The Stz’uminus (Chemainus) First Nation has enacted a blockade that spans its traditional territory in the Gulf Islands of BC. They say they’ve been let down by a recent Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) policy decision to restrict their ability to culture geoducks, a hugely valuable clam species that is already harvested commercially in the area.
“We’re trying to send a message to DFO,” says Ray Gauthier, CEO of the Coast Salish Development Corporation and the man behind the blockade. “If you’re not going to acknowledge our interests… then we’re going to reclaim the area.”
Nobody from DFO was made available speak with VICE, but the agency sent a statement, saying: “Officials are engaged in ongoing discussions with the Stz’uminus to understand their concerns and interest.”
It’s the “ongoing” part that has enraged the First Nation.
Six years ago they applied for permission to conduct a 100-hectare geoduck aquaculture operation in the waters off their reserve near Nanaimo. The undeniably phallic clams grow up to a metre long, and can sell for $50 a kilo to Asian markets.
Band officials saw the lucrative geoduck harvest as a chance to build the local economy and make the reserve more self-sufficient.
“We don’t have our hand out here,” says Gauthier. “We’re not asking for money.”
But the plan stalled. Then, after two years of frustration, the First Nation blockaded commercial operations in Kulleet Bay in 2010, preventing the divers from getting in the water. “The message was, if we can’t have access to the industry, then neither can you,” Gauthier recalls.
They threatened to blockade the bay again the following year, but the commercial geoduck harvesters steered clear. A few weeks ago, the First Nation was given a one-time opportunity to apply to harvest in five hectares. They say it’s not enough. “This new policy that was supposed to address aboriginal interests simply doesn’t,” says Gauthier.
Now they’re blockading much more than just one fishery in just one bay: they’re planning on blocking access to “all vessels including but not limited to commercial fishing vessels, DFO vessels and any non-native civilians and government officials,” within their traditional territory. That territory spans from Active Pass to Gabriola Island, heavily used areas in the Gulf Islands.
Gauthier says the issue is that the government is shirking its duty to consult with First Nations prior to making decisions regarding resources they have the right to use. “It doesn’t mean you have a meeting and it’s all good, he says. “They’re having trouble with the concept.”
That alleged failure to consult has attracted the interest of “10 or 12” other First Nations. Meaning, depending on the outcome, this protest could grow. No confrontations have occurred yet, but Gauthier says the blockade is in full swing.
FALL CITY, Wash. — Washington state’s five steelhead hatcheries are on high alert after someone broke into a facility overnight and released approximately 25,000 juvenile fish into the Snoqualmie River.
State Fish and Wildlife Hatchery managers are concerned it was an act of defiance against a new agreement that sharply curtails the state’s steelhead hatchery program. The agreement resulted from a lawsuit filed by a fish protection group, Wild Fish Conservancy, which accused the State of violating the Endangered Species Act. State Fish and Wildlife Managers agreed to stop planting winter steelhead hatchery fish in all but one river.
This set off a wave of criticism by some sport anglers who eagerly await the steelhead runs each year.
It also left the state with huge numbers of steelhead that could not be released into tributaries of Puget Sound. Whoever struck the Tokul Creek facility on the Snoqualmie appeared to know the hatchery was planning to truck its large inventory of steelhead to the east side of the state where they would be released into lakes that would not allow them to migrate to the Sound.
State Fish and Wildlife Enforcement officers and King County Sheriffs deputies are investigating the break in. Hatchery workers say whoever did it cut the lock off a tall chain link fence, entered the hatchery grounds and pulled the screens that prevented the steelhead from entering the creek and Snoqualmie River.
Private security officers have been hired to patrol the other hatcheries until police figure out if this is an isolated case or part of an organized resistance to the settlement.
AP Photo/The Salt Lake Tribune, Trent Nelson Ryan Bundy, son of the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, rides an ATV into Recapture Canyon north of Blanding, Utah on Saturday, May 10, 2014, in a protest against what demonstrators call the federal government’s overreaching control of public lands. The area has been closed to motorized use since 2007 when an illegal trail was found that cuts through Ancestral Puebloan ruins. The canyon is open to hikers and horseback riders.
ATVs have not been allowed through Recapture Canyon since 2007, but that didn’t stop a group of protesters on Saturday, May 10 from riding the trail—which is full of Native American sacred sites—anyway.
