship

Washington was the first state to formalize a government-to-government relationship with tribes through a binding executive agreement. The Centennial Accord, signed on August 4, 1989, established that the state and federally recognized tribes would deal with each other as sovereign governments, not as subdivisions of some larger entity.¹⁵ It grew out of the contentious years after the Boldt Decision and was meant to rebuild trust.¹⁶

The Accord requires state agencies to consult with tribes on policies that affect tribal interests and commits the parties to annual meetings. The 1999 Millennium Agreement standardized protocols for consultation and dispute resolution.¹⁵ State law codifies the consultation framework under RCW 43.376, which requires each state agency to designate a tribal liaison and make “reasonable efforts to collaborate” with tribes.¹⁷

In October 2025, Governor Bob Ferguson signed Executive Order 25-10, directing cabinet agencies to proactively engage with tribes, incorporate “Tribally accepted Indigenous Knowledge” in science-based standards, require tribal liaisons to report directly to agency heads, and produce annual reports on activities affecting tribal nations. The order defines tribal consultation based on the principle of “free, prior, and informed consent.”¹⁸ The state also mandates a “Since Time Immemorial” tribal sovereignty curriculum in K-12 public schools.¹⁹

A Closer Look at Several Reservations

Colville Reservation

The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation hold the largest reservation in Washington: 1.4 million acres across Ferry and Okanogan counties.²⁰ The confederacy comprises 12 tribal groups, including the Colville, Wenatchi, Okanogan, Nespelem, San Poil, and Chief Joseph Nez Perce. The reservation was created by presidential executive order in 1872 and later significantly reduced.²¹ Government runs through the 14-member Colville Business Council, established in 1937. Economic activity includes gaming, tourism, retail, construction, wood products, and ownership stakes in the Grand Coulee and Wells hydroelectric dams.

Yakama Nation

The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation hold a reservation of over one million acres in south-central Washington, established by the 1855 Treaty with the Yakama. The boundary has been disputed for decades because the original 1855 treaty map was misfiled by a federal clerk under “M” for Montana and remained lost for nearly 75 years, during which incorrect surveys stripped hundreds of thousands of acres from the reservation. In 2021, the Ninth Circuit ruled in Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation v. Klickitat County that “Tract D,” a 120,000-acre section in the reservation’s southwestern corner, was always part of the reservation, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the county’s appeal in 2022. On December 13, 2024, the state transferred 167 acres containing the Klickitat Hatchery to the Yakama Nation, with negotiations continuing over additional land in the northern “Tract C” area.²²

Urban Reservations: Puyallup, Muckleshoot, and Tulalip

Several of Washington’s most economically active reservations sit inside or beside the Seattle-Tacoma metro area. The Puyallup Tribe operates on land within Tacoma and Fife, with enterprises including the $400 million Emerald Queen Casino (opened 2020), a marina, golf course, cannabis retail, a seaplane terminal, and an international logistics company.²³ In 2024, Congress passed the Puyallup Tribe of Indians Land Into Trust Act, adding roughly 17 acres of Tacoma waterfront to the reservation after the tribe cleaned a formerly contaminated industrial site.²⁴ The Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, in central Puget Sound in King County, is one of South King County’s largest employers, supporting 3,300 direct jobs.²⁵ The Tulalip Tribes, along the I-5 corridor in Snohomish County, operate two casinos, an amphitheatre, and Quil Ceda Village, described as the first and only federally recognized city established by a tribe.²⁶

Olympic Peninsula Coastal Tribes

Washington’s remote Pacific coastline is home to small tribes facing acute environmental pressure. The Makah Tribe at Neah Bay is the only tribe in the lower 48 states with an explicit treaty right to whale, secured by the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay. The reservation covers roughly 47 square miles and has 3,349 enrolled members.²⁷ After a successful 1999 hunt, the tribe was blocked from whaling for over two decades by litigation over the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In June 2024, the tribe secured a federal waiver allowing a limited hunt of up to 25 eastern North Pacific gray whales over 10 years, and in March 2025 it submitted a permit application to NOAA Fisheries. The federal government missed an October 2025 decision deadline, delaying any hunt by at least 18 months.²⁸

