Hank Adams

Henry Lyle Adams (May 16, 1943 – December 21, 2020) was an American Native rights activist known as a successful strategist, tactician, and negotiator.

Adams was born to an Assiniboine family on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana on May 16, 1943.

His birthplace was Wolf Point, Montana also known as Poverty Flats.

His father Louis Adams, a bronc and bull rider, and his mother Jessie, a rodeo rider and horsewoman, divorced when he was young.

The family was given an English surname when his grandfather, Two Hawk Boy, was sent away at age nine to Fort Peck Indian Boarding School, one of the Indian boarding schools established to assimilate Native American children into European-American society in the United States.

He was renamed as John Adams, and his children retained the surname.

Hank Adams, also known as Yellow Eagle, had one sister, Lois.

His family moved to Washington State toward the end of World War II.

They settled in Taholah, Washington, part of the Quinault Indian Reservation on the Olympic Peninsula.

While growing up, Adams regularly fished and worked as a fruit and vegetable picker on nearby farms, where he gained a strong work ethic.

He was instrumental in resolving several key conflicts between Native Americans and state and federal government officials after 1960.

Born on a reservation in Montana and based in Washington state for much of his life, he participated in protests and negotiations in Washington, DC and Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

Adams was instrumental in working to assert and protect Native American fishing and hunting rights on traditional territories free of state restrictions.

He fostered change through protests and court challenges.

Adams was student-body president, editor of the school newspaper and yearbook, and played football and basketball at Moclips-Aloha High School in Moclips, Washington, graduating in 1961.

He worked part of the time in a sawmill on the Quinault Reservation.

Adams attended the University of Washington for two years, from 1961 to 1963.

While in school, he commuted to the Quinault Reservation to help combat a suicide epidemic.

He left university in November 1963 immediately after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and pursued full-time work on suicide prevention for Native American youth.

That year also marked the start of his long partnership fighting for treaty rights with activist Billy Frank Jr.. (Nisqually).

Adams joined the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) in 1963.

While serving as Special Projects Director from 1963 to 1967, he met actor Marlon Brando, who later became involved in the Native American rights movement and supported protesters at several events.

Adams organized a protest march for March 3, 1964 on Washington's capital Olympia, to call attention to the state's attempt to limit Indian treaty fishing rights.

More than 1,000 Native Americans and supporters attended the event.

He invited Brando to the event, whose visit garnered national media attention.

The day before, a "fish-in" protest in Washington state was organized at Franks Landing, the first of a series of civil disobedience actions Native Americans modeled on the sit-ins of the African American civil rights movement.

Brando was arrested at the "fish-in" and was swiftly released.

In 1964 and 1965, Adams was active as the research secretary for the National Congress of American Indians.

In April 1964, he refused to be inducted into the military unless traditional Indian treaty rights were honored by the federal government.

Although his rebellion attracted media attention, he later served a two-year term in the Army from 1965 to 1967.

In 1968 Adams became the leader of the Survival of American Indians Association (SAIA).

This collection of 200 members was concerned with protecting traditional Indian fishing rights, which were under pressure from sports and commercial fishermen and local governments.

Native Americans asserted that their rights to fish superseded state regulations.

Near the end of 1968, Adams became directly involved in the struggle and fought against state fishing regulation of Native Americans on the Nisqually River in Washington.

Adams participated in the American Indian Movement, including its occupation of the Department of Interior Building in Washington, DC in 1972 and in the 71-day standoff of the Wounded Knee incident in 1973.

In both cases Adams played important roles in negotiating peaceful resolutions of volatile situations.

He continued his work to press for tribal sovereignty, as well as with tribes to restore the role of their elders.

The ruling in United States v. Washington (1974), known as the Boldt Decision, upheld by the United States Supreme Court (1979), reaffirmed native treaty fishing rights on ceded territory.

It resulted in tribes becoming the co-managers of salmon and other fishing resources with the state of Washington and reserving a portion of the annual harvest for them.

In 2006 he was honored with the 'American Indian Visionary Award' by Indian Country Today.