where the salmon run - Washington Secretary of State

spirit of the father 23
Billy Frank Jr. personal collection
Forced to cut his hair, silence his tongue, and learn the American way, Willie
Frank Sr. took up the big horn at boarding school and played the “Star-
Spangled Banner.” Seated, middle row, fourth from left.
At boarding school, Willie Frank even learned about the whites’
God and their heaven. “If you die, you go to the great place that’s got
everything,” his teachers told him. The religion never made much
sense to Willie. He already lived in paradise. The mountain fed the
river. The river and the land fed his people. Every year, the salmon
returned, darting upriver to spawn. And Willie was alive. No. He
didn’t need the whites’ faith. “The Indian, he don’t believe in the
God, white man’s God,” Willie often said. “He believed in the Great
Spirit, that’s what [Indians] called what they believed in, the Great
Spirit, some kind of spirit.”
One day Willie’s trousers split from the crotch to the bottom of
the pant leg. That was the end of St. George’s Industrial School for
him. “I’d go to the seamstress three times and she had no time to sew