Tribal Rights Advocate Dies at 83

Billy Frank, Jr. was chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. This column is made available to publications throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Editor’s Note: Billy Frank, Jr. died on Monday, May 5, 2014, at his home on the Nisqually River. He was a Native American environmental leader and treaty rights activist born in 1931. A Nisqually tribal member, Frank was known specifically for his grassroots campaign in the 1960s and 1970s for fishing rights on the tribe’s Nisqually River, located in Washington state. He was also known for promoting cooperative management of natural resources.

Tribes reserved the right to fish, hunt and gather shellfish in treaties with the U.S. government negotiated in the mid-1850s. But when tribal members tried to exercise those rights off-reservation they were arrested for fishing in violation of state law. Frank was arrested more than 50 times in the “Fish Wars” of the 1960s and 1970s because of his intense dedication to the treaty fishing rights cause.

The federal government filed suit in the support of Native American civil rights. In U.S. v. Washington, Judge George Hugo Boldt of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington found in favor of the Natives in 1974. The Boldt decision reaffirmed the right of most Washington tribes to act as “comanagers,” alongside the state, of salmon and continue to harvest it. In 1975 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Boldt’s ruling, and on July 2, 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court largely affirmed it in Washington v. Washington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Ass’n (Fishing Vessel). Justice John Paul Stevens delivered the opinion of the court, writing that “Both sides have a right, secured by treaty, to take a fair share of the available fish.” United States v. Washington was a landmark case in terms of Native American civil rights and evoked strong emotions.

According to former U.S. Representative Lloyd Meeds of Everett, “the fishing issue was to Washington state what busing was to the East” during the African-American Civil Rights Movement

Mr. Frank was chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission , a position he held for more than 30 years. The Commission was created in 1975 to support the natural resource management activities of the 20 treaty Indian tribes in western Washington. The commission’s 65-person staff supports member tribes in efforts ranging from fish health to salmon management planning and habitat protection. The commission also acts as a forum for tribes to address issues of mutual concern, and as a mechanism for tribes to speak with a unified voice in Washington, D.C.

Information from Wikipedia.

Keep Big Oil Out of Grays Harbor

By Billy Frank, Jr.

Our environment, health, safety and communities are at risk from decisions being made now to transport and export trainloads of coal and oil through western Washington.

If coal export terminals proposed for Cherry Point near Bellingham, and Longview on the Columbia River are approved, hundreds of trains and barges would run from Montana and Wyoming every day, spreading coal dust along the way. That same coal will continue to pollute our world when it is burned in China and other countries thousands of miles away.

Now that threat is joined by proposals to use mile-long crude oil trains to feed massive new oil terminals in Grays Harbor. Safety is a huge concern. Since 2008 nearly a dozen oil trains have been derailed in the U.S. In December, a fire burned for over 24 hours after a 106-car train carrying crude oil collided with a grain train in North Dakota. In July, an oil train accident killed 47 people and leaked an estimated 1.5 million gallons of oil in Quebec, Canada.

It’s clear that crude oil can be explosive and the tankers used to transport it by rail are simply unsafe. These oil trains are an accident waiting to happen to any town along the route from the oil fields of the Midwest to the shores of western Washington.

Plans for shipping crude oil from Grays Harbor also include dredging the Chehalis River estuary, which will damage habitat needed by fish, shellfish and birds. Large numbers of huge tanker ships moving in and out of the harbor would interfere with Indian and non-Indian fisheries and other vessel traffic.

The few jobs that the transport and export of coal and oil offer would come at the cost of catastrophic damage to our environment for years. We would have to live with that damage for many years. Everyone knows that oil and water don’t mix, and neither do oil and fish, oil and wildlife, or oil and just about everything else. It’s not a matter of whether spills will happen, it’s a matter of when.

Thankfully, the Quinault Indian Nation is taking a stand. “The history of oil spills provides ample, devastating evidence that there are no reasonable conditions under which these proposed terminal projects should proceed,” says my friend, Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Indian Nation. “We oppose oil in Grays Harbor. This is a fight we can’t afford to lose. We’re in it to win. Our fishing, hunting and gathering rights are being jeopardized by the immediate and future impacts of these proposed developments.”

Right now public hearings are being held and Environmental Impact Statements are being developed for these oil export schemes. You can send comments to Maia Bellon, Director of the Department of Ecology, 300 Desmond Drive, Lacey, WA 98503-1274.

I urge you to join the Quinault Indian Nation and the many others who are battling Big Oil on this issue. Email ProtectOurFuture@quinault.org or more information.

“We have a responsibility to protect the land and water for the generations to come. Together, we can build a sustainable economy without sacrificing our environment,” says Sharp.

She’s right.