Soul Snatcher Productions ™ & Law Library ****************- Democracy Wall -***************

Angels In The Field’s (a non-profit) director, Debra Lopez, is on a mission from God. Sold at 14 by her successful mother who owned a NY boutique during their trip to India, she now, having survived 22 years of abuse, seeks to help others similarly afflicted/trapped. And she’s good at finding the victims, 18 and counting with 8 in Mason County/Shelton, Washington.

Having escaped her captors at a Texas Airport while acting as a drug ‘mule’, she chose Forks and Shelton because of their remoteness to hide from those who had harmed her. She bears the emotional and physical scars from her ordeal but had begun to heal through her faith and counseling sessions. Her bondage spanned continents from India, to Germany to Latin America and the U.S. After surviving 22 years of slavery in the international trafficking ring, Debra has reconciled by forgiving herself and her mother who is now very ill. Today, she is about to embark, with the support of the Baptist Church congregation and donors to this cause, on a journey to India, possibly Thailand, Africa, and wherever she is needed.

Indian embassy officials have instructed her not to speak to the press while visiting their country–an embarrassment they’d prefer to avoid for an India with a modern shiny democratic sheen to its current image. But Debra has become a strong woman who speaks eloquently and passionately in her commitment to those unfortunates whose ranks she only recently departed. Buoyed up by her Faith and her determination, she’s now a woman to be reckoned with.

Her ministry can receive donations through the Shelton 1st Baptist Church on Cota or by visiting her website: http://djsangelsinthefield.webstarts.com

This interview of Debra Lopez was conducted in the Shelton Baptist Church on 1-14-12 after her presentation during a well attended Saturday evening worship service. Donations were made in anticipation of her leaving as soon as her visa arrived. Ms. Lopez’s message rings loud and true, aimed at those with enough compassion to reach out toward the marginalized, reviled, and forgotten in their struggle to survive from one day to the next.

Debra Speaks Out against Human Trafficking, shares deep wounds/healing.

Debra Lopez fights Human Trafficking by pinbalwyz/Soul Snatcher, Productions(tm)

Child Slavery And Human Trafficking – TAKE NO GLORY

Debra Tells of Human Bondage Today and Being Sold at 14 ptI

Debra Tells of Human Bondage Today and Being Sold at 14 ptII

Debra Tells of Human Bondage Today and Being… by pinbalwyz

Debra Tells of Human Bondage Today and Being Sold at 14 ptIII

Debra’s Sings of Hope, Love in the Arms of a Simple Faith – pt I

Debra’s Sings of Hope, Love in the Arms of a Simple Faith – pt II

Debra’s Sings of Hope, Love in the Arms of a Simple Faith – pt III

A tribute to the resiliency of childhood and the restorative power of art, Born into Brothels is a portrait of several unforgettable children who live in the red light district of Calcutta, where their mothers work as prostitutes. Zana Briski, a New York-based photographer, gives each of the children a camera and teaches them to look at the world with new eyes.
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Born Into Brothels 1/6

Born Into Brothels 2/6

Born Into Brothels 3/6

Born Into Brothels 4/6

Born Into Brothels 5/6

Born Into Brothels 6/6

Having been privileged (by instinct?) while still a teenage member, to have defended Dr. King against the LDS Church’s open antipathy after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the 60’s, his “I Have A Dream” speech still brings goosebumps.  While we honor this truly great American today, his words continue to pull at our hearts and our conscience.

“We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. HistoryLink.org Essay 8929

“If we don’t exercise our rights, we will lose them!” -David Sohappy- 1925-1991

Billy Frank Jr. has served as chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC) for most of the past 30 years. He has committed his life to protecting his Nisqually people’s traditional way of life and to protecting the endangered salmon whose survival is the focus of tribal life. Beginning with his first arrest as a teenager in 1945 for “illegal” fishing on his beloved Nisqually River, he became  a leader of a civil disobedience movement that insisted on the treaty rights (the right to fish in “usual and accustomed places”) guaranteed to Washington tribes more than a century before. The “fish-ins” and demonstrations Billy Frank Jr. helped lead in the 1960s and 1970s, along with accompanying law suits, led to the Boldt decision of 1974, which restored to the federally recognized tribes the legal right to fish as they always had. Following the Boldt decision, Frank has been a leader in the work to save the river and its fish. In part due to his continuing leadership, Native Americans have finally been recognized as the country’s first environmentalists. Billy Frank Jr., who has been honored with national and international humanitarian awards, overcame personal tragedies to help save a precious resource, not only for his people, but for the broader society that was heedlessly destroying it.

