– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

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.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
night /naɪt/ A1	noun - the time of darkness between sunset and sunrise
dark /dɑːrk/ A1	adjective - with little or no light
arrest /əˈrest/ A2	verb - to be taken into custody by the police noun - the act of arresting someone
fish /fɪʃ/ A1	noun - a cold-blooded vertebrate animal that lives in water. verb - to catch fish
river /ˈrɪvər/ A1	noun - a large natural stream of water flowing in a channel to the sea, a lake, or another river.
battle /ˈbætl/ B1	noun - a sustained fight between large organized armed forces.
member /ˈmembər/ A2	noun - a person, animal, or thing belonging to a group or community.
nation /ˈneɪʃən/ B1	noun - a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.
time /taɪm/ A1	noun - the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.
fight /faɪt/ A2	verb - to take part in a battle or conflict. noun - a physical or verbal conflict.
native /ˈneɪtɪv/ B1	adjective - belonging to a particular place by birth noun - a person born in a specified place or associated with a place by birth.
food /fuːd/ A1	noun - any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth.
people /ˈpiːpl/ A1	noun - human beings in general or considered collectively.
right /raɪt/ A2	noun - a moral or legal entitlement to have or do something. adjective - morally good, justified, or acceptable.
government /ˈɡʌvərnmənt/ B1	noun - the governing body of a nation, state, or community.
land /lænd/ A1	noun - the part of the earth's surface that is not covered by water, as opposed to the sea or the air.
war /wɔːr/ B1	noun - a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country.