Street roots., January 01, 2016, Page 11, Image 11

Commentary
Page 12
Street Roots • Jan. 1-7, 2016
A Giant Walks On
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
“I don’t believe in magic. I believe in the sun and
the stars, the water, the tides, the floods, the owls, the
hawks flying, the river running, the wind talking.
They’re measurements. They tell us how healthy things
are. How healthy we are. Because we and they are the
same. That’s what I believe in.” - Billy Frank Jr.
On May 5, 2014, one of the most respected
Native American leaders of the 20th century passed
away.
Bom in Nisqually, Wash., on March 9,1931, Billy
Frank Jr. was a fisherman, life-long warrior, and
one-time U.S. Marine who spent a lifetime fighting
for his people and their home. Branded a “renegade
fisherman” By government agencies, Frank Jr.
helped to transform the relationship of tribes with
the state of Washington, winning them an essential
role in the self-management of their fisheries and in
the broader co-management of the environment As
a result of his successful work in Washington, Frank
Jr. became an international symbol of indigenous
self-determination, and used that fame to bring vital
support to the Chippewa in Wisconsin during their
fishing rights struggle, and to document the
struggles of Native Alaskan villages after the Exxon-
Váldez oil spill.
Two months ago, President Barack Obama
awarded Frank Jr. the Presidential Medal of
Freedom. This topped off a long list of awards and
recognitions he had received in his lifetime,
including the American Indian Visionary Award, the
Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Service
Award, and the Albert Schweitzer Prize for
Humanitarianism. For his work hosting the film
series, “This Is Indian Country,” he also won the
Northwest Regional Emmy Award.
Former Nisqually chairwoman Zelma McCloud
has compared Frank Jr. to the great Chief Leschi,
who once laid siege to the city of Seattle. Others
have compared him to Martin Luther King Jr. and
Nelson Mandela, who waged their own campaigns
against white supremacy.
In the beginning, Frank Jr. did not fit the typical
profile of someone who would earn so many
honors. “I wasn’t a policy guy,” he once explained.
“I was a getting arrested guy.” Over the course of
his life Frank Jr. was spied on, spat on, shot at,
beaten, arrested more than 50 times, and had his
property repeatedly stolen by state officials to
prevent him from fishing. One of his closest friends,
Hank Adams, was even shot in the stomach while
napping along the Nisqually River in 1971. Adams
survived after undergoing emergency surgery, and
went on to play a critical role in several fishing
rights lawsuits and eco-management agreements, as
well as the formation of the Northwest Indian
Fisheries Commission, which Frank Jr. chaired from
1981 to 2014.
“Billy and I were the prime negotiators,” Adams
explains.
Frank Jr. inherited much of his personality from
his father, Willie Frank Sr.; both were respected
leaders of the Nisqually and spent their lives
fighting for fishing rights.
As a young man Frank Sr. had also attended a
boarding school, where he was pressured to shed
his culture to achieve entry into paradise. “The
religion never made much sense to Willie,” wrote
biographer Trova Heffernan. “He already lived in
*
paradise. The mountain fed
the river. The river and the
land fed his people.”
“He was a lifelong fighter
for Nisqually rights,” said
Adams. Despite being in his
80s, he was out in a canoe
with the comedian and civil
rights activist Dick Gregory
in 1966, who later went on a
hunger strike behind bars to
draw attention to treaty
rights. At 103 years old,
Frank Sr. was also the key
witness in a momentous
Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission hearing on the
re-licensing of Nisqually
River dams.
Frank Jr.’s patience and
dedication were famous for
winning over opponents,
including the legendary
Sen. Warren Magnuson
(D-Wash.) - a friendship
that became key in passing
groundbreaking legislation like the Northwest
Power Act. It also sunk the career of others, like
the notorious “Indian fighter” Slade Gorton.
Despite everything, Frank Jr. maintained a
sweetness and friendliness to everyone - even to
those who tried to make him an enemy. According
to Adams, Frank Jr. got this sense of cooperation
from his mother, Angeline Frank. “His mom was
the principle carrier of the good neighbor
principle,” Adams said. “She instilled it on him -
everyone’s your neighbor. You’ve gotta always be a
good neighbor.”
Battles at Frank’s Landing
Frank Jr. discovered early that he would not be
able to carry on his family’s traditions without a
fight. He was arrested at age 14 for fishing on his
family’s property along the Nisqually River - a six-
acre piece of land called Frank’s Landing. Frank Sr.
had used compensation money from the U.S.
government to purchase the land after his original
land - along with most of the Nisqually reservation
- was seized by the army in the build-up to World
War I. The land became a crucial sanctuary to
native fishermen, and the center of gravity in the
growing fishing rights struggle that took shape in
the 1960s.
“People who come into Frank’s Landing would
gain strength to take into the world,” recalled
Adams.
When Adams became the head of the Survival Of
American Indians Association, the group decided to
adopt tactics from the Civil Rights Movement,
holding what they called “fish-ins” to demonstrate
against racist law enforcement that obstructed then-
access to traditional foods. As in the South,
recalcitrant state governments in the Northwest
were sicking the police on people of color, and
claiming that federal protections for non-whites
could not constrain them.
At one infamous fish-in on Oct. 13,1965, the
people of Frank’s Landing managed to capture
public attention across the country, and produced a
sense of confusion and shock for people in the
Northwest.
1 ” ' \
BY STEPHYN QUIRKE
■■
A Tribute to Nisqually Hero Billy Frank Jr.
With news cameras rolling, two fishermen
lowered their net into the Nisqually River in front
of a small crowd of natives and a larger crowd of
journalists. State wardens hiding behind bushes on
the other side of the river suddenly took off in
three powerboats and rammed the native canoe
without warning. The Native canoe was mostly
filled with newspaper men and children under 10.
Frank Jr.’s niece Alison Bridges, who was 13 at
the time, recalled "... this game warden, he grabbed
me. by the hair and he started to slam my head into
the log ... So my sister was fighting with him ... and
we got up to the cars and they were arresting my
mom ... They were hitting my dad in the back with
those brass knuckles.... They were clubbing him
and hitting him ... One of the game wardens turned
around and he just punched my sister in the face ...
the blood was just spurting out.”
One bystander summarized, “I think I’ll go home
and throw up.”
Just six days before the infamous fish-in, Frank
Jr. and his brother-in-law A1 Bridges had been
rammed without warning and nearly drowned in the
Nisqually River. “Those bastards rammed us at full
speed, and knocked us clean over,” Frank Jr. later
explained. “We had our hip boots on and it was
harder’n hell to swim. I honestly thought I was
going to drown.”
Frank Jr. and his friends were labeled
“renegades” for claiming that states had no
authority to manage Indian fishing - particularly
fishing off the reservation at traditional fishing
sites. This was an irritation for state officials, and
for the white fishermen who saw no point in
sharing. But under a strict reading of the treaties it
was hard to dispute - the documents contained no
language about regulating native fishing, and under
the Winans ruling of 1905, judges must analyze
treaties the way tribal signatories would have
understood them.
After Frank Jr. and five other fishermen were
arrested in March 1964, the resulting legal dispute
went to the U.S. Supreme Court three times in a
case called the Puyallup Trilogy.
See B ILLY FRAN K JR., page 13