From Confrontation to Cooperation: a Journey

“We aren’t going anywhere!” shouted Billy Frank Jr. It was a rallying cry. His Nisqually people and other Northwest tribes were determined not to assimilate into urban American, but to live as they had for centuries. Theirs is a life bound up with the rivers that flow from the mountains to Puget Sound, and the gentle land beside it — and most of all, to a physical and spiritual connection with the salmon that have traveled from stream to river to ocean and back, from time immemorial.

Over the past 60 years the struggle of the Nisquallys and other Northwest tribes took on many dimensions — legal, political, environmental, racial, and cultural — but whatever the issue, whatever the fight, Billy Frank Jr. was near the center of the action.

The Nisquallys are a sovereign nation by law. Like other tribes, they are the nation’s first citizens. Although forced to withstand the land grabs and environmental depredations of the white society that surrounded and overwhelmed them, they became determined to claim and protect the few rights reserved by them under treaties with the United States.

For years, the State of Washington regarded the 1854 Treaty of Medicine Creek as an irrelevant nuisance. The State insisted that it could impose its fishing regulations on the tribes, notwithstanding the treaty. It tried to do so forcefully, destroying property and making hundreds of arrests. But the traditions and training passed on to Billy Frank Jr. by his father — which in turn were taught to him by Billy’s grandfather, and on into the past — were ingrained. The tribes had given ground and shed blood over the years, but they were determined to fight for what was rightfully theirs.

A Nisqually Boyhood

Billy Frank Jr. was born in 1931, the son of long-lived parents. “Dad lived to 104 and Mom into her 90s,” he says. Left unsaid by this man of 77, who everyone calls Billy, is that he expects to be around for a long while and knows that much remains to be done to clean up the waters and save the salmon. He gives a stranger a brief, warm hug on entering a room, exuding the energy of a man with no thought of retirement.

“The people need to know the truth,” he says, “but the government won’t tell them the truth. The rivers and the Sound are still being poisoned, and now the state is cutting $40 million from its fish and wildlife budget. I used to swim in the Nisqually River, but I wouldn’t swim in it today” (Frank interview, February 2009).

Billy Frank had no way of knowing as a boy how crucial his role would become as a leader, resisting strong-arm tactics of state officials, providing a base of operations for Nisqually fishermen at Frank’s Landing, and insisting that treaty rights were supreme over state law.

His training began, as his father’s had, with stories of the land, and the river, and the salmon runs that provide much of the tribe’s subsistence and livelihood. He described his father’s life as a young boy:

“I can picture my dad riding on a horse with his dad. He’d be five or six years old, standing up on the horse’s rump, holding on to his dad’s shoulders. They’d be riding across the Muck Creek Prairie. The grass would be blowing. I know what it was like, because my dad did it with me when I was a little boy” (Wilkinson, 20-21).

The young son standing behind the father on horseback is a potent image for the sharing of tribal tradition, the passing on of stories and practices — of how salmon are caught, cleaned, dried, smoked — and celebrated. Of how habitat is nurtured. Of how things are done.

“We had everything back when Dad was a boy,” Frank said. “The sound was close, only eight miles downriver. Dad would take a canoe down to the mud flats at low tide for the clams, the oysters, the geoducks. He’d always say, ‘When the tide goes out, our table is set’” (Wilkinson, 22).

His father, Willie Frank — born Qui-Lash-Kut — called that time and place Paradise. The salmon runs were strong. The process of harvesting a share of the salmon runs and preserving the fish was passed down to Billy as it had been to his predecessors for the millennia his people had lived in the delta. The same was true for the wild berries and camas roots that had fed the Nisqually people through the years.

Billy Frank was first arrested in December 1945, when he was just 14. He’d set a net on the Nisqually River the night before to snare fish from the late chum run headed for the Muck Creek freshet which burst forth around that time every year. He hid his canoe under a fallen maple and arose early the next morning, while it was still dark, to claim and clean his catch. But while doing so, there came a shout: “You’re under arrest!” Billy tried to scramble away but two game wardens soon had him by the arms. “Leave me alone, goddamn it,” he screamed, “I live here!” (Wilkinson). It was his first arrest. More than 50 arrests would follow over the years, as they would for many other tribe members.

Billy’s formal education ended when he finished 9th grade at a junior high in nearby Olympia, but continued in the company of his fellow fishermen. He worked construction by day — mostly highways and sewers — and fished by night, suffering occasional rough treatment, arrest, and confiscation of his precious gear.

