Native American Indigenous

Henry Lyle Adams (May 16, 1943 – December 21, 2020) was an American Native rights activist known as a successful strategist, tactician, and negotiator. He was instrumental in resolving several key conflicts between Native Americans and state and federal government officials after 1960. Born on a reservation in Montana and based in Washington state for much of his life, he participated in protests and negotiations in Washington, DC and Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
Adams was instrumental in working to assert and protect Native American fishing and hunting rights on traditional territories free of state restrictions. He fostered change through protests and court challenges. The ruling in United States v. Washington (1974), known as the Boldt Decision, upheld by the United States Supreme Court (1979), reaffirmed native treaty fishing rights on ceded territory. It resulted in tribes becoming the co-managers of salmon and other fishing resources with the state of Washington and reserving a portion of the annual harvest for them.
Adams participated in the American Indian Movement, including its occupation of the Department of Interior Building in Washington, DC in 1972 and in the 71-day standoff of the Wounded Knee incident in 1973. In both cases Adams played important roles in negotiating peaceful resolutions of volatile situations. He continued his work to press for tribal sovereignty, as well as with tribes to restore the role of their elders. In 2006 he was honored with the 'American Indian Visionary Award' by Indian Country Today.
Early life and education
Adams was born to an Assiniboine family on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana on May 16, 1943. His birthplace was Wolf Point, Montana also known as Poverty Flats. His father Louis Adams, a bronc and bull rider, and his mother Jessie, a rodeo rider and horsewoman, divorced when he was young. The family was given an English surname when his grandfather, Two Hawk Boy, was sent away at age nine to Fort Peck Indian Boarding School, one of the Indian boarding schools established to assimilate Native American children into European-American society in the United States. He was renamed as John Adams, and his children retained the surname. Hank Adams, also known as Yellow Eagle, had one sister, Lois.
His family moved to Washington State toward the end of World War II. They settled in Taholah, Washington, part of the Quinault Indian Reservation on the Olympic Peninsula. While growing up, Adams regularly fished and worked as a fruit and vegetable picker on nearby farms, where he gained a strong work ethic. Adams was student-body president, editor of the school newspaper and yearbook, and played football and basketball at Moclips-Aloha High School in Moclips, Washington, graduating in 1961. He worked part of the time in a sawmill on the Quinault Reservation.
Adams attended the University of Washington for two years, from 1961 to 1963. While in school, he commuted to the Quinault Reservation to help combat a su***de epidemic. He left university in November 1963 immediately after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and pursued full-time work on su***de prevention for Native American youth. That year also marked the start of his long partnership fighting for treaty rights with activist Billy Frank Jr. (Nisqually).

Let us take a moment to HONOR this man
Roy Hawthorne, former USMC Navajo Code Talker. Roy walked the 2-mile parade route. Two Navajo Marines are helping him with the last half mile...
Thank you so much for your service and sacrifice to our Country....WE HONOR AND LOVE YOU!!!

"She was born on October 12, 1919, on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in Promise, South Dakota. She is a member of the Two Kettle Band Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and, and is known in Lakota as Wignuke Waste Win (Pretty Rainbow Woman). Marcella LeBeau, now 101 years old, has accomplished enough in her life to fill three centuries of living.

Each line on a Native Americans face is a badge of honor, every line holds sacred knowledge from their experiences in this life. Like the tree that has lines in their inner trunk for every year it has existed and holds the knowledge of all those years, so does these lines show the knowledge amassed in these faces. For honor and respect were shown to these elders, and the more lines meant more knowledge to share. For these Elders usually had the last word for the most important decisions for the well being of their Nation. These lines had just as much stature as Eagle feathers collected and they were shown proudly. We did not see beauty as young appearance but saw beauty and gave reverance to these lines.❤