Tell the Truth: The Collected Columns of Billy Frank Jr. - Tapa blanda

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Billy Frank Jr. dedicated his life to defending tribal treaty rights and protecting threatened populations of salmon. A member of the Nisqually Tribe, he chaired the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission for more than 30 years. Beginning with his first arrest as a teenager in 1945 for “illegal” fishing on his beloved Nisqually River, Billy became a leader of a civil disobedience movement that insisted on the treaty rights guaranteed to Washington tribes more than a century before. The fish-ins and demonstrations he helped organize in the 1960s and 1970s, along with accompanying lawsuits, led to the Boldt decision of 1974 in the federal case of U.S. v. Washington, which reaffirmed the tribes’ rights to fish as they always had. The Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission was formed as a result of that decision. His life and times are captured in the books "Messages from Frank’s Landing" by Charles Wilkinson, and "Where the Salmon Run" by Trova Heffernan. He passed away May 5, 2014 at the age of 83. In 2015, President Barack Obama honored him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.