The Marines and After

After World War II and the population boom the Boeing Company had lured to Puget Sound, the paradise Billy had grown up in began to change. Suburban subdivisions sprouted. The Northwest timber industry harvested trees by the tens of thousands. Runoff from newly barren land destroyed fish habitat. An urban mega-community, stretching from Everett to Olympia, grew. And so did arrests of Indian fishermen.

In 1952, at age 21, Billy fulfilled a dream and joined the Marines. He was proud of his two years in the corps, but in 1954 he returned to his roots — fishing and the six acres of trust property along the river that his father had acquired in 1919. Frank’s Landing, as it came to be known, became the family’s base just two years after the Nisqually people were ousted from their reservation land in mid-winter of 1917 by the Army’s expansion of Fort Lewis. The sudden eviction was hard on all and fatal for some. Willie’s first wife, Josephine, died within a year of the removal.

Disappearing Land, Degraded Water

The story of the Nisqually, as with many native peoples, is one of increasing encroachment by a large, alien population with different values. The pristine river the tribe had depended on for centuries, and the land beside it, was taken away, in broad strokes.

The first and largest bite from traditional tribal territory — the tribes had no legal concept of land ownership — came in the form of the federal government’s treaties with Northwest tribes. The treaties were the work of Isaac Stevens (1818-1862),  Superintendant of Indian Affairs and governor of the new Washington Territory (which included northern Idaho and western Montana). The treaties, drafted by Stevens and quickly consummated, secured virtually all the traditional tribal lands of the region for the United States, 100,000 square miles in all.

The first of the treaties was the Medicine Creek Treaty of 1854, with the Nisqually, Puyallup, and Squaxin tribes. Governor Stevens, a compact and determined man, arrived at the treaty site west of the Nisqually River with a fully drafted document. There was little discussion, none of it in the tribes’ native language, and no negotiation. Stevens got all 2,240,000 acres, leaving the Nisqually people what their leader, Leschi, considered an insult: 1,280 acres on a bluff west of the river. None of the riverside land was included. The exchange was so unfair that the reservation was later expanded by President Franklin Pierce to 4,700 acres, on both sides of the river.

In return for the vast land grant, Stevens promised the tribes the one thing he knew they would insist on — a clause in Article 3 granting them the right to take fish “at all usual and accustomed stations … in common with the citizens of the Territory.” The tribes were also to be paid $32,000 by the United States over the ensuing 20 years.

A smaller but more painful land grab came years later during World War I, when Pierce County condemned the east bank portion of the remaining Nisqually reservation and deeded it to the Army to become part of Fort Lewis’s 60,000 acres. The action was patently illegal. Treaty land could only be taken with Congress’s consent, which had not been given. But the tribe — “dispirited, disorganized, and dispossessed” (Wilkinson, 27) — failed to challenge the suit and was forced to leave their abodes in mid-winter of 1917. A doubtful Congress ratified the taking years later.

The final insults were to fish habitat and survival, the result of runoff from extensive logging and development, and from the damming and diversion of the Nisqually River by the Cities of Tacoma and Centralia. Diversion of water and the dams’ off-and-on pulsing of the river’s natural flow disrupted salmon migration, destroyed spawning habitat, and depleted oxygen the fish needed.

Protests and Tear Gas, Arrests and Litigation

Non-Indian salmon fishing soared after World War II. By the late 1950s there were hundreds of commercial gillnetters and purse seiners. Although non-Indian commercial fishermen caught salmon by the millions of tons in the Pacific and Puget Sound, ironically much of the public blame was attributed to “Indian lawlessness.” In fact, the tribes, who fished only the rivers, caught just what was left over. By the state’s own figures, Indians captured less than 5 percent of the harvestable salmon at the height of the fish wars. Even to catch that, “we had to go underground,” Billy Frank says. “To survive, to continue our culture, we had to become an underground society” (Tizon).

The tribes claimed that the real culprits in the salmon’s decline were commercial fishing, the dams, and logging. Research would eventually prove them right.

Journalist Alex Tizon summed up non-Indians attitudes toward Indians in Washington in an article commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Boldt decision: “For most of the twentieth century, white society did not look kindly upon Indians, when they looked upon them at all. They were viewed as a nuisance, a hindrance to progress. In the Northwest, tribes were widely seen as poaching communities — lawless and primitive, skulking around in the dark” (Tizon).

