Where the Salmon Run

Where the Salmon Run follows the life and activism of Billy Frank, Jr., a member of the Nisqually tribe in Washington state who became one of the most prominent American Indian activists during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 1970s.  Frank was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 because his activism—Frank hosted fish-ins that were modeled after sit-ins—that led up to 1979 Supreme Court case United States v. Washington, commonly known as the Boldt Decision. That ruling maintained the rights of American Indians to fish in waters in the Northwest as part of the terms of a century-old treaty with the U.S. government that gave them fishing rights in exchange for land from the tribes, terms that the state tried to curb as demand grew over the years. The book was autographed by Billy Frank, Jr. He is also featured in the National Museum of the American Indian exhibit, Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations, which runs through 2021.