Emotions ratcheted up. “We had the power and force to exterminate these people from the face of the earth, instead of making treaties with them. Perhaps we should have!” snapped an assistant Pierce County prosecutor at the time. “We certainly wouldn’t be having all this trouble with them today.”
By March, the fishermen reached a tipping point. They organized, pulled together, and pooled minimal resources. “We just said we’re not moving no more,” recalls Maiselle, Billy’s older sister.
With a mission to renew their treaty rights, the fishermen and their families founded the Survival of the American Indian Association. Survival was the kind of organization that strategized from the kitchen table and scraped up every dime. It began with more heart than money, more energy than people, more will than public support. Fred Haley, a prominent candymaker from Tacoma, donated a Xerox machine. The activists raised fifty dollars at a fish bake and retained Jack Tanner as their attorney. Regional director of the naacp, Tanner was lead attorney for African Americans in their own pursuit of justice. Tanner, himself African American, hoped to spur on the fight for Indians. “Now is the time for those who believe in Indian treaty rights to join them,” Tanner announced.
What Survival lacked in resources, it made up for in a media strategy decades ahead of its time. A primary orchestrator was Hank Adams, a twenty-year-old “skinny Indian kid with black-rimmed glasses,” who called Survival a “Chronicle of Courage.” The skinny kid turned out to be one of the most pivotal people in Billy’s life. Adams, an Assiniboine-Sioux, came originally from Fort Peck, Montana, a place they call Poverty Flats. His mother married a Quinault Indian and Adams grew up on the reservation of the Quinault Nation, the largest in Western Washington. Adams sailed through Moclips High School as editor of the paper, student body president, and a star athlete. After two years at the University of Washington, however, he traded college for a calling, dedicating the rest of his life to the wellbeing of Indian people.
“Adams was hooked to all the professors of our country, the good ones and the bad ones, people who are out there talking about the law and the protection of treaty rights,” says Billy. “Adams is too smart to go to law school. Law school would tie him down. He can shoot for the stars and that’s what he’s been doing in his lifetime. We’re just tagging along.”
Adams’s mark is everywhere in Indian Country, from its seminal events to its most obscure. He is as elusive as he is intelligent and loyal. Next to his immediate family, Adams is among the closest to Billy, a brother he talks with every day. For his part, Adams knows Billy’s life backward and forward. He’s a family historian who spews dates, court cases, and the complex family tree like a machine gun firing away.
“Hank Adams, early on, was the one who got your attention because he was right in your face,” recalls Dan Evans, governor of Washington when tribal leaders resisted state law. “He was doing things out on the river. He was making sure you understood that there was a problem. And Billy was the guy who very quickly started to say, ‘This isn’t working. We’ve got to find a better answer.’”
Adams’s role in Billy’s life came by happenstance in 1963. He stood inside tribal offices of the Quinault Nation. A flier in a wastepaper basket piqued his interest. The National Indian Youth Council (niyc), an activist group founded in New Mexico in 1961, planned to meet in Roosevelt, Utah, to launch a national awareness campaign. The mission of the niyc, “to provide and ensure that every Native American person has an equal opportunity to participate, excel and become a viable member and asset to his/her community,” struck a chord. Adams had already developed a strong interest in tribal fishing rights and state jurisdiction over Indian affairs. On a whim, he opted to go. Like a scene straight from Hollywood, Adams hitchhiked, caught a bus, and hopped in a tribal car to reach Roosevelt, some thousand miles away.
“You’d have to be crazy to hitchhike out of Quinault!” Billy jokes, because of the isolated surroundings of the reservation village at Taholah. Adams found luck, however. Biologist Jim Heckman picked him up, along with Guy McMinds, a Quinault Indian. The three headed for the meeting on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation at Fort Duchesne. It was hot, dry, and the third weekend of August.
