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On a dark winter night in
1945, a shout rang out on
the banks of the Nisqually River:
“You’re under arrest.” Billy Frank Jr.—
just fourteen at the time—called back,
“Leave me alone! [...] I live here!” before being hauled off to a holding cell.
He didn’t know it then, but his arrest was one of the earliest battles in what would
later be known as “The Fish Wars.”
Hi! I'm Che Jim, and welcome to Crash Course Native American History.
[THEME MUSIC]
That night on the river,
Frank Jr. was checking his
fishing nets—
just like his ancestors had done for generations.
He was a member of the Nisqually Nation, one of many in the Pacific Northwest that fished
the rivers there for ages.
It was his first time being arrested,
but it wouldn’t be the last.
In the years to come, he’d be handcuffed at least
fifty more times.
Threatened and harassed too many times to count.
And he’d inspire dozens of
others to join him in his
nonviolent resistance.
See, for Native people, the food you eat
defines who you are.
And not in a health-conscious “you are what you
eat” kind of way.
Frank Jr., and other members of the Nisqually, had
a strong connection to the fish they ate.
For them, salmon were gifts
from the Creator, to be
honored and protected –
even if that meant facing jail time.
But to understand how it ever came to that, let’s take a step back.
In episode two, we talked about sovereignty, the
right of Native nations to govern themselves.
Today, we’re going to talk
about a different kind of
self-governance:
food sovereignty, the right
of Native nations to use
the foods that have sustained their communities
since time immemorial.
Before Europeans arrived, Natives from coast to
coast had their own distinct, culturally defined
behaviors, beliefs, and
attitudes surrounding their
traditional foods.
Their menus were local and seasonal, rotating
among hundreds of different kinds of plants and
animals.
Like, the Algonquin tribes knew June as the
Strawberry Moon—
the month that marks the beginning of berry
season.
And the Shawnee knew September as the Pawpaw Moon—
the month when you can enjoy an enormous
custardy fruit that’s, like,
the mango of the Midwest.
Native peoples also stockpiled certain foods to
enjoy year-round.
Like, many in what’s now
California created a flour
out of raw acorns by drying,
shelling, smashing, and
flushing out their bitterness.
Then, they'd use it to whip up a batch of soup,
bread, or mush.
Other Native nations, like the Haudenosaunee and
Cherokee, depended on corn—
grown either on its own or closely planted with
beans and squash.
They knew these crops as the Three Sisters—
because, like family, they
protected each other and
grew better together.
Unlike the Two Brothers: orange juice and toothpaste, which are sworn enemies.
But that all changed when Europeans began colonizing the land we now call the United States.
In just over 300 years, Native nations across the
country lost 99 percent of the lands where they
hunted, fished, gathered, and grown food for
longer than anyone can remember.
And between the 19th and 20th centuries, as the
U.S. government forced Native
people off their lands,
they used federal boarding schools to eradicate
their cultures altogether.
Native children were
separated from their families,
their languages, their traditions—and their foods.
Students in boarding schools were often fed
low-quality rations,
and punished if they ate
anything they’d personally
grown while laboring on the school farms.
At the same time that Native people were being
separated from their traditional foods,
settlers were exploiting those food sources in
unsustainable ways.
Like, traditionally, the Great Sioux called
themselves Pte Oyate or “Buffalo Nation,”
viewing buffalo as the source of everything they
needed to survive—
what they ate, what they wore, how they sheltered
themselves.
They even played an important role in their creation story.
In the early 19th century,
at least 30 million buffalo
roamed the plains.
But as railroads expanded west, hunters on trains
killed the herds en masse.
The numbers vary, but by
1887, it’s likely that fewer
than 100 individual buffalo remained in the wild.
Not only did this eliminate
a traditional food source
for many,
but for groups like the Great Sioux, it destroyed
their way of life, too.
And that destruction was often the point.
American soldiers were
ordered to kill every buffalo
on sight because, quote,
“every buffalo dead was an Indian gone.”
The U.S. government knew that without the
buffalo,
Native Americans would starve, which meant that they
would be more willing to sign treaties and hand
over land to them.
Which brings us back to Billy
Frank Jr. and the Fish Wars.
In the mid-19th century, the Nisqually and other Native nations who define themselves as “Salmon
People”
signed treaties with the U.S. government, ceding
millions of acres of land in
what’s now Washington State.
But they signed under a few big conditions,
including that they’d keep
the right to fish there,
just as they always had.
But thanks to decades of logging, mining,
commercial fishing, and other man-made activities,
by the mid-20th century, the salmon population
was collapsing –
just as the buffalo had done before them.
And under state laws passed
to protect the fish, law
enforcement started cracking down on fishing.
But not in the offshore
spots, where bougie fishing
boats were catching most of the salmon.
