Hank Adams

Activist

History

Adams was born to an Assiniboine family on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana on May 16, 1943.[8] His birthplace was Wolf Point, Montana[6] also known as Poverty Flats.[3] His father Louis Adams, a bronc and bull rider, and his mother Jessie, a rodeo rider and horsewoman, divorced when he was young.[3] The family was given an English surname when his grandfather, Two Hawk Boy, was sent away at age nine[8] 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.[3] Hank Adams, also known as Yellow Eagle, had one sister, Lois.[3]

His family moved to Washington State toward the end of World War II.[1] They settled in Taholah, Washington, part of the Quinault Indian Reservation on the Olympic Peninsula.[3] While growing up, Adams regularly fished and worked as a fruit and vegetable picker on nearby farms, where he gained a strong work ethic.[3] Adams was student-body president, editor of the school newspaper and yearbook, and played football and basketball[9] at Moclips-Aloha High School in Moclips, Washington, graduating in 1961.[10] He worked part of the time in a sawmill on the Quinault Reservation.[8]

Adams