Editor’s Note: Whatcom Watch has entered a cooperative agreement with Salish Current. When possible, we will share each other’s content. Salish Current, an online-only news organization, covers the North Sound area.
Whatcom Watch first starting printing “Being Frank” — written by Billy Frank Jr. — with the April 2004 issue and continued running his column until May 2009, when The Bellingham Herald starting printing it. We started offering it again in September 2013 when the Herald abandoned it and have been printing it ever since for a grand total of 18 years. Billy Frank Jr. passed away in June of 2014. Lorraine Loomis took over the column until her passing in August 2021. Ed Johnstone — current chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission — has been writing the column since February 2022.
Late Treaty Rights Leader Looms Large 11 Years After His Passing
by Richard Arlin Walker
Willie Frank III is working out in a gym in Tumwater, and some other gym-goers notice his Billy Frank Jr. Day sweatshirt and stop to ask him about it.
“They start telling me stories about my dad, but they don’t know he’s my dad,” Frank said. “And they’re telling me all these amazing stories, and then they ask me, ‘Did you know him?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, you know, I did, actually.’”
Frank (Nisqually) gets that often, whether in the gym, the nation’s capital or in the state capital, where on March 8, he opened the floor of the Legislature.
Frank’s father died in 2014 after a lifetime helping adversaries become allies on issues of common interest. Tribal and political leaders say the values that guided him endure as much as the treaty rights he defended and the salmon and habitat he worked to restore.
photo: Richard Arlin Walker
Billy Frank Jr. speaks at the celebration marking the beginning of deconstruction of the Elwha River dams, Sept. 17, 2011, an action to restore the altered ecosystem and salmon run in the river.
He Didn’t Look Back
Billy Frank Jr. didn’t look back, didn’t dwell on the arrests and the beatings he endured in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s for exercising his treaty right to fish. He kept moving forward, his son said, forward on the path opened by decades of resistance and a landmark court case.
“That’s going to be my message in Olympia, to try to give people hope, try to get people to slow down a little bit, to remember how to respect themselves and respect each other,” Willie Frank said. “For me, it’s about the respect that my dad had for himself, for the community and for the United States of America. He served in the Marines, and he just loved this place so much. I don’t focus on the negative — the times we live in and the hate, the anger, jealousy and bitterness that are out there — because he taught me to try to lift up not just myself but everybody who’s in my life. He just kept moving forward.”
March 9 was the 94th anniversary of Billy Frank Jr.’s birth, observed in Washington state as Billy Frank Jr. Day. Later this year, a statue of Frank will be installed in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall and the USNS Billy Frank Jr. (T-ATS 11), a rescue and salvage ship, will be launched.
Frank is widely remembered for his peaceful resistance to state efforts to regulate Indian fishing despite treaties that said the descendants of Indigenous signatories could fish as always in their usual and accustomed areas. His resistance led to a court decision upholding treaty fishing rights and four decades of work on his part to protect salmon and improve habitat.
Frank’s peaceful resistance was not met peacefully. He and other Native fishermen and women were beaten and arrested, and their boats and nets seized, in the 1950s and ’60s (Frank was first arrested for fishing in 1945 at the age of 14). There were similar clashes on the Columbia and Puyallup rivers.
Frank and fellow activist Hank Adams, Assiniboine Sioux, organized a series of fish-ins that drew the nation’s attention to the ongoing treaty rights battle in the Nisqually River community of Frank’s Landing. The U.S. government intervened and sued the State of Washington; Frank’s father, who was born in 1879, was one of the elders who testified about the Indigenous signatories’ understanding of the treaty when they signed it and the rights they had retained.
1974 Boldt Decision
U.S. District Court Judge George H. Boldt on Feb. 12, 1974, upheld the fishing rights of treaty Indians, which was later endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Frank, who as a Marine defended the Constitution only to be brutalized for exercising his constitutionally protected treaty fishing rights, spent the next 40 years helping people understand that everyone — Indian and non- Indian — benefits from healthy salmon, a healthy environment and treaties.
“People forget that non-Indians in Western Washington have treaty rights, too,” he wrote in 2007. “Treaties opened the door to statehood. Without them, non-Indians would have no legal right to buy property, build homes or even operate businesses on the millions of acres tribes ceded to the federal government. Treaty rights should never be taken for granted — by anyone.”
“To Better Understand Each Other”
Boldt’s ruling in U.S. v. Washington led to a succession of court decisions.
Boldt affirmed that treaties are “the supreme law of the land” as stated in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. That means there has to be salmon, or the treaty is violated.
Boldt’s decision established the Treaty Tribes and the State of Washington as co-managers of the state’s salmon resource. The Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, which Frank chaired for 40 years, was established to provide natural resource management assistance to its members. Frank also founded Salmon Defense, a nonprofit, to advocate for salmon.
