[holyscroller]

What's with the Indians in this battle? I have a friend who's incredibly sympathetic to the Indians in all this, and I fail to see what they have to do with it. Are they a ligitimate tribe or just political opportunists?

[Grampa Dave]

They are both legitimate tribes and political opportunists. The ones around the Klamath Basin tried to say that the bony and rotten/slimy Short Nosed Sucker Fish was part of their religion. No anthropologists have ever found any evidence of the bones and heads of these fish eaten in the camp areas where their ancestors dwelled. That claim doesn't hold any water nor deserve any water.

Being part Indian myself, I find this claim to be an outrage. Why would I want to eat a foul tasting/bony slimey sucker when I could eat the wonderful trout in the Klamath Lake or the two rivers that feed it. Then, I could come down stream a little along the Klamath and catch/spear the King of Salmon, King Salmon or the wonderful tasting steelhead. To get me to eat a sucker fish, you would have drug, beat me and maybe shot me. To get me to eat good salmon/trout just call me over for dinner.

When there are Salmon or steelhead, these tribal people should be allowed catch and kill what they want up and down these streams and rivers. However, please don't play a game about re the Sucker Fish.