Billy Frank and other tribal leaders said that the treaties gave them the right to fish as they always had, but the state insisted that its authority to regulate fish and game was the controlling law. Billy can tell stories “of having boats and nets confiscated, of being chased and tear-gassed, tackled, punched, pushed face-first into the mud, handcuffed and dragged soaking wet to the county jail” (Tizon). Like others before him and alongside him, Billy Frank lived like an outlaw, fishing at night, always on the lookout for men in uniforms.

Throughout the 1960s, declining salmon runs and aggressive state policing forced militancy on the Puget Sound tribes. Their determination reflected broader changes in the country. In the African American and Latino communities, Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez led movements pressing government for fairness and justice. Social beliefs and the very culture were changing.

Billy Frank was the public face and spokesman for the tribe’s resistance, but in 1964, a bright, fiery young man named Hank Adams, an Assiniboine and Sioux from eastern Montana, showed up at Frank’s Landing and became a key behind-the-scene worker, leading strategic and legal planning that complemented Billy’s more public role. The tribes decided to go public with their struggle and attracted help from young people who broadened support; many camped out and watched over Nisqually fishing nets when tribal fishermen could not.

In 1964, the first “fish-in” was staged at Frank’s Landing. Later, the National Indian Youth Council organized a large demonstration in Olympia. The same year, Marlon Brando showed up for net fishing on the Puyallup River with tribal leader Bob Satiacum (1929-1991) and was arrested, but released and never tried. In October 1965 there were two skirmishes on the Nisqually. First, an Indian boat was spilled by state agents. Later there was an attempted raid on Frank’s Landing; officers tried to make arrests and a battle broke out, with paddles, sticks, and stones flying through the air.

The following spring, comedian and activist Dick Gregory showed up for a series of fish-ins and demonstrations. He was arrested, convicted, and served 40 days of a 90-day sentence. On his release, Gregory observed, “If more people went to jail for rights, fewer would go for wrongs” (American Friends Service Committee, n. 6 at 111).

“The changes in the law — the Boldt decision — never would have happened without the fish-ins,” declares Billy Frank (Frank interview, March 2009). “We’d gone up to see the U.S. Attorney to get him to protect out treaty rights,” but got no help. “Every day there was a fish-in — on the Puyallup, the Green, the Nisqually, whenever the fish were running.  One day we were drift-fishing along the Puyallup and there were these potato farmers, and they were cursing us and throwing potatoes at us. But we were never gonna quit. We were gonna stay here and fish” (Frank, 2).

Billy’s first wife, Norma, was “one of our great wives and great ladies on the watershed of the Nisqually.” Together the two raised a lot of Indian children — other people’s kids. “Norma fought for our rights just like the other wives who put themselves on the line. When we were in jail they were on the river fishing” (Frank, 2).

In 1968 the situation became so threatening that the Unitarian Fellowship in Olympia sent a telegram to the Department of Justice saying that the federal government “has not exercised its responsibility” to the tribes. They were “appalled at the legal abuse and injustice exercised by state agencies and local courts” and expressed fear that “loss of life is more than a probability” (Layton).

Toward Vindication: the Boldt Decision

But the tide was turning. Hank Adams organized the Olympia demonstration and much more. He had a hand in three film documentaries of the salmon crisis; attracted CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt to the Olympia demonstration; and sparked production of the highly regarded study, Uncommon Controversy: Fishing Rights of the Muckleshoot, Puyallup, and Nisqually Indians.

Perhaps most importantly, in 1966 Adams induced University of Washington law professor Ralph Johnson to teach a course in Indian law. “I came back to my office one day … after teaching my class in property law,” recalled Johnson. “There were at least 15 Natives in my office. I could barely get in the door””(Wilkinson, 46). Johnson taught the course until his retirement in 1999. He was an important ally and his intellectual involvement was another step toward legitimacy.

In 1968, Yakama fisherman Richard Sohappy, a decorated veteran, and one of his relatives  were arrested by Oregon officials for gillnetting on the Columbia River. Professor Johnson and others filedSohappy v. Smith in federal court in Portland. The Justice Department, concerned about the relentless prosecution by states of native treaty fishermen, filed its own suit, United States v. Oregon. The two cases were consolidated and assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Robert C. Belloni, who ruled that the treaties with Columbia River tribes were valid and that the tribes were entitled to a “fair share” of fish, 302 F. Supp. 899 (1969). It was a huge victory, but Judge Belloni stopped short of specifying what the tribes’ share might be.

With arrests and strife between tribal fishermen and state fish and game officials continuing in Washington, on September 18, 1970, the Justice Department filed suit in United States v. Washington. The suit asked for declaratory relief for treaties covering areas west of the Cascade Mountains and north of the Columbia River drainage area, including the Puget Sound and Olympic Peninsula watersheds.

