Billy Frank Jr.

Billy Frank Jr. (March 9, 1931 – May 5, 2014) was a Native American environmental leader and treaty rights activist born in 1931 to Willie and Angeline Frank. A Nisqually tribal member, Frank is known specifically for his grassroots campaign for fishing rights on the tribe’s Nisqually River, located in Washington state, in the 1960s and 1970s. He is also known for promoting cooperative management of natural resources.

Contents

• This is indian country with billy frank jr the inupiat hanging on at the top of the world
• 1992 billy frank jr and gov bill clinton on komo tv
• Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
• Titles
• Awards
• Presidential Medal of Freedom
• References

The tribal nations in western Washington reserved the right to fish at all their usual and accustomed places in common with all citizens of the United States, and to hunt and gather shellfish in treaties with the U.S. government negotiated in the mid-1850s. But when tribal members tried to exercise those rights off-reservation they were arrested for fishing in violation of state law.

Frank was arrested more than 50 times in the Fish Wars of the 1960s and 1970s because of his intense dedication to the treaty fishing rights cause. The tribal struggle was taken to the courts in U.S. v. Washington, and Judge George Hugo Boldt found in favor of the native tribes in 1974. The Boldt Decision established the 20 treaty Indian tribes in western Washington as co-managers of the salmon resource with the State of Washington and re-affirmed the tribal right to half of the harvestable salmon returning to western Washington. He died on May 5, 2014.

Frank was chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, a position he held for more than 30 years.

In November 2015, President Barack Obama announced that Frank would receive a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom. The following month, the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge was renamed in Frank's honor.