"A stirring human document for these times" Empty Nets is a disturbing history of broken promises and justice delayed. It chronicles a native peoples' fight to maintain their livelihood and culture in the face of an indifferent federal bureaucracy and hostile state governments. In 1939, the U.S. government promised to provide Columbia River Indians with replacements for traditional fishing sites flooded in the backwater of the Bonneville Dam. Roberta Ulrich recounts the Indians' sixty-year struggle, in the courts and on the river, to persuade the government to keep its promise. "Masterfully researched and lucidly told, 'Empty Nets' gives a fresh, in-depth account of the chicanery and environmental degradation that have confronted Indian fishermen on the Columbia River over the past half century. Roberta Ulrich's book is must reading for all who care about the critical events that have shaped the modern Pacific Northwest." -- Charles Wilkinson, Moses Lasky Professor of Law at the University of Colorado, and author of Crossing the Next Meridian and Fire on the Plateau "Roberta Ulrich, a long-experienced and highly credible journalist, has written an important and powerful book that stands as a metaphor for our continued injustices to Indians and must shame us all. It is a stirring human document for these times, and I recommend it heartily." -- Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., author of The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest and A Walk Toward Oregon Used Book in Good Condition