Keefe urged Billy to meet with Magnuson and sell him on the urgent need to improve salmon habitat. After one session, Maggie sat puffing his cigar and turned his bulky frame toward Keefe, “Your friend Billy really makes a lot of sense.”
Those sessions with Billy altered Keefe’s view of the fish and its relationship with the tribes. As the “white guy in blue suits,” Keefe attended a myriad of weddings, funerals, and feasts with Billy all over Indian Country. “I was really struck by the odd mix of deep poverty overlaid with great pride, and the central role the salmon played in their survival as a community.”
The fragile state of Pacific salmon grew more delicate still. Presenting themselves solely as fish advocates, biologists and resource managers had sounded a warning in the Seattle Times: “All citizens of this state are bound to lose with the present course of salmon and steelhead management.” There were other factors killing off salmon to be sure, experts acknowledged. However, the tangled web of fishery managers threatened irreparable harm to the runs. “It appears that control of fishing by state and federal courts, state and federal agencies, international organizations and Indian tribes has been inadequate,” authorities warned. Experts called for a decisive and clear management structure: “Such a plan is essential and the need is urgent. If it is not initiated soon, the salmon and steelhead runs of the state of Washington may well cease to exist.”
Proposed solutions took various forms. Tribes attacked one congressional proposal to decommercialize steelhead as a scheme to abrogate treaties. Billy sharply chastised Congressman Don Bonker for the bill, and used the media to debunk myths and kill the legislation. Taking steelhead off the commercial market would be a violation of treaty rights, Billy shot back, even if the fish could still be used for ceremony and subsistence. Supporters of the proposal argued that Indian nets were destroying steelhead runs, while sportsmen paid for the resource. Billy refuted the claims. Taxpayers, even the non-fishing kind, funded steelhead programs through federal grants used to research the species. Because of the Boldt Decision, tribes invested resources to track and manage the runs. That effort would cease, Billy warned, if Indians could no longer sell the fish.
Magnuson, meanwhile, proposed the Salmon and Steelhead Enhancement Act, calling for a widely accepted management plan for Northwest fisheries. Maggie’s bill also offered a “buy back” of commercial licenses furnished by the state.
Billy supported Magnuson’s bill, with some adjustments, and took heat for his endorsement. Tribal members distrusted Magnuson because of his earlier stance on Indian fishing. As Hank Adams explains, “In 1964, both Henry Jackson and Warren Magnuson introduced resolutions into Congress to extinguish these treaties and/or to buy out, to either place all Indian fishing under state control and regulation and alternatively to buy out all treaty rights and extinguish them relating to fish.”
The Salmon and Steelhead Enhancement Act passed three days before Christmas in 1980, just weeks after Magnuson’s defeat by Slade Gorton. “I really look back on that legislation as the Magnuson/Frank blueprint for the future in restoring our salmon runs for everyone, but it mostly depended on Magnuson’s re-election,” Keefe recalls. “We did get some license buy-backs, but the Reagan era brought big cuts in domestic discretionary spending, so the restoration of spawning grounds and destroyed rivers and streams didn’t happen. Spending money on habitat restoration in the Pacific Northwest was never going to be a Reagan priority, and with Magnuson’s defeat, we just ran out of time.”
Billy and Magnuson’s friendship produced tangible results. In 1980, the site of Wa He Lut Indian School at Frank’s Landing transferred into federal trust status. The lot adjacent to the Landing was now a permanent location for the school. In 1987, Frank’s Landing was deemed eligible for federal funding to aid in education at Wa He Lut. Their friendship was also key in the passage of the Northwest Power Act of 1980, says Adams. The law targeted dams on the Columbia River and required a regional energy conservation plan mindful of salmon.
Generally speaking, Magnuson became more favorable to Indian interests because of Billy, says Adams. “By the end, when Senator Magnuson came to know Billy, he found that he liked Billy and began to see Indians in a different way. You had Warren Magnuson fighting as strongly for Indians as he ever fought against them at the end of his Senate career.”
