Ramona Bennett (b. 1938) is a prominent Puyallup Tribe leader and activist. She was elected to the Puyallup Tribal Council in 1968, and served as Tribal Chairwoman in from 1971 to 1978. Hank Adams (Assiniboine-Sioux, 1943-2020) fought for Indian civil rights and sovereignty beginning in the 1960s and throughout his life. Both Bennett and Adams were involved with the National Indian Youth Council and the Survival of the American Indian Association, and were pioneers of fishing rights advocacy. On September 9, 1970, Hank Adams and Ramona Bennett were among 60 people arrested at an armed encampment on the Puyallup River just north of Tacoma, set up to protect Puyallup fisherman and defend their Native fishing rights. The fish-in was in protest of the three-day-a-week fishing season imposed by Washington state on Native fishers. Native activists and their supporters asserted that under the 1855 treaties with the U.S. government, they could fish off-reservation without restriction. Soon afterwards, Nixon’s Justice Department sued the State of Washington on behalf of tribes seeking to remove the state’s restriction. The lawsuit eventually resulted in the 1974 Boldt Decision, granting tribes 50 percent of the salmon and steelhead harvest and the right to regulate their own fisheries.

Here, Ramona Bennett and Hank Adams confer over legal papers outside the Pierce County Superior Court room where a trial was taking place over the rights of the Puyallup Tribe to fish on the Puyallup River.

Caption information source: “Ramona Bennett,” The Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, University of Washington, https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/bennett.htm
Caption information source: "Hank Adams, champion for American Indian sovereignty, treaty rights, dies at 77," Seattle Times, December 28, 2020
Caption information source: "State Agencies Tangle Over Indian Fishing" by Jack Ryan, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 22, 1970, p. 1