Biography
Hank Adams was an Assiniboine-Sioux activist born on the Fort Peck Reservation who became one of the most effective Indigenous strategists of the twentieth century. He left the University of Washington on November 22, 1963 — the day Kennedy was assassinated — to organize full-time, leading the March 3, 1964 march on the Washington state capitol that drew 1,000 people protesting state suppression of Native treaty fishing rights. He worked closely with Billy Frank Jr. at Frank's Landing on the Nisqually River, was arrested repeatedly between 1968 and 1971 at fish-ins, and in January 1971 was shot in the stomach by an unknown assailant while guarding a fishing site. His organizing helped produce the 1974 Boldt Decision affirming tribal treaty fishing rights.