The Bureau of Land Management closed Recapture Canyon in Blanding, Utah to ATVs in 2007 after enthusiasts were caught trying to construct another trail illegally, and in so doing damaged archaeological sites, reports The Salt Lake Tribune.
Saturday’s ride was a demonstration by residents and San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman that they want control of the lands in public hands, a fight that has been going on for eight years. Only eight percent of San Juan County is not managed by the BLM, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Lyman and others who want the canyon reopened to ATVs argue that their families have been using the land for recreation for years.
“My grandfather called that canyon the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. It’s important to our family. To see it as the focal point of a conflict is painful,” Lyman said before riding into the canyon on an ATV, to the Los Angeles Times.
People listen to San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman at Centennial Park in Blanding, Utah on Saturday, May 10, 2014. Lyman organized an ATV protest ride into nearby Recapture Canyon to show that the federal agency isn’t the “supreme authority” and local residents have a right to have their opinions heard. The area has been closed to motorized use since 2007 when an illegal trail was found that cuts through Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites. The canyon is open to hikers and horseback riders. (AP Photo/The Salt Lake Tribune, Trent Nelson)
But there are others who have been in the area for far longer than Lyman and his supporters.
“Since well before the state of Nevada, the federal government, and farmers and ranchers occupied the area, tribal nations—including the Las Vegas Band of Paiute, Moapa Band of Paiute, and other tribes in the area—have respected and honored the Utah Canyon as a sacred place,” the National Congress of American Indians said in a statement opposing the ride. “Native peoples believe the canyon contains many markers from their ancestors. An action like this is no more appropriate than a similar activity at a church or other place of worship.”
This April 9, 2011 photo shows an Anasazi ruin in the cliff close to “Lem’s Trail” in Recapture Canyon, near Blanding, Utah. A San Juan County commissioner tired of waiting for the Bureau of Land Management led an ATV ride into the canyon May 10, 2014. (AP Photo/The Salt Lake Tribune, Scott Sommerdorf)
A number of other groups have also spoken out against the ride.
“We believe the [Bureau of Land Management] should be providing more law enforcement to protect and preserve the cultural and natural resources for which it is the nation’s caretaker, and not providing more motorized access to areas containing cultural and natural resources that it has demonstrated that it is unable to protect,” Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma, preservation director for the Hopi, wrote in a May 1 letter to the BLM.
“It is sad that irreplaceable treasures of importance to all Americans would be sacrificed on the altar of anti-government fervor,” Jerry Spangler, executive director of the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance, said in a statement. “It is worse that protesters would be so blinded to their own insensitivity as to what others consider to be sacred treasures of their past.”
Willie Grayeyes, chair of a nonprofit that lobbies to protect Navajo land, was offended not only by the lack of sensitivity of the riders for Native culture, but also because a veterans retreat had to be relocated because of the protest.
“This opportunity for healing, to help these men and women has been postponed due to the threats of illegal activities by San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman on behalf of those who desire to drive their ATV toys over the sacred ruins of others,” wrote Grayeyes in a letter to The Salt Lake Tribune.
Many are comparing this recent protest to the exploits of private rancher Cliven Bundy in Nevada, whose cattle graze for free on U.S. government land.
File photo of Billy Frank Jr. in 2011 at a ceremony for the removal of dams on Washington state’s Elwha River. The well known fishing rights activist died Monday at the age of 83. | credit: Katie Campbell / Earthfix
Associated Press
SHELTON, Wash. (AP) — Thousands of people attended a funeral service for Billy Frank Jr., the Nisqually tribal elder who fought for Indian fishing rights in Washington state and was an advocate for salmon habitat.
Frank died May 5. He was 83.
Frank figured prominently in Northwest fish-in demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s that eventually led to sweeping changes in how Washington manages salmon and other fish.
Among those at the service Sunday at the Little Creek Casino Resort’s Event Center were Gov. Jay Inslee and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. Inslee said Frank was a state and national leader and that when he spoke, “people listened.”
About 6,000 people attended the service, said Little Creek spokesman Greg Fritz. Crowds also watched the service on jumbo screens from a large tent and other areas of the resort.
The service featured traditional Indian Shaker Church prayers, a presentation of a folded U.S. flag for the family — Frank had served in the Marine Corps — and remarks from more than 20 tribal leaders and elected officials.
“I often said that no one cared more about salmon and the planet Earth than our friend Billy,” said former U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks.