The tribes’ situation seemed to be brightening. With the U.S. committed to standing behind the treaties, funding for expert witnesses was assured, as well as a cadre of excellent government lawyers. The case was assigned to Judge George Hugo Boldt (1903-1984), a tough law-and-order jurist. The trial began on August 27, 1973. Judge Boldt held court six days a week including on the Labor Day holiday. Forty-nine experts and tribal members testified, among them Billy Frank Jr. and his then-95-year-old father.

The state, led by then-Attorney General Slade Gorton (b. 1928), held firm to its position that native treaty fishermen must be treated like any other citizens and were fully subject to state regulation. The tribes and the federal government, citing United States v. Winans, 198 U.S. 380 (1905), and other precedent, said that treaty provisions, having been drafted by the government in its own language, must be construed as they would have been understood by the tribes.

The decision in United States v. Washington, 384 F.Supp. 312 (1974), issued by Judge Boldt on February 12, 1974, was a thunderous victory for the tribes. The treaties were declared the supreme law of the land and trumped state law. Judge Boldt held that the government’s promise to secure the fisheries for the tribes was central to the treaty-making process and that the tribes had an original right to the fish, which the treaty extended to white settlers. It was not for the state to tell the tribes how to manage something that had always belonged to them. The tribes’ right to fish at “all usual and accustomed grounds and stations” included off-reservations sites, as well as their diminished lands. The right to fish extended not just to the tribes but to each tribal member.

Finally, Judge Boldt ordered the state to take action to limit fishing by non-Indians when needed for conservation purposes. This last was an embarrassment to the state. Until the Boldt decision, the tribes had been the principal focus of state enforcement.

With his hard beginnings — and the jailings, the “fish-ins” and demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s – it’s hard to imagine the transformative impact of the Boldt decision. The oft-arrested and jailed Billy Frank Jr., once branded a renegade for the civil disobedience he led, blazed a path to the cases that turned it all around. It may be hard for some to imagine that Billy Frank today is one of the most respected people in the state.

Restoring the Resource

The Boldt decision was a grand slam home run for Billy Frank and Washington’s fishing treaty tribes, but there was now an immense amount of work to do. At first, non-native fishermen refused to obey the District Court’s occasional bans on non-Treaty fishing and the Washington Department of Fisheries and refused to enforce them. Outlaw fisheries proliferated, resulting in scores of enforcement orders from Judge Boldt, who was reviled, hung in effigy, and the subject of angry bumper stickers throughout Western Washington. During this time, hundreds of tons of salmon were illegally harvested by non-natives in and around Puget Sound — so much so that in 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a follow-on decision, likened the state’s resistance to the Boldt decision to the South’s unyielding response to desegregation.

The tribes’ immense win placed a huge burden on them. They knew the state would be looking over their shoulders. “[Judge Boldt] gave us the opportunity to make our own regulations, our own management systems,” said Billy Frank. “[That’s] a responsibility we have” (Wilkinson, 62 ).

An immediate result of that responsibility was Billy’s decision to give up drinking, as friends and family had urged him to do. His beloved niece Valerie, bright and devoted to the cause, had pleaded with him before her drowning death in the river at age 20: “Uncle,” she said, “you can change the world if you would just stop” (Wilkinson, 63). It took the weight of the Boldt decision — a ruling for the ages — for Billy to honor fully his responsibility to family and tribe. His sobriety never wavered through tragedy. In 1977, he lost his daughter Maureen and his granddaughter Cabaqhud to a car wreck. In 2001, he lost his second wife, Sue Crystal, then age 48, to kidney cancer. She was a brilliant lawyer, advisor to governors, lawyer for several tribes, and mother of their son Willie, now 26.

Sue once had this to say about her husband: “Being with Billy is like floating on a steady, easy river. Billy’s life is turbulent, but Billy is not. He’s the happiest person I know. He’s completely at peace with himself (Wilkinson, 64).”

Legacies and Work Continuing

Billy Frank Jr. chairs the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC), as he has done for most of the past 30 years. NWIFC serves the 20 Western Washington treaty tribes with a central office in Olympia and satellite offices in Mt. Vernon and Forks. Its staff of 65 includes fishery and shellfish biologists, biometricians, habitat analysts and managers, fishery geneticists, and much more. It covers all of Puget Sound as well as coastal locations.

