INFLUENTIAL STRATEGIST INVOLVED IN PIVOTAL AMERICAN INDIAN EVENTS FROM 1960S ON

Hank Adams, one of Indian Country’s most prolific thinkers and strategists, has died at age 77.

Adams was called the “most important Indian” by inf luential Native American rights advocate and author Vine Deloria Jr., because he was involved with nearly every major event in American

Indian history from the 1960s forward.

He was perhaps best known for his work to secure treaty rights, particularly during the Northwest “fish wars” of the 1960s and ’70s.

Henry “Hank” Adams, Assiniboine-Sioux, died Dec. 21 at St. Peter’s Hospital in Olympia, Wash., according to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

Adams was born in Wolf Point, Mont., on May 16, 1943. Toward the end of World War II, his family moved to Washington state, where he attended MoclipsAloha High School near the Quinault Nation. He played football and basketball and was student body president and editor of the school newspaper and yearbook.

In 1963, Adams joined the

National Indian Youth Council, where he began to focus on treaty rights just as the “fish wars” were beginning and Northwest tribes were calling on the federal government to recognize their treaty-protected fishing rights.

Adams had so many personal connections with people from that era, such as Mel Thom, Clyde Warrior and Willie Hensley. It was while Adams was working with the youth council that he first met Marlon Brando. The actor would be prominent later in the Frank’s Landing protests.

Also through the youth council, Adams began working at Frank’s Landing, on Washington’s Nisqually River, with others who were striving to advance the treaty right to fish for salmon.

“That turned into a civil rights agenda,” Adams said in an interview.

As Washington state’s fish wars heated up in the 1960s, Adams was often working with Northwest leaders on a strategy of civil disobedience through “fishins.”

The Supreme Court eventually upheld treatyprotected fishing rights.