Cantwell described him as “a legend that has walked among us,” comparing his legacy to those of Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.
Frank was arrested more than 50 times for “illegal fishing” during the protests that came to be known as the fish wars. Patterned after the sit-ins of the civil rights movement, the campaign was part of larger nationwide movement in the 1960s for American Indian rights.
In 1992, Frank was awarded the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, whose winners include former President Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu.
Swinomish tribal chairman Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians, described Frank as a forceful teacher and a truth teller.
“Billy treated everyone with respect, even when we failed to live up to his expectations,” Cladoosby said.
Native Americans have long had a close relationship with their lands and waters—sacred places and resources that define their lives. The disruptions wrought by a warming climate are forcing abrupt cultural changes on peoples with a long reliance on a once stable ecosystem.
Among the special issues affecting tribes, the 2013 Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwestern United States (SWCA) cited “cultural and religious impacts, impacts to sustainable livelihoods, population emigration, and threats to the feasibility of living conditions.”
The Hoh, Quinault, Quileute and Makah nations inhabit low-lying land along the west coast of Washington State, and face similar threats as rising sea levels and the other impacts of climate disruptions endanger their villages.
”The area is relatively vulnerable,” Patty Glick, senior global warming specialist and author of a 2007 National Wildlife Federation report, ”Sea Level Rise and Coastal Habitats in the Pacific Northwest,” told Indian Country Today Media Network in 2008. Higher wave action, wave force and destructive storm surges will increase in the coming decade, Glick said, and destructive storms such as the hurricanes will become more frequent.
The Hoh road to the beach has washed out, and the ocean has destroyed the homes that once lined their beach. In Quinault, a passing storm tossed gigantic logs onto the school grounds. These events intensified both tribes’ agenda to get higher ground returned from the Olympic National Park beyond their tiny reservation boundaries.
The Makah and the Quinault nations have large reservations, but their seaside villages are at risk, as evidenced by the recent state of emergency at Quinault headquarters in Taholah, which faced an increasingly dangerous situation with sea level rise and intensified storms, which breached a sea wall causing serious damage.
According to Climate Central, which uses data from NOAA and the USGS, there is a greater than one in six chance that sea level rise, plus storm surge, plus tides, will raise sea levels by more than one foot before 2020 along the coastline and in the Puget Sound region, where another eight tribes are situated. The Shoalwater Bay sits nearly out to sea in southwest Washington.
Rising sea levels will affect Washington’s shoreline habitat for vegetation, animals, birds and fish, according to Glick’s report. Marshes, swamps and tidal flats will be significantly affected, and salmon and shellfish habitat are expected to be significantly affected, Glick reported.
Along Alaska’s northwestern coast, melting sea ice has reduced natural coastal protection. Increased coastal erosion is causing some shorelines to retreat at rates averaging tens of feet per year. In Shishmaref and Kivalina, Alaska, severe erosion has caused homes to collapse into the sea, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, forcing these Alaska Native Village populations to relocate in order to protect lives and property.
Moving inland, “Climate change is slowly tipping the balance in favor of more frequent, longer lasting, and more intense droughts,” states the SWCA. The Navajo Nation is experiencing annual average temperatures warmer than the 1904-2011 average, cites a climate report released in March 2014. Latest figures show their drought continuing beyond 2010 studies into July 2013, indicating the drought continues.
Perhaps among the worst of those impacts are the runaway sand dunes it has unleashed, which extend over one-third the 27,000-square-mile reservation. During the 1996-2009 drought period the extent of dune fields increased by some 70%. These dunes are moving at rates of approximately 35 meters per year, covering houses, burying cars and snarling traffic, degrading grazing and agricultural lands, contributing to the loss of rare and endangered native plants, and when they occur contributing to poor air quality, a serious health concern for many of the reservation’s 173,667 residents.
Intertribal organizations around the U.S. are recognizing climate change and variability as a significant factor that can impact tribal resources, livelihoods, and cultures, cites the latest tribal climate report. The National Tribal Air Association notes that “perhaps no other community of people has experienced the adverse impacts of climate change more than the nation’s Indian tribes.”
