Billy Frank
Hank Adams has been my good friend for more than fifty years.
I first met the skinny Indian kid with black-rimmed glasses at small intertribal meetings in the early 1960s. We were trying to figure out what we were going to do about the state prohibiting us from selling our steelhead, which they classified as a game fish. He was with the Quinaults and wasn’t much more than a teenager at the time, but you could tell he was smart.
Months later, I was out on Nisqually Cutoff Road one day when he stopped to ask me for directions to Franks Landing, my family’s home for many years. He was there to organize the fight for treaty fishing rights. It was the beginning of a long journey for us and our families. In the years that followed, he became a brother to me.
We’ve been through a lot together: getting beaten up, arrested, and jailed. Those were hard times, but we laughed a lot. I started calling Hank Fearless Fos—from the character in the Li’l Abner cartoon strip—after he got shot while tending a net on the river. I still call him Fearless today, because that’s what Hank is. He’s fearless.
It was Hank who kept us going throughout the long struggle for treaty fishing rights that led to the Boldt decision, in 1974. He has always been there for us. Even after he was drafted into the army, he found ways to keep on helping us, coordinating our efforts, building support from elected officials, and finding a little money to keep us all going. I’m not sure that we could have done it without Hank. He was everywhere, all at once, organizing, strategizing, and communicating.
Hank is one of the great thinkers in Indian Country. He remains a trusted adviser to many. I talk to him every day, because the fight continues every day and will never be over.
Hank’s whole life has been dedicated to helping Indian people, but he has really helped all citizens of the United States. He is not just a champion of treaty rights. He is a champion of civil rights for all people.
He could have been many things: a lawyer, a professor, a politician. But those jobs would have just tied him down.
Hank shoots for the stars, and that’s what he’s been doing for his whole lifetime. We’re just tagging along.