In 1968, Frank’s Landing activists and supporters staged emotional demonstrations at the Temple of Justice and the Thurston County courthouse. “Now another beautiful young red sister, Suzette Bridges,” a woman said as she introduced Billy’s niece to the crowd. Bridges, a young enrolled Puyallup Indian, delivered an impassioned speech:
“When we go out and talk to all these citizens of America, we tell them, ‘You’d better do something about your government, because your government is awfully sick. And it’s trying to make my people sick.’ I keep trying to explain to these people that we’re never, never, never going to be like them.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she cried to the crowd, “I don’t know what’s wrong with Dan Evans! And I don’t know what’s wrong with Thor Tollefsen! Why is it that they keep practicing genocide on my people?” That day, activists dropped a parting gift for the governor on his doorstep. The mansion cook didn’t know what happened to the “mystery” fish, but gibed that “there’d be no salmon cooking in her kitchen” that night.
In October 1968, a force of state officers raided the continuing encampment at Frank’s Landing. “This thing is clear out of perspective,” fired R. D. Robison, a Fisheries assistant director. “They’re not concerned with Indian fishing rights. They’re trying to incite riots.”
in 1968. Image-Carol Burns As Long as the River Runs
The community at Frank’s Landing viewed the encampment as direct action, a tool to protect their treaty rights. State officers were ordered to leave the Frank trust property and informed they were trespassing. Adams said the officers insisted they “have a right to go anywhere,” and brandished clubs. They directed a boat on the other side of the river to take a net that belonged to Billy, his wife, and his niece,” Adams wrote in an open letter to Governor Evans. Adams warned the state’s chief executive that Willie Frank’s fear of the whites had since grown, and the state would not be permitted on the property. The letter noted the recent court order “prescribing haircuts for prisoners immediately upon entry into the Thurston County jail— citing sanitation as the basis. It seemed clearly evident, however, that the order was secured primarily to carry out the threats against Al Bridges and other Indians, as well as non-Indians now involved in the fight over fishing rights.” The situation grew so intense, Adams told Evans in the same communication, that sessions took place in which Fisheries Department officers planned to “create an incident wherein they could ‘justify’ homicides premeditated.”
By October’s end, fishermen secured a guarantee from the Justice Department that it would protect their civil rights. They removed armed guards from the property. Money came in from benefit performances by the Grateful Dead, Redbone, and James Taylor. Canadian Indian Buffy St. Marie arrived and wrote a song about the fishermen.
For his part, the governor had established a special fact-finding group on Indian Affairs which interviewed fishermen. A couple of months into 1969, staff members talked with Billy. In the governor’s papers at the State Archives, interviewers note: “Billy did not once speak with malice, but was as friendly ‘as an old shoe’ and appreciative of any assistance that could be given. He did wonder why the state has kept the nets of the acquitted and asked for assistance in that area.”
Among the conclusions of Evans’s committee: fishing is a matter of “great emotional importance” to the Indian people, the Nisqually Tribe does support its members fishing off reservations, and attitudes of the state and county authorities toward Indians and their treaty rights are “excessively arbitrary and punitive.”
When December arrived, Walter Neubrech, head of enforcement at the Department of Game, placed a call to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, expressing the state’s interest in purchasing Frank’s Landing. “He indicated that at the present time there were about 20 Hippies getting really entrenched in the area and this would be one way of getting them off the property.”
The state never acquired the land.