The struggle will soon come to more tribes. Sea level rise projections do not bode well and may already be a cause of concern for the tribes along Louisiana’s Gulf of Mexico—the United Houma Nation, the Atakapa-Ishak Nation, Pointe-au-Chien Tribe, and the Biloxi-Chitimacha’s Isle de Jean Charles Band, Grand Caillou/Dulac Band and Bayou Lafourche Band. In Florida—the Miccosukee, and some locations of the Seminole Indian Reservations. Ocean residing tribal nations in California include the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla, Cahto, Chumash, Hoopa, Karok, Kumeyaay, Luiseño Bands of Indians, Maidu, Miwok, and some bands of the Pomo Nation. Some are more at risk than others.
Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee says Washington will likely adopt a California-style pollution limit on gasoline and other transportation fuels.
Inslee recently ordered a feasibility and cost study of a low-carbon fuel standard.
For months now, Washington Republicans have been predicting that Inslee will use his executive powers to enact a low-carbon fuel standard. Inslee acknowledges he’s looking at ways to do this without legislative approval. Either way he thinks Washington is poised to move forward.
“I think it’s a probability that we will be able to fashion a low-carbon fuel standard that will be effective for the state of Washington, both for carbon pollution and from a cost-containment standpoint,” Inslee said during an appearance on Seattle Channel’s “Civic Cocktail” program. “From what I know today, I think it’s a likelihood we will succeed in fashioning that, but I want reiterate we’re going to have a very sophisticated, thorough evaluation of that before I make that ultimate decision.”
A low-carbon fuel standard is basically a requirement that vehicle fuels be blended with less carbon-intensive alternative fuels. For instance, California’s standard requires a 10 percent reduction in carbon intensity of gas and diesel over 10 years.
Inslee has promised a “deliberative, public process” as he pursues carbon pollution reduction measures in Washington. Legislative Republicans oppose a fuel standard and say it could drive up the cost of gasoline.
source: Waddington’s, via theglobeandmail.com Lot 22 – ‘Northern Plains Indian Child’s Tunic, early 19th century fringed and with beaded collar, showing signs of central bullet trauma.’
When the Toronto-based Waddington’s auction house held a pre-show viewing of items to be sold during its auction of the late William Jamieson’s collection, a blood-stained “Northern Plains Indian Child’s Tunic,” complete with a bullet hole, was among the items. An outpouring of anger ensued, and Waddington’s soon pulled the item from the listing.
Responding to the outcry, Waddington’s President Duncan McLean told the Globe and Mail, “We don’t want to upset anybody, so are withdrawing the item and returning it to the consignor.”
Though Waddington’s responded by removing the item to be auctioned, several more native artifacts were auctioned from April 29th to May 1st, including a Pair of Lakota moccasins said to have been owned by Sitting Bull, which sold for $9,000, a Sioux Saddle blanket and pouch, which sold for $3,120, an Iroquois False Face Society Mask, which sold for $2,640, and more.
The child’s tunic was of interest to Jamieson because the garment had a bullet hole in the center of the chest and visible blood stains. Jamieson was known in the rare-item collectors world as the “Master of the Macabre” — a label backed up by his collection of items on auction at Waddington’s. In addition to the Native artifacts, other items listed at Waddington’s included an electric chair, a bone model of a guillotine, a medieval wrought-iron ‘Shame’ mask and more.
The items on sale at Waddington’s also caused an outcry from First Nations communities in Canada. In particular, the Haudenosaunee Council forbids the sale or exhibition of medicine masks.
Hayden King, a member of Beausoleil First Nation who teaches history and native politics at Ryerson University, told the Globe and Mail, “I’m generally of the belief that they should be returned. Some government agencies and museums agree, but the market includes many players who do not.”
“It all reflects this apparently endemic belief that native people are extinct, so we can do whatever we want with their stuff,” said King.
Sean Quinn, Waddington’s decorative arts specialist who appraised the tunic to be worth $2,000 to $3,000 told the Globe and Mail, “It was very, very difficult for me to catalogue [the tunic], because of its relation to a terrible period of history, the death of any child is horrific.”
When Jamieson died in 2011, his fiancée Jessica Phillips took to selling his collection, which also included authentic shrunken heads and necklaces made of human teeth. Though she says she agrees the tunic is a piece of history, it is up to the executors to decide where it ends up.
