“He wasn’t even paying attention,” said Sid Mills in disgust. “That’s how they all are.” Mills, a Yakama Indian, had withdrawn from the U.S. Army to remain in Washington and fight for treaty rights. He married Billy’s niece, Suzette. On the morning of the invasion, hundreds of Indians walked the beaches, scaled bluffs, and stormed the compound. Bob Satiacum, a Puyallup Indian, read the proclamation: “We, the Native Americans, reclaim the land known as Fort Lawton, in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery.”
In no time, the 392nd Military Police Company arrived. “Move in and take them away!” hollered an M.P. sergeant.
“The army closed in on scattered groups of Indians,” Billy says. “Women were knocked to the ground. Men were clubbed. Cameras were smashed. Movie film and tapes were destroyed. Sixty-four people, the youngest of them three years old, were held all day in two cells.”
Once again, tribal fishermen drew Hollywood. Just the night before, actress Jane Fonda announced to Johnny Carson and late night television that she would use her celebrity to help coastal fishermen reassert their treaty rights.
After a visit to Frank’s Landing, Fonda was whisked off first to Fort Lawton and then to Fort Lewis, the site of a second invasion. In the aftermath of the occupations, Indians leveled stinging accusations against military police, describing beatings that took place behind bars. The U.S. Army insisted the only time any “military person touched anyone was to help them off the post.” But a newsman witnessed one young Indian who was shoved against a desk. Fonda and eighty-four Indians received letters from the army expelling them from the post.
One week later demonstrators returned to Fort Lawton. Again, they walked the beaches, climbed the bluffs, and lit a fire as the sun rose. “If you read me, listen,” Whitebear ordered over his walkie-talkie. “We are in position on the Fort Lawton Indian Reservation. We have erected a teepee, started a fire and about 50 of us are waiting for the MPs to arrive.”
A handkerchief rose in the air as a flag of truce. “The colonel says he has 30,000 troops at his disposal and he will call them if necessary,” Gary Bray told the crowd.
“Let him!” someone shouted in return.
“It was a little terrifying when I saw them white helmets come,” Sugar says. “I kind of got scared. And then after I realized they were just going to arrest us, not actually beat us, I kind of calmed down and just listened to Alison [Bridges].”
“Just lay down and make them pack you!” Alison urged.
“We just hugged each other and laid down so we made them work,” says Sugar. “They didn’t even handcuff us. They just put us on a bus and they took us to their jail.”
“The Indians were defeated once again by the United States Army,” Billy says.
The invasions at Fort Lawton and Fort Lewis intrigued journalists across the world. One call came from the Italian News Agency: “‘Is it true that you have twelve thousand Indians living in your city?’” asked a journalist in bewilderment. “‘How do they get along with everybody else?’ They are everybody else,” he was told.
Protests continued at the fort until the government agreed to negotiate a land deal. Days before Halloween in 1973, Jackson dedicated Discovery Park to the British sloop hms Discovery that explored Puget Sound in the eighteenth century. “The whole country owes you a debt of gratitude,” Jackson told the crowd. The city of Seattle, Native Americans, and the federal government signed a ninety-nine-year lease to construct a center to promote Indian culture, heritage, and education. In May 1977, the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center at Discovery Park opened its doors.
As takeovers continued in 1970, tragedy struck the family, with the death of Valerie Bridges, Billy’s niece. Billy and Valerie shared a passion for the Nisqually River. She had grown up at Frank’s Landing—swimming, fishing, and watching Billy’s children—and was considered an expert swimmer. One May afternoon she lingered after a swim with her sister Alison, following a long day planting bare-root seedlings for an industrial tree farm.
