Samish proved in a hearing that Judge Boldt's decision against these tribes was based on incomplete and erroneous evidence." This would argue for allowing an appeal of the decision. In the mid-1980s, the BIA concluded that since the Duwamish Indians have no land, they cannot be recognized as a "tribe". In June 1988, 72 descendants of Washington settlers reversed their ancestors and petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs in support of federal recognition of the Duwamish Tribe. The signers were members of the Pioneer Association of the State of Washington, which maintains Pioneer Hall in Madison Park as a meeting hall and archive of pioneer records. In the mid-1990s, proposals were made in Congress to extinguish all further efforts by unrecognized tribes to gain recognition. These were defeated. Success or continued failure tends to drift with the national mood and leanings of Congress. Effectively, recognition turns upon the mood of Congress with respect to honoring treaties with Native Americans. Occasionally tribes succeed, such as with the Boldt Decision in 1974. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) denied recognition in 1996. The Tribe then assembled additional evidence for its active existence through the decade in question. Evidence was assembled from Catholic church records, news reports, oral histories, and further tracing of bloodlines. Ken Tollefsen, a retired Seattle Pacific University anthropologist, helped assemble the additional data. This new evidence prompted the Bureau of Indian Affairs to reverse its 1996 decision, and the Tribe briefly won federal recognition in January 2001, in the waning days of the Clinton administration. However, the ruling was voided in 2002 by the Bush administration, citing procedural errors. The Tulalips have opposed efforts by local unrecognized tribes, contending that the Tulalip Tribe (a post-Treaty construct) are the heirs of an amalgam of unrecognized tribes. This is also the case where it comes to the Muckleshoots. Such potentially adversarial intentions notwithstanding, the Duwamish Tribe pursued litigation for the purpose of gaining tribal recognition. In March 2013 Federal Judge John C. Coughenour granted summary judgement in Hansen et al vs. Salazar ordering the Department of Interior to reconsider or explain the denial of the Tribe's petition. In July 2015 the BIA responded with a conclusion that the Duwamish do not meet the criteria for federal recognition. In May 2022, the Duwamish sued Department of Interior attempting to gain federal recognition. Recent history Unlike many other Northwest Coast indigenous groups, many