Billy the man

Billy the man. . , From a Nisqually and Squaxin Island Indian lineage, Bily Frank, Jr. was born in 1931 on the treasured banks of the salmon-bearing Nisqually River glacial stream originating on the sacred Mountain Takhoma. Billy learned early of the Treaty of Medicine Creek's securing a perpetual right of taking fish at all ancestral fishing grounds for Nisqually, Squaxin, Puyalup and Muckleshoot Indians. Living half his life in denial of this right to tribes by discriminatory State laws, Bily Joined a spirited resistance coupled with strategic calls upon federal courts to defend treaty rights by protecting and then enhancing fish resources and their habitats. Vital to this was the filing September 1970 of United States v. Washington leading to its 1974 Boldt Decision and creation of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission which Blilly would chair from 1977 until his death on May 5, 2014., [Captions:] , Billy Frank Jr., 1983. , MW11 President Barack Obama and Billy Frank Jr. at the White House. President Obama said of Billy; "Thanks to his courage and determined effort, our resources are better protected, and more tribes are able to enjoy the rights preserved for them more than a century ago!", The 1964 "Renegade" Indian fishermen - Jack McCloud, Don McCloud, Billy Frank Jr., Neugen Kautz , Herman John Jr., and Al Bridges. The men show their allegiance to an ongoing Treaty defense beneath the funeral flag of Billy's adoptive brother "Buck" John, a Nisqually killed in January 1945 in World War II - the year of Billy's first arrest at age 14. ,