Nisqually elder Billy Frank Jr., a lifelong fisherman who led the battle for Treaty Indian fishing, speaks to an audience of tribal leaders past and present, activists, but most of all friends, remembering the Boldt Decision with stories this last February. Photos of “The Old Swede,” as Billy called Judge Boldt, hung as a backdrop in memory of his momentous decision. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News
In the early hours of May 5, after a lifetime dedicated to protecting treaty rights of northwest tribes, Billy Frank of Nisqually dies at age 83. He is known for championing the battle for Treaty Indian fishing in the 1960s and 1970s, which culminated with the momentous Boldt Decision. He remained ceaseless in his work as chairman at the Northwest Indian Fish Commission (NWIFC) to protect and preserve the salmon resource in all aspects, continuing his work until his final day. The nation mourns the loss of a great man.
In a White House press release, President Barack Obama said this, “I was saddened to learn of the passing of Billy Frank Jr. Today, thanks to his courage and determined effort, our resources are better protected, and more tribes are able to enjoy the rights preserved for them more than a century ago. His passion on the issue of climate change should serve as an inspiration to us all. I extend my deepest sympathies to the Nisqually Indian Tribe, and to Billy’s family, and to his many friends who so greatly admired him.”
Tulalip Tribal Chairman Herman Williams Sr. said, “He’s always been that symbol of our relationship with the state and federal government. He’s the one out in front, leading the fight.”
As serious and determined as he was, Billy was exceedingly humble. He was a man of the people. Wherever he went, he seemed to know everyone, and was always thrilled to see his friends and relatives. He spoke frankly, and was never afraid to speak his mind and say what he knew to be right.
Terry Williams, who worked closely with Frank through the Tulalip Natural Resources Department, said, “Billy had a saying I just loved. He’d say, ‘You have got to tell the truth and recognize the truth.’ That’s what we have faced all our lives.”
Billy Frank spoke from the heart with passion and tenacity. He was revered for his words and what they accomplished.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, who sits on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, told the Everett Herald, “Billy Frank was a legend among men. Today, America lost a civil rights leader whose impact will be felt for generations to come.”
His death comes in the middle of a crucial discussion in Washington State that will change the way salmon are protected. The Fish Consumption Rate and the pollution rate are issues to be decided this year. If he were here, his words would be to stay the course. The battle doesn’t stop with the rights, it continues for the survival of the resource.
February 12 of this year marked 40 years since the Boldt Decision. At a celebration at the Squaxin Island resort remembering the battle for Treaty Indian fishing, Frank highlighted how the future of tribes is intertwined with the future of the environment. He said, “We have to protect the salmon. Look at California. The tribes there have the first water right, but there is no water. We have a right to the salmon, but if there are none, what kind of right we got?”
Tulalip Chairman Williams agrees that the fight must continue, but people have to pick up where the old leaders have left off.
“Where will the next Billy Frank rise from?” he said.
Andrew Gobin is a reporter with the See-Yaht-Sub, a publication of the Tulalip Tribes Communications Department. Email: agobin@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov Phone: (360) 716.4188
Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press The dried-out bed of Lake Mendocino, California, in February 2014. The state is gripped in its worst drought in recorded history, and a new study has found that climate change is to blame.
It is no secret that American Indian communities are at the forefront of climate change. From low-lying nations facing sea-level rise, to villages located on melting permafrost, to drought-plagued lands, these are some of the more dramatic examples of American Indian tribes that are taking a direct hit from extreme weather events likely linked to climate change. Although several tribes, including some on this list, are already adapting or laying out plans for the inevitable, this list highlights those that are seeing dramatic, tangible changes.
The Hoh road to the beach has washed out, and the ocean has destroyed the homes that once lined their beach. In 2009, Hog tribal officials told a U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., that they face constant threats from floods and the Hoh River.
Seaside villages up and down the Pacific coast are at risk, from rising sea levels. Some stark evidence of this came with the recent state of emergency declared by the Quinault Indian Nation. Earlier this year, its headquarters in Taholah faced an increasingly dangerous situation with sea level rise and intensified storms. The situation came to a head with the breach of a sea wall that caused serious damage.
The Quileute are squeezed on a sliver of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Olympic National Forest. Rising sea levels and a river’s changing course through the reservation has exacerbated not only fears of flooding, but also of what could happen if an earthquake occurred powerful enough to wreak the damage that was seen in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. Just a couple of years ago a tribal school attended by 80 children was just a foot above sea level. A powerful storm surge threw car-sized wood trunks into their schoolyard. But now the Quileute are relocating an entire village.
