Biography
Billy Frank Jr. was a Nisqually fisherman and treaty-rights organizer first arrested in December 1945 at age 14 for fishing in the Nisqually River. He went on to be arrested more than fifty times through the 1960s and 1970s in defense of fishing rights guaranteed by the 1854 Treaty of Medicine Creek. From his family's six-acre property, Frank's Landing, he and Hank Adams organized the iconic LBJ-era 'fish-ins' modeled on the civil rights sit-ins, drawing the support of Marlon Brando (arrested 1964) and Dick Gregory. The arrests and protests culminated in the 1974 Boldt Decision (United States v. Washington), which restored Pacific Northwest tribes' rights to half the salmon harvest. Frank was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 2015.