Journalist Tim Egan wrote, “When a bunch of Really Important People get together in a conference room, you can always tell Mr. Frank, even from afar. Amid the governors and corporate executives, all tasseled loafers and silk ties, he’s the one with the long pony tail, the gold salmon medallion, the open-necked shirt. And he’s the one with the scars – nicks, cuts and slash marks – from a lifetime of being harassed by people who don’t like Indians and from an all-season outdoor life” (Egan).

Billy Frank is a sought-after speaker — warm, passionate, and candid. He has been covered with honors by many organizations, but his mission is the same as always — save the resource.

He has been involved in the Nisqually Tribe’s work to restore the Nisqually River Delta. In conjunction with the federal government, which manages the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, the tribe has worked for removal of the dike system that holds back seawater. The tribe restored 140 acres of their own land, which will combine with over 700 acres of federal land to become prime habitat for endangered salmon.

Thanks to the redress granted by the Boldt decision, Billy Frank’s focus has long since shifted from confrontation to cooperation. Following the Supreme Court’s upholding of the Boldt decision in 1979, the NWIFC and the state had to determine how they were going to co-manage the fisheries they shared jurisdiction over. A long process of creating co-management guidelines and establishing trust between the tribes and state officials began with the development Puget Sound Salmon Management Plan in the early 1980s. With Billy at the helm, the NWIFC has established working relationships with state agencies and other non-Indian groups to manage fisheries, restore and protect habitat, and protect Indian treaty rights.

In monthly articles for NWIFC News, the commission’s newsletter, Billy writes about issues facing Washington fisheries. In 2007, after Judge Ricardo Martinez handed down a summary ruling in the Culverts case (a litigation over repairing culverts under state roads that are impeding salmon), Billy wrote that the tribes had filed the suit because, “We simply could not wait the 100 years that the state estimated it would take to fix the culverts. That would have spelled the end of the salmon” (“Being Frank: Culvert”). Writing in 2006 about the creation of the Puget Sound Partnership, Billy threw his support behind the measure: “It will be no easy task to turn the tide of disrespectful treatment of the Puget Sound. Governor Christine Gregoire has demonstrated great courage in standing up on this issue, and I, for one, will do all I can to help it become a great success. I hope you will, too” (“Being Frank: Step Forward”). More recently, Billy has discussed Washington’s Municipal Water Law and how the economy has affected fisheries recovery efforts.

Billy is often the voice of the commission to the public. Newspapers quote him repeatedly in articles on fisheries issues in the Northwest. He has written editorials relating to treaty shellfish rights, water rights, and myriad other issues. He has served on the leadership council of the Puget Sound Partnership since its inception in 2005.

In March 2011, in honor of Billy Frank’s 80th birthday, Salmon Defense, a non-profit organization established by Western Washington’s treaty tribes to advocate for salmon, established the Billy Frank Jr. Endowment for Salmon, “to honor and create permanence and action to the vision and work of Billy Frank Jr” (Salmon Defense website). The endowment will fund scholarships, restoration projects, litigation, educational programs, and an annual award to honor “individuals or organizations that have demonstrated leadership and commitment to the environment through collaborative problem solving” (Salmon Defense website).

Billy Frank Jr. has been honored with countless awards for his decades-long fight for justice and environmental preservation. They include the Common Cause Award for Human Rights Efforts, the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism (past winners of which include President Jimmy Carter, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, and author Norman Cousins), the American Indian Distinguished Service Award, the 2006 Wallace Stegner Award, and the Washington State Environmental Excellence Award.

With Billy Frank’s family history of longevity, his resilience and energy, and his deep sense of purpose, the work goes on, led by him and the committed, collegial NWIFC staff. The Nisqually River continues to slide sweetly downstream and seaborne salmon may one day be singing.

 

