The Yakama are a Native American tribe with nearly 10,851 members, based primarily in eastern Washington state.

Their Yakama Indian Reservation, along the Yakima River, covers an area of approximately 1.2 million acres (5,260 km2).

Many Yakama people engage in ceremonial, subsistence, and commercial fishing for salmon, steelhead, and sturgeon in the Columbia River and its tributaries, including within land ceded by the tribe to the United States.

[citation needed] Their right to fish in their former territory is protected by treaties and was re-affirmed in late 20th-century court cases such as United States v. Washington (known as the Boldt Decision, 1974) and United States v. Oregon (Sohappy v. Smith, 1969), though more than a century of U.S. industrial pollution has contaminated these waterways with dangerous levels of toxic chemicals.

Since the late 20th century, some native speakers have argued to use the traditional Yakama name for this language, Ichishkíin Sínwit.