• As a tribal member and as an attorney, what is the significance of this case?

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• How is it significant to the Nez Perce specifically?

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• Does this case have any significance legally, as in setting some precedent?

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• The Deputy Attorney General [Clive Strong] mentioned that the purpose of Congress opening up land to non-Indian settlers was to let them be able to use the water to settle the land, and if tribal rights of certain instream flows are affected, then that would defeat in his words that objective.

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• How important are the off-reservation claims?

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• What do you see as a lawyer as the main difference between federal reserved water rights law and the doctrine of prior appropriation?

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• And the issue of time immemorial is different as well . . .

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• Can you describe the importance of the Winters case?

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• And Winans?

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• There never has really been a case that looked at not just the right to fish off-reservation and have access like in Winans, but the right for the tribe to have this water to take care of the this resource.

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• Is there case law that puts the Nez Perce on solid ground to be asking for these rights off-reservation for the protection of fish?

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• Judge Wood's decision says, the tribe has the right to fish the same as any other citizen but does not have a right to the conditions nor the volume of water that existed at the time the reservation was created.

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• Many of these negotiations have been going on for a long time. I would assume it is in everyone's best interest to have this thing settled.

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• Is there anything else you feel is important to say?

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• Would the tribe settle for some sort of compensation, some sort of recognition that something was taken from them?

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• It wasn't too long ago that the tribe wouldn't have been able to mount an effort like this; it couldn't have been done even 20 years ago.

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