Sources:
Charles Wilkinson, Messages from Frank’s Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000); Fay G. Cohen,Treaties on Trial: The Continuing Controversy over Northwest Indian Fishing Rights (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986); American Friends Service Committee, Uncommon Controversy: Fishing Rights of the Muckleshoot, Puyallup, and Nisqually Indians (Seattle:  University of Washington Press, 1970); Robert Marritz interview with Billy Frank Jr., Olympia, February 6, 2009 (Frank 1); Telephone Interview with Billy Frank, Jr., March 9, 2009 (Frank 2); Timothy Egan, “On the River Bank with Billy Frank Jr.: Indians and Salmon: Making Nature Whole,” The New York Times, November 26, 1992, p. C-1; Jay Manning and Billy Frank Jr., “Water Bills in Olympia Sacrifice Healthy Streams,” The Seattle Times, May 28 2003; Lynda V. Mapes, “Culvert Ruling Backs Tribes,” Ibid., August 23, 2007; Warren Cornwall, “Gregoire Takes First Swipe at Huge Sound Cleanup,” Ibid., December 14, 2006; Alex Tizon, “Northwest Tribes Support Makahs,” Ibid., November 12, 1998; Don Hannula, “Fitting Recognition For `Renegade Indian,’” Ibid., March 20, 1991;  Eric Pryne and Dick Lilly, “Indian Leader Gets Coveted Honor — But Salmon Still Are Declining, Bill Frank Warns,” Ibid., May 25, 1992;  Hal Spencer, “Tribal Leaders Rap State’s Lawmakers,” Ibid., May 7, 1999;  Sylvia Wieland Nogaki, “End Fishing Conflict, Activist Asks,” Ibid., October 18, 1992, all available at (http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/); John Dodge, “Water Flows Again at Nisqually Estuary,” The Olympian, October 1, 2009 (www.theolympian.com); Billy Frank, Jr., “Being Frank: Culvert Ruling Benefits Salmon Everyone,” NWIFC News, September 4, 2007 (http://www.nwifc.org/); Billy Frank, Jr., “Invest in our Future,”NWIFC News, January 3, 2011 (http://www.nwifc.org/); Billy Frank, Jr., “Salmon Recovery: It Takes All of Us to Make it Happen,” North Kitsap Herald, February 4, 2011 (www.pnwlocalnews.com); Billy Frank, Jr. “A Sense of Place Crucial to Tribal Fishing,” Tacoma Weekly, December 23, 2009 (http://www.tacomaweekly.com/); Billy Frank, Jr., “Being Frank: Step Forward for Puget Sound,” NWIFC News, January 26, 2006 (www.nwifc.org); Billy Frank, Jr., “Water Law: An Accident Waiting to Happen,” NWIFC News, December 1, 2010 (http://www.nwifc,org/); Jay Manning and Billy Frank, Jr., “Water Bills in Olympia Sacrifice Healthy Streams,” The Seattle TImes, May 28, 2003 (www.seattletimes.com); ;  .Bill Taylor and Billy Frank, Jr., “We All Benefit from Shellfish Agreement,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 29, 2007 (http://www.seattlepi.com/).

Note: This essay was substantially updated on March 30, 2011.

By Robert O. Marritz, March 10, 2009

OLYMPIA

Ongoing Shows in SeattleCarmona Flamencowith guest artist Ana Montes starts a new season onJanuary 28 at Cafe Solstice and will be there on the last Saturday of each month through June.  Cafe Solstice     4116 University Way  Seattle (206) 675-0850 Serving fine teas, coffees, teas, wines & inviting desserts, no dinner. Shows at 8:00 and 9:30, both sets included in $20 ticket. Cash please.  Come early, no reserved seating, doors open at 7:30. More info at www.fanw.org

Tuesdays, 8:30PM, RESUMING THIS WEEK on January 10, 2012 Live Flamenco!   with Eric and Encarnación The Capitol Club, 414 East Pine. Seattle’s best kept secret. Come and see the most intimate, authentic and exciting Flamenco show in Seattle. NO COVER. 2 order minimum. flamencoseattle.com  On the first and third Thursday of the month Flamenco Gitana Bilbao Spanish Restaurant and Tapas Bar. 4500  9th Ave. NE,  Seattle, (206) 547-5034. Join us for an evening of tapas and flamenco dance. Shows at 8pm and 9pm.  www.flamencogitana.com

The burning of the Bank of America in Isla Vista

A teen boy who’d never heard of the police being called ‘pigs’ before saw the aftermath in Isla Vista. His understanding is the local Bank of America branch was burned to the ground TWICE by locals. The part about it being the street people more than political activists who took this direct action is something of a surprise. The ambient tone in the community after the Santa Barbara Sheriff/Captain Hershey arrived in medieval fashion with a MACE (spiked club) to command deputies in acts of suppression against the crowds of demonstrators was quite hostile to authority. Residents had been ripped from their homes without Due Process after martial law was declared.

Most businesses in Isla Vista had signs on their windows stating, “Bank Americards & Checks NOT accepted here.” Some Bank of America account holders had their own checks printed with color photos of the Bank in flames. The Bank was forced to cash them. The Bank’s replacement building was designed like a bomb shelter, reminiscent of all the metal detectors, bullet proof windows, and security surrounding many government buildings today. The Bank and Hershey were hated…as was the draft.