Along Alaska’s northwestern coast, melting sea ice has reduced natural coastal protection. Increased coastal erosion is causing some shorelines to retreat at rates averaging tens of feet per year. In Shishmaref and Kivalina, Alaska, severe erosion has caused homes to collapse into the sea, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, forcing these Alaska Native Village populations to relocate in order to protect lives and property.
“Climate change is slowly tipping the balance in favor of more frequent, longer lasting, and more intense droughts,” states the 2013 Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwestern United States (SWCA). The Navajo Nation is a prime example, with a drought that pre-dates the one that has crippled parts of California. From runaway sand dunes, to dying horses, the Navajo Nation is suffering from a lack of water.
The Agua Caliente, hit last year by wildfires, got the double whammy after the charred remains of its Indian Canyons became prone to flash flooding, forcing their closure for several months.
Sea level rise is washing away the land of this small tribe in Louisiana. The Biloxi-Chitimacha moved to the Isle de Jean Charles on the Gulf Coast in the 1840s and made a way of life there. The island—along with the rest of Louisiana’s coastline—is disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico at a speed almost visible to the eye, reported Truthout in April.
“There was land on both sides of the bayou,” tribal member Chris Chaisson told Truthout. “Now, it’s just open sea.”
While the tribe faces a multitude of problems, sea level rise remains at the root of the tribe’s most pressing.
8. Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation
An April 2014 study by scientists at the Utah State University has linked this year’s California drought to global warming, the Associated Press reported. That brings us to two tribal nations that issued drought state of emergencies. The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation declared a drought emergency in April, calling upon its members to cut their water use by 20 percent.
Tribal chairman Marshall McKay put out a statement that said, “The drought threatens how we eat and drink everyday, how we manage our businesses, how we protect our environment and how we plan for our families’ futures.”
The Hoopa Valley Tribe had declared a drought state of emergency two months before the Yocha Dehe, in February. The Hoopa began formulating a drought mitigation plan that would plan out water use for three to five years, with measures such as storing water from the mountains that is currently not being tapped, beefing up fire prevention initiatives and shoring up backup water systems.
Ellen M. Banner / Seattle Times Billy Frank Jr., pictured in 2007, was praised for his courage.
Billy Frank Jr., the charismatic leader in the successful battle over fish, was praised by President Obama: “Thanks to his courage and determined effort, our resources are better protected, and more tribes are able to enjoy the rights preserved for them more than a century ago.”
He was beaten and clubbed and tear-gassed and jailed, watched police slam friends in the back with brass knuckles and saw his teenage niece punched in the face by a game agent.
Billy Frank Jr.’s decades-long battle with authorities over tribal rights to catch fish — beginning with his arrest at 14 in 1945 for filling his net with steelhead and chum — propelled him to the forefront of one of the Northwest’s greatest civil-rights movements.
And when a federal judge in 1974 affirmed Indian treaty rights to half the region’s salmon, the angry young Nisqually fisherman who’d suffered so much violence at the hands of the state didn’t simply head back to the river.
Instead, Mr. Frank transformed himself into a charismatic statesman for tribal rights, traveling the country and the world and becoming one of the nation’s most influential Native Americans.
Billy Frank Jr. — smart and generous, befriended by senators, called upon by presidents and looked up to by a generation of young tribal leaders — died Monday at home. He was 83.
“He’ll stand with all the great Indian names of the past two centuries in the Pacific Northwest and across the nation,” said his longtime friend Hank Adams, who first met Mr. Frank at the height of the region’s salmon wars in the 1960s. “His is a name that will stand out in the future for all he’s given to Indians and the world.”
His son, Willie Frank, said, “He wanted all these tribes to understand that if they worked together we could do anything.”
In the latter half of his life, Mr. Frank spent decades fighting in Olympia and Washington, D.C., to protect forests and salmon streams from excessive timber harvest and development. He battled in court, in endless public meetings and in private conversations with anyone who would listen.
He used a soft voice, strong handshake, hearty hugs and stories laced with profanity to disarm all he encountered, earning the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1992.
President Obama on Monday hailed Mr. Frank’s accomplishments.
“Today, thanks to his courage and determined effort, our resources are better protected, and more tribes are able to enjoy the rights preserved for them more than a century ago,” he said in a statement.
Gov. Jay Inslee called Mr. Frank not just a tribal leader but a state leader.
“We can’t overstate how long lasting his legacy will be,” Inslee said in an interview. “He pushed the state when he needed to push the state. And he reminded the state when it needed reminding. His legacy is going to be with us for generations. My grandkids are going to benefit from his work.”
