Chief William Yallup Jr. is a respected elder and river chief. His father is Chief William Yallup, Sr. and he is a direct descendant of treaty signer Wish-Och-Kmpits, and can trace relations to the chiefs Kamiakin and Skloom who were present for the treaty signing. Bill Yallup Jr is a keeper of oral history related to the treaties and strong advocate for treaty related rights.

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“Well just travelers going through. I think pretty much they thought was they were just venturing through, you know. They didn’t have much, they were not a trade group and they weren’t carrying a lot of things to trade, they just had a few things. Pretty much just kind of made up things. Like, ‘oh hey we’ve got a extra one of these, oh hey you want to trade for that?’ [Laughs] People were going like, ‘oh we already have one of those, thank you.’ [Laughs] They were explaining, they tried to explain, it’s hard to understand that. It’s like if a flying saucer landed here and somebody got out and they had a map, they were looking around, like, ‘oh where’s this galaxy at, you know where we could find this galaxy?’ Well we just bought this whole half of the universe and we’re trying to find this galaxy and this star group right here. We bought all that and we want it now. We own this, what’s this place called, this planet here? We own this place too. You know? And they’re like, yeah, right, sure you did. You bought this planet, from who? I never got payment for it, did you get payment for it? Did you negotiate the sale? “