The following pics are available for download and/or your banking pleasure with a check printer of your choice…or you may have software that allows you to print your own.

But for a look at today’s burgeoning global class warfare of the 21st Centure, check out:
Bonfire of the Bank Vanities (An analysis of our failing institutions)

The prevailing trend of militarizing our police along with the increased incidence of brutalization at their hands is evident in this clip filmed outside the Occupation of the Rachel Corrie Community Center (abandoned old Public Health building in Olympia across from Heritage Park and Bayview supermarket). Mary Hath Spokane, one of the spiritual leading lights of non-violence in the Occupy Olympia encampment has often stated she never met anyone she couldn’t love. Here this beautiful woman can be seen putting herself in harm’s way to protect an obviously distraught black man protesting the callous insensitivity of our government institutions, power structure, and elitist social fabric. At one point, she waves off a man offering to help, convinced she has the best chance of preventing the incident from escalating unimpeded and on her own. Mary is a grandmother who has never wanted for courage or tolerance. She is a fantastic role model, not only for today’s youth, but for all of us.

Occupy Olympia Black Man Cries Out In Protest

Occupy Olympia One Face at a Time

On the very eve of Occupy Olympia’s eviction from Heritage Park, Glen Anderson, local director of the Fellowship for Reconciliation (FOR), interviews 4 activists about the movement’s core values and purpose in TCTV’s studio. These articulate spokespersons (Mary Hath Spokane, Kyle Tanner, Dana Walker, Bill Moyer) speak of the humbling enlightenment they experienced learning fundamental lessons of survival from the homeless along with the underlying principles necessary to sustain such a broad based political movement, defining why Occupy has become a global revolutionary event commanding the common man’s attention in an unprecedented irresistible fashion.

Mary, Kyle, Dana, and Bill speak out on the issues motivating Occupy.

New Suspect for World Wide Bee Colony Collapse Discovered

By Wayne Freedman, San Francisco (KGO)

Apiaries in Mason County have been taking some heavy but mysterious hits this past decade.

Some of humankind’s most significant discoveries have been by accident. Tuesday, San Francisco State announced another unexpected finding. It has taken two years work, and may answer a pressing question: Why are all those honeybees leaving their hives?

What happened to Texas judge William Adams?

In November 2011, the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct (TCJC) temporarily suspended Aransas County Family Court judge William Adams after a 2006 video of him viciously beating his then-16-year-old cerebral palsy afflicted daughter, Hillary Adams, went viral. The Supreme Court of Texas reinstated Adams on November 9, 2012. Aug 23, 2016

Who would have guessed judges & prosecutors are too often corrupt vicious petty tyrants? The truth is disturbing and all too common. Many white middle class Americans still found themselves in denial even after watching the Rodney King nearly fatal beating by police on their evening TV news.

But today, WE are the media! The ubiquitous video/web camera has placed the harsh truth into the hands of commoners in a way unmatched since the Gutenberg Press–a powerful archangel’s sword, Fiction and Reality TV can’t hold a candle to these sobering ugly truths. Yet citizens in Thurston and Mason County continue to believe they’re immune from such corruption and official abuse despite the evidence, despite the circumstances of too many of their friends, neighbors, and family before their very eyes. This reporter has only begun to scratch the surface of the judicial cesspool festering in Thurston County smugly ensconced in the language of RCW 10.14 and laws protecting government officials from the public instead of vice versa.  (RCW 9A.76.180) The following video clip is an example of the true nature (behind closed doors and ex parte hearings) of these vicious abusive petty tyrants hiding in the judiciary and every branch of local government.

Judge William Adams beats daughter for using the internet

Arkansas County Court-At-Law Judge William Adams took a belt to his own teenage daughter as punishment for using the internet to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time. She has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father’s backwards views. The judge’s wife was emotionally abused herself and was severely manipulated into assisting the beating and should not be blamed for any content in this video. The judge’s wife has since left the marriage due to the abuse, which continues to this day, and has sincerely apologized and repented for her part and for allowing such a thing, long before this video was even revealed to exist. Judge William Adams is not fit to be anywhere near the law system if he can’t even exercise fit judgement as a parent himself. Do not allow this man to ever be re-elected again. His “judgement” is a giant farce.  -Hillary Adams-  (his daughter)

Well, Hillary, the judge would feel right at home in Thurston County. Now that he’s single again, there’s a certain unmarried criminal prosecutor in Thurston’s Superior Court who’d find herself, no doubt, right at home in his company. And given their spin on it in Olympia, the law won’t mind.