They disproportionately monitored the riverbanks—
where Native people and their nets took in less
than 5 percent of the annual catch.
‘Cause that’s fair.
And that’s how Frank Jr. first got arrested for
fishing—
which, at the time, he didn’t consider to be a
political act.
It was more about having something to eat.
But the arrests didn’t stop.
Frank Jr. and the other
Native fishers knew the history of their treaty
rights.
They knew exercising those rights was legal
according to the U.S. government,
but illegal according to state law.
And they knew that having access to fish supported
their health, their cultural identity, and their
survival.
And, well, that’s all pretty political.
So, the Fish Wars began.
By the 1960s, Frank Jr. and other Native activists
were taking part in nonviolent acts of civil
disobedience,
which is when people intentionally break laws as a
form of protest.
They staged demonstrations, including “fish-ins”
where they asserted their treaty rights.
They faced sabotage and violence from non-Native
fishermen and clashes with state police.
But they also attracted nationwide attention,
drawing support from
celebrities like Marlon Brando.
And Frank Jr. got arrested…a
lot. He was good at it.
“[I] was not a policy guy,” he once said.
“I was a getting-arrested guy.”
Then in 1974, he and other
Native activists finally
got their day in court.
In a landmark decision, called The Boldt Decision,
the judge upheld the treaty rights and ruled that
Native nations in Washington were entitled to half
of the harvestable catch.
Can we make some noise for this huge win?
[Party horn]
And that brings me to an important point.
Food sovereignty really can’t be separated from
regular sovereignty.
When communities can’t practice their traditional
foodways or access high-quality foods,
like we saw with the Great
Sioux and the Nisqually,
the health and well-being of
those communities suffers.
While it doesn’t always
lead to civil disobedience,
like in the Fish Wars,
every Native nation in the U.S. has experienced
some kind of disruption to their traditional food
systems.
And often, those distinct experiences bleed
together into a common story.
One about separation and resilience.
Take frybread for example—
a delectable deep-fried disc
of flour, salt, water, and
baking powder that’s a staple at Powwows.
But the dish itself has a complicated past.
Frybread’s origins likely trace to the 1860s, when
the U.S. government forced thousands of members
of the Navajo Nation to leave their homelands.
Hundreds died on that nearly 500-kilometer
journey to a reservation in what’s now New Mexico.
And the survivors found the land wasn’t good for
growing their traditional staples of corn,
beans, and
squash.
So, the government rations of white flour, sugar,
and lard helped them make the dough for frybread.
Other Native nations, who were given similar
rations, started leaning on frybread, too.
Some Native people today see frybread as a
reminder of how traditional food systems have
been torn apart, contributing to high rates of
diabetes, heart disease,
and other chronic illnesses.
But to others, frybread represents comfort and
resilience wrapped up in one—
making something out of nothing, and stretching it
far enough to feed everybody.
We can find that same resilience that ignited the
Fish Wars and brought us frybread in the many
Native food initiatives happening
across the United States today.
The Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project, for
example, hosts harvest festivals, maintains a
community garden, and teaches tribal members
how to prepare salmon and elk.
The Cherokee Nation shares free heirloom seed
packets with their members, encouraging them to
grow and eat the same crops as their ancestors.
And the Three Sisters Project at Iowa State
University partners with Native gardeners to study
how growing corn, beans, and squash together
nourishes people, plants, and the soil.
Plus, Native chefs have been making
their mark in the culinary world—
opening restaurants, publishing cookbooks, and
working to bring traditional
foods into the limelight.
Like Mariah Gladstone—a member of the Blackfeet
and Cherokee Nations and the host of
Indigikitchen, an online cooking show.
She shares traditional food knowledge, teaching
viewers how to make pemmican and balsamic
manoomin with dandelion greens.
For thousands of years, Native nations hunted,
fished, grew, and gathered foods that sustained
their communities and the places where they lived.
Under colonization, they faced violent
disconnection from those food systems, and
witnessed many of their food sources disappear.
But Native people also recognize that when you
nourish a community, you support its ability to
exist, now and in the future.
And that’s why many Native nations have fought to
keep traditional foods in their communities—
or are working to put them back.
Today, the salmon in the
Nisqually River still face
threats from dams, habitat
destruction, and overharvesting.
But the state of Washington now co-manages the
river and the fish alongside the Nisqually
and other
Native Nations.
And as for Billy Frank Jr.?
He remained active in
protecting the tribe’s treaty
rights until his death in 2014.
A year after his death he was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a national
wildlife refuge was renamed in his honor.
In our next episode, we'll
go back in time to Native
Americans’ first contact with Europeans.
I will see you then.
Thanks for watching this episode of
Crash Course Native American History
which was filmed at our studio
in Indianapolis, Indiana,
and was made with the help
of all these nice people.
If you want to help keep Crash
Course free for everyone,
forever, you can join our community on Patreon.
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