- Davis “Yellowash” Washines, a Yakama elder, public servant, ceremonial leader, and former police chief, devoted much of his life to defending Yakama treaty rights, clean water, and the Columbia River, known to the Yakama people as Nch’i-Wána.
- Drawing on his background in law enforcement, he described the toxic pollution at Bradford Island near Bonneville Dam as a crime scene, with the water, salmon, and people who depended on them as victims.
- His work joined law, culture, education, and public service: he served as Yakama Tribal Police chief, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission police chief, Yakama Nation General Council chairman, counselor, language instructor, trustee, and board chair.
- The 2022 designation of Bradford Island as a Superfund site reflected years of persistence, but he saw the deeper goal as clean, healthy fish, safe water, and the fulfillment of responsibilities to future generations and those unable to speak for themselves.
At Bradford Island, near Bonneville Dam, the river carried more than water. Beneath the surface of the Columbia were toxic sediments, dumped near a place where Yakama people had fished since time immemorial. To officials, it was a cleanup site. To the Yakama Nation, it was a usual and accustomed fishing place, protected by treaty. To Davis Washines, known to many as Yellowash, it was also a crime scene.
The victims, he said, were first the water, then the salmon and other life that depended on it, and then the people who depended on them. He did not speak that way for emphasis. He spoke from a life spent moving between law enforcement, ceremony, public service, and the river. Evidence mattered to him. So did harm, responsibility, and the obligations carried through Yakama law, culture, and memory.
Yellowash died on May 1st, at his home in White Swan, Washington. He was 74. By then he had held many titles: Yakama Tribal Police chief, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission police chief, member of the Yakama Tribal Council, chairman of the Yakama Nation General Council, government relations liaison in the Yakama Nation Department of Natural Resources, trustee, board chair, counselor, teacher, and ceremonial leader. The titles marked a long public life. They did not fully describe it.
He began that life in public service in 1973 with the Yakama Tribal Police Department and rose to chief in 1986. He later returned to that role, and then became chief of police for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, serving tribes whose treaty rights were inseparable from the fish and the river. Colleagues remembered that he did not need force to command a room. His authority was steady. He spoke calmly, often with a smile, and people listened.
That steadiness mattered because much of his work concerned things that others preferred to treat as settled. The dams had been built. The river had been changed. Waste had been left behind. Salmon still had to pass through polluted water. Yellowash insisted that these were not only matters of history or policy. They were continuing harms. The Columbia, Nch’i-Wána, was part of Yakama history and identity. The salmon were among the First Foods, served first at feasts and ceremonial meals in recognition of their sacrifice. Safe fish required safe water. Treaty rights, in his telling, included the right to fish without poison.
He was a descendant of the Klickitat Tribe, one of the 14 original signers of the 1855 treaty, and he carried that inheritance with care. He was called on to conduct traditional ceremonies across the region, drawing on his knowledge of language, culture, and oral history. He also carried the Oglala Lakota name Yello-Wash-Tay, given to him by a Lakota elder at Pine Ridge in 1995. He worked in schools, as a counselor and language instructor, and helped young people stay connected to culture, fishing, hunting, and custom. In the mid-1990s, as gang violence troubled tribal lands, he looked beyond enforcement to the loss of rites and identity that had left some young people without firm ground.
His public work stretched outward. He served on museum and university boards, chaired the Willamette Falls Trust, and helped restore the original spelling of “Yakama” to the Yakama Nation, as recorded in the treaty. He cheered for Seattle teams, but also for student-athletes in his own community, where his voice could be heard at school games.
The designation of Bradford Island as a Superfund site in 2022 was one measure of the persistence he had helped sustain. He did not treat it as enough. The work, he said, was for clean, healthy fish that were safe to eat. It was for children and grandchildren, and for those that could not speak for themselves.
“We don’t own this,” he once said. “It belongs to our children. It belongs to our grandchildren. And we’re just taking care of it for them.”
For much of his life, he spoke in that spirit: plainly, firmly, and with a sense of responsibility that extended beyond any office he held.
Banner image: Davis “Yellowash” Washines. Courtesy of the Willamette Falls Trust
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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