The U.S. and Canada signed the Pacific Salmon Treaty in 1985, establishing the Pacific Salmon Commission through which both countries cooperate in the management and enhancement of Pacific salmon stocks.
Boldt ruled that treaties are “not a grant of rights to the Indians, but a grant of rights from them,” meaning the original inhabitants of the land reserved inherent rights that could not be granted to them because they already possessed them. That guided U.S. District Court Judge Edward Rafeedie’s ruling in 1994 that the Treaty Tribes’ reserved right to harvest shellfish from beds not “staked or cultivated by citizens” extends to shellfish beds on public and private tidelands — in the same way that one might reserve the right to minerals or other resources on property they sell.
The state Legislature in 1999 passed a law directing the state’s Forest Practices Board to adopt measures to protect Washington’s native fish and aquatic species and ensure compliance with the Clean Water Act. Known as the Forests and Fish Law, it affects 60,000 miles of streams flowing through 9.3 million acres of state and private forestlands. And in 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez ruled that Washington state must remove hundreds of state highway culverts that block fish migration.
“I experienced the strategies, the being patient, the bringing everybody to the table to find the solution rather than keeping us apart,” Willie Frank said of his father’s success in bringing adversaries together to work for salmon and the environment. Billy Frank’s way of coalition building was the subject of a panel discussion, “Frenemies: How to Make Climate Adversaries into Effective Allies,” March 13 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Willie Frank was joined by his wife, Peggen, executive director of Salmon Defense; Ron Garner, president of Puget Sound Anglers; and Kadi Bizyayeva, vice chairwoman and fisheries director for the Stillaguamish Tribe.
His Engaging Personality
What made Billy Frank Jr. successful was his engaging personality — he liked people and didn’t hold grudges — and also his unwavering stand for what was right.
“He was fearless and steadfast in protecting our way of life, and that’s something that needs to always be remembered,” Lummi Nation Chairman Anthony Hillaire said. “Being able to fish in our usual and accustomed areas and having enough salmon to be able to take care of our families — it’s just not up for question. As far as his ability to unify people to work together, that’s just really great leadership. And, what we see in the work he did throughout his life and passed on to his children and grandchildren is this: the fight for our salmon and our home is much bigger than ourselves. It’s not about me, it’s not about you, it’s about a greater cause.”
Remembering our shared history is vital, Hillaire said. “When we understand each other, when we know who it is that we’re talking to, that’s how we create a better world.”
Rep. Deb Lekanoff (D-Bow) is Tlingit and one of three Indigenous persons in the state Legislature. Salmon is culturally important to her, but she said salmon should be important to all people — if we don’t have healthy salmon, that means we don’t have healthy water and we don’t have a healthy environment, and that’s bad for everybody.
Lekanoff often quotes Billy Frank Jr. in her advocacy for salmon and the environment, and said his teachings will inform her thinking as the governor and Legislature determine how to eradicate an anticipated $12 billion budget deficit over the next four years.
“The values that Billy taught me that have kept me steady in the work that I do … remembering that our tribal leaders such as Billy have been here before,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere. We’ve been through this turmoil. We will sustain it, but we can only do it better together.”
Recalling his teachings, “The salmon struggle to get upriver, but they know when they get there that, generations from now, there’s going to be salmon up and down that river,” Lekanoff said. “The struggle that the salmon go through upriver is the same struggle that we face, regardless of what aisle we sit on. … Stay steady, keep your eye on the ball, get upriver.”
photo: Richard Arlin Walker
“Later this year, a statue of Frank will be installed in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall”
“A Great Human Being”
Billy Frank Jr. was honored during his lifetime and posthumously.
The Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge is named in his honor. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. He received the Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Service Award for Humanitarian Achievement, the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, the American Indian Visionary Award from Indian Country Today and the Washington state Medal of Merit. He’s the subject of documentaries and an educational film for children.
“Billy Frank stood as a guiding light for Native people to stand up for their rights in a nonviolent way,” U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), said upon his death. “His bravery and leadership led to the breakthrough Boldt Decision, which forever changed the landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Today, because of the Boldt Decision, the state and tribes are partners in the management and preservation of resources that are foundational to the economy of the state.”
Gina McCarthy, Environmental Protection Agency administrator during the Obama administration, said upon Frank’s death that he brought people together “in a resurgence of momentum on natural resource conservation (and) cultural preservation.”
Sally Jewell, secretary of the Interior in the Obama administration, attended an event where Frank spoke “forcefully and passionately” about the need to tackle the growing threat of climate change. “Billy shared a great sense of urgency that we come together as one people to work toward practical solutions to address its impacts,” she said when he died.
The teachings will live on. “He was a great teacher, a great father, a great grandfather,” his son said. “He was just a great human being.”
________________________
Richard Arlin Walker is a journalist living in Anacortes and a former editorial writer for newspapers in California, Utah, Alabama and Washington.