The Quinault Indian Nation is relocating the entire village of Taholah to higher ground, roughly a half-mile uphill on about 200 acres, due to flooding, rising seas, and the threat of a Cascadia Subduction Zone tsunami. Paved streets, sewers, and a 30,000-square-foot Generations House are complete, though the nation still faces a funding gap of more than $450 million to finish the move. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has designated the project as one of three national pilots for community-driven relocation.²⁹ The Quileute Tribe faces a similar situation at La Push, where the reservation sits 10 to 15 feet above sea level. In 2012, President Barack Obama signed the Quileute Tsunami and Flood Protection Act, transferring 772 acres of former Olympic National Park land to the tribe to enable relocation.³⁰

Tribal Gaming

All 29 federally recognized tribes in Washington have gaming compacts with the state, as required by the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. The compacts govern Class III gaming, including casino-style operations using Tribal Lottery System terminals. Individual allocations allow up to 1,075 terminals per tribe, with facility maximums ranging from 2,500 to 4,000 for the largest operations at Muckleshoot, Tulalip, and Puyallup.³¹ Nationally, tribal gaming generated $43.9 billion in gross gaming revenue in fiscal year 2024, up 4.6 percent over the prior year.³²

Health Care and Housing

Health care on Washington reservations runs through the Indian Health Service Portland Area office, which covers 43 tribes across Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. Tribes administer more than 74 percent of the Portland Area’s budget authority through self-determination contracts and self-governance compacts.³³ The service area has no IHS-operated hospital, so emergency and hospital-level care must be processed through the Purchase and Referred Care Program, which tribal leaders describe as chronically underfunded. IHS nationally carries a 30 percent vacancy rate for medical providers, and tribal leaders say recent federal lease cancellations, hiring freezes, and payment-system disruptions have occurred without the legally mandated consultation.³⁴

In fiscal year 2024, the 29 Washington tribes received nearly $75 million in Indian Housing Block Grant funding, the main federal source of tribal housing assistance. Federal data show Native Americans are twice as likely as other U.S. households to live in poverty and nearly three times as likely to live in overcrowded housing.³⁵ Washington’s 2025 state budget included $330,000 for the Health Care Authority to seek a federal waiver to cover traditional health care practices and directed the state to work with the Governor’s Indian Health Advisory Council on substance use disorder services for tribal communities.³⁶

1
Washington Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs. Federally Recognized Tribes in Washington State
2
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Tribal Hunting Rights History
3
Washington Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs. Treaty of Medicine Creek
4
National Indian Council on Aging. Washington Tribes
5
High Country News. Treaty-less Tribes Struggle to Have Their Rights Recognized
6
Justia. United States v. State of Washington, 384 F. Supp. 312
7
Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. 50 Years of Boldt
8
University of Washington School of Law. The Boldt Decision
9
Washington State Department of Transportation. Federal Court Injunction Fish Passage
10
The Herald. Big Coal Terminal Violates Tribal Rights, Permit Denied
11
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. NWIFC Home
12
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. Questions and Answers on Tribal Salmon Fisheries
13
Washington State Legislature. Chapter 37.12 RCW – Indian Lands Jurisdiction
14
CSVANW. MMIW Toolkit
15
Washington Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs. Centennial Accord
16
The Evergreen State College. The Centennial Accord Case Study
17
Environmental Law Institute. Tribal Consultation in Washington
18
Office of the Governor of Washington. Governor Ferguson Sets New Foundation for State Agencies to Foster Partnerships With Tribal Nations
19
Washington OSPI. Native Education Tribal Consultation
20
Bureau of Indian Affairs. Colville Reservation Economic Profile
21
Upper Columbia United Tribes. Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation
22
Grist. State Trust Lands and the Yakama Nation
23
Puyallup Tribe. Economic Development
24
KUOW. Puyallup Tribe to Have 17 Acres of Land Added to Reservation
25
Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. Muckleshoot Indian Tribe
26
Tulalip Tribes. Economic Development
27
International Whaling Commission. Makah Tribe
28
KNKX. Makah Tribe’s Treaty-Protected Whaling Rights Remain Blocked After More Than 25 Years
29
PBS NewsHour. Facing Climate Change, the Quinault Nation Envisions a New Home
30
ICT News. Quileute Is Moving to Higher Ground
31
Washington State Gambling Commission. Tribal Gaming Compacts and Amendments
32
National Indian Gaming Commission. FY 2024 Gross Gaming Revenue
33
Indian Health Service. Portland Area
34
InvestigateWest. Clinic Closures, Firings, Buyouts: Northwest Tribes Sound Alarm About Cuts
35
Office of U.S. Senator Patty Murray. Nearly $75 Million to Address Housing Challenges in WA Tribal Communities
36
Washington State Department of Health. DOH Tribal Policy Director 2025 Legislative Report