Birthday of Hank Adams

Perhaps one of the most difficult lives to try to distill into a short blurb, Hank Adams was a Fort Peck Assiniboine & Sioux activist known as a successful strategist, tactician, and negotiator. Raised on the Quinault Reservation of coastal Washington, he was instrumental in the fish wars of the Pacific Northwest and author of the 1972 Twenty Points demands delivered to Washington DC for the Trail of Broken Treaties. He was an expert in Indigenous law and supported Native struggles across North America. Vine Deloria Jr described Adams as "one of the most intelligent" people he ever met. (Americans Before Columbus, Oct 1963). He was a member of National Indian Youth Council and Survival of American Indians Association of which he served as president for 52 years. In the court case which led to the Boldt decision he was admitted as lay council to represent Billy Frank, Jr., and Reggie Wells and other Nisqually treaty fishermen resulting in the landmark ruling which affirmed tribal rights under 1854-56 Treaties. During the fish wars in 1971 he was shot in the stomach by racists while fishing on the Puyallup river. About the attack he said, “I can’t identify him. But hell, I’ve seen him before—in a thousand taverns, in a thousand churches, on a thousand juries.” He is also credited for helping to resolve the conflict at Wounded Knee in 1973.