Billy Frank, Jr.

Who was Billy Frank, Jr.?

Billy Frank, Jr. 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.

Tribes reserved the right to fish, 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 Natives 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.