Background
Hank Adams, original name Henry Lyle Adams, was born in 1944 in the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana at a place known as Wolf Point, but more commonly referred to as Poverty Flats.
(Vine Deloria once said that Hank Adams was the most impor...)
Vine Deloria once said that Hank Adams was the most important Native American in the country. From his treaty rights work to his mediation of disputes between AIM and the US government in the 1970s, Adams shaped modern Native activism. For the first time, Adams' writings are collected, evidencing his unparalleled role in Indian affairs and beyond.
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Hank Adams, original name Henry Lyle Adams, was born in 1944 in the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana at a place known as Wolf Point, but more commonly referred to as Poverty Flats.
In 1961 Adams graduated from Moclips High School, where he was student-body president, editor of the school newspaper and annual, and a starting football and basketball player.
Following graduation Adams developed an interest in politics and moved to California where he was a staunch supporter of President John F. Kennedy and a campaign worker for the president's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, in the 1968 Democratic primary.
In 1964, Adams played a behind-the-scenes role when actor Marlon Brando and a thousand Indians marched on the Washington State capitol in Olympia to protest state policies toward Indian fishing rights. Indians reserved the right to take fish in "the usual and accustomed places" in numerous treaties negotiated in the 1850s. State officials and commercial and sports fisherman tried to restrict the amount, time, and places where Indian people could fish, thus prompting the treaty-fishing rights battles.
Adams began his activist career in April 1964 when he refused induction into the U. S. Army until Indian treaty rights were recognized. His attempt failed and he ultimately served in the U. S. Army. In 1968 Adams became the director of the Survival of American Indians Association, a group of 150 to 200 active members primarily dedicated to the Indian treaty-fishing rights battle. Late in 1968 he actively campaigned against state regulation of Indian net fishing on the Nisqually River near Franks Landing, Washington. For this and his role in the fishing-rights battles, Adams was regularly arrested and jailed from 1968 to 1971.
In January 1971, on the banks of the Puyallup River near Tacoma, Washington, Adams was shot in the stomach by an unknown assailant. He and a companion, Michael Hunt, had set a fish trap about midnight and remained to watch it. That section of the Puyallup River had been the scene of recent altercations as Indian people claimed fishing rights guaranteed by treaties, despite state laws to the contrary. Adams recovered from the gunshot wound and continued to fight for Indian fishing rights in the state of Washington into the mid-1970s.
Adams played a central role in the struggle for treaty fishing rights and has been called “the most important Indian. ” He helped resolve acrimonious confrontations between Native Americans and the federal government during the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1972 and the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973.
(Vine Deloria once said that Hank Adams was the most impor...)
Survival of American Indians Association