Mr. Frank was still such a force in Washington tribal and political circles, and his father had lived to be over 100, that many were caught off-guard by his death.
“We are all stunned and not prepared for this,” said W. Ron Allen, Jamestown S’Klallam tribal chairman, who had worked with Mr. Frank since the early 1980s. “He was bigger than life. It’s a very sad day for all of us.”
From the beginning, all Mr. Frank really wanted to do was catch fish, as his father had since before Washington became a state.
But despite 19th-century treaties promising Northwest tribes shared access to salmon and steelhead, as stocks plummeted early in the 20th century, state game agents began harassing and arresting tribal fishermen, including Mr. Frank’s father.
“To understand Billy, you really need to understand his dad,” said friend Tom Keefe, who first met Mr. Frank when Keefe was an aide to U.S. Sen. Warren Magnuson in the late 1970s.
“Billy’s dad was really the guy who told Billy, ‘You stick with this river and if the state interferes, let them throw you in jail, but when you get back out, go back to fishing.’ ”
Mr. Frank did, again and again and again, even after a stint in the U.S. Marines in the 1950s and while working as a utility lineman in the 1960s.
By 1962, harassment was turning exceptionally violent, with state game agents staging night raids with billy clubs and tribal fishermen fighting back with rocks.
In 1964, Adams, an Assiniboine-Sioux, brought actor Marlon Brando to the Northwest to bring attention to native “fish-ins,” expecting him to fish illegally in solidarity with the tribes at Frank’s Landing near the mouth of the Nisqually. He got TV newsman Charles Kuralt to interview Mr. Frank’s father, but Brando ultimately was arrested on the banks of the Puyallup River. It would be another decade before U.S. District Judge George Boldt affirmed the tribes’ right to half of the fish harvest — and the nation’s obligation to honor the old treaties. In 1993, another court decision extended that affirmation to the harvest of shellfish.
Ann Yow / The Seattle Times, 1983 Billy Frank Jr. is shown on the Nisqually River in 1983 when he was chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, a position he held for more than 30 years.
By 1974, Mr. Frank was angry and drinking heavily. His friends had been trying to convince him he could become a great leader — if he could get past the alcohol. He entered treatment the same year Boldt made his decision and stayed sober for 40 years. Friends said it helped set the course for the rest of his life.
When Keefe introduced Mr. Frank to Magnuson, the two hit it off right away. When Magnuson lost his re-election bid, Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye took Mr. Frank under his wing. The two became very close. “Even if you didn’t agree with him, it was hard to come away not liking him,” Keefe said.
Steve Robinson, who worked side-by-side with Mr. Frank for 30 years, serving as his spokesman and writer starting in the mid-1980s, said Mr. Frank would never hesitate to do battle over what he believed. But he also had the instincts and skills of a diplomat.
“We would have visitors from Russia, Asia, South America, and he’d delight them all,” Robinson said. “He’d travel to Barrow or Kamchatka and kids would line up to see him. … He knew no strangers and hugged everybody.”
Kyle Taylor Lucas, a Tulalip Indian and former director of the Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs, recalled Mr. Frank’s deft diplomacy during the scores of oft-heated meetings to negotiate Washington’s new timber harvest rules during the mid-1980s.
But Lucas noted Mr. Frank’s contributions extended far beyond fishing rights.
“I think the tendency is to compartmentalize what Billy achieved in terms of fishing,” she said. “But in fact, what he did was help to cement treaty rights for all of Indian Country, that go to health and education and so many facets of what it means to be Native American.”
Added Lucas, “When I think of him, I think of a peaceful warrior. He was so humble, he was so kind and he treated everyone with respect and dignity.”
But Mr. Frank was still a fighter to the very end, said his son, who woke his father around 6 a.m. Monday to get ready for another meeting.
Mr. Frank showered and dressed, but when Willie went back to check in, his father was hunched over in bed. The cause of death was unknown.
“I asked him every day if he was feeling good, but he would never tell me if he wasn’t,” Willie said. “He wouldn’t want people to worry about him.”
Mr. Frank was predeceased by his first and second wives, Norma and Sue Crystal, and by his daughter, Maureen. He is survived by three sons, James “Sugar,” Tanu and Willie Frank.
Services are pending.
Seattle Times staff reporter Lewis Kamb contributed to this report.
