Get to know Billy Frank Jr., who transformed our state as he fought for treaty rights
Far too many people know far too little about Billy Frank Jr. We hope to inspire readers to want to learn more.
Last Tuesday was Billy Frank Jr.’s birthday, which is an official holiday for the Nisqually Tribe. Billy died in 2014 at the age of 83. Some were shocked at how young he died; his father, Willie Frank, lived to be 104.
Willie Frank, who was born in 1879, heard stories from his parents about treaty times, when the Nisqually, Squaxin, Puyallup and Muckleshoot tribes signed the Treaty of Medicine Creek. In 1854, the tribes ceded vast land areas and agreed to move to reservations. The tribes retained their right to fish, hunt and gather off the reservations in their usual and accustomed places, and to share fish in common with the settlers. Billy grew up hearing stories about all that history and more.
Billy’s career began in 1945 when he was 14 and state agents arrested him for exercising his treaty right to fish in the Nisqually River.
Billy kept fishing, and kept getting arrested. He was eventually arrested over 50 times, many during the “fish-ins” aimed at getting Washington to honor treaty rights. For many years, he described himself as a “getting arrested Indian.”
In 1963, Billy and other local Indians attended Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, where they told their story and made a lot of new friends.
Back on the Nisqually River, fish-ins became the analog to lunch counter sit-ins in the South. Scores of Indians fished, got arrested, got out of jail, fished, and got arrested again. There were a couple of years when Billy spent more time in jail than on the river. At one point, he became the jail barber.
Then Marlon Brando showed up, the first of a stream of celebrity supporters. They brought the national media. The sight of state game officials tear gassing Indians and seizing their nets and boats on the TV news was electrifying. Billy’s salty eloquence about treaty rights and Washington state’s brutal punishment for exercising them got an ever-wider audience.
Finally the federal government responded by suing the state for violating the treaty. As Billy recounted in an interview on TVW with Denny Heck, federal Judge Boldt listened deeply.
In 1974, Boldt ruled that when the treaty said Indians had a right to fish “in common with” settlers, that meant they had a right to “share equally.” He ruled that the tribes had a right to 50 percent of the fish harvest, and a right to be equal co-managers of the fishery with the state.
The Boldt decision set off a war waged by non-Indian fishermen against Indians. For a few years afterward, the state of Washington sided with the non-Indians, leaving them free to fill their boats so full that far fewer salmon made it back to their natal rivers.
Then Billy did what Nelson Mandela did: He led the way to reconciliation and acceptance of the Boldt decision. He led the tribes toward collaboration among themselves — no small feat — and the creation of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission to hold up the tribes’ end of co-management with the state. He met with state and federal leaders and talked until they found ways forward. He went from being a getting arrested Indian to being a getting it done Indian. And mainly he got things done by inspiring other people to do them.
One day he learned about land trusts, and said, “We need one of them.” The Nisqually Land Trust is the result of that one sentence.
Billy’s son, Willie Frank III, says, “When he walked in a room, it changed; the whole room was uplifted.” He’s not exaggerating.
Billy’s personal magnetism drew out the good in people. He helped Indians replace victimization with sovereignty, dignity and power, and he taught non-Indians humility and appreciation for the many ways the tribes’ quest for protection of salmon and their habitat benefits us all.
Billy could speak for the salmon and every other living plant and creature in the Nisqually watershed because he knew them. “The salmon kept us alive,” he said simply. “Now it needs our help.”
He also had a fine wit. He was talking to a non-Indian friend one day about the ways of “Mr. Bear, Mr. Eagle, and Mr. Deer.” The friend said, “You talk about those animals as if they were human.” Billy replied, “Well, when we’re not around, they talk about us like we’re animals.”
Billy’s legacy belongs to the whole world. But Billy was one of us. He transformed our community and our state. Knowing about him is essential to our sense of place, and our community and state identity.
That’s why we ought to put a statue of him in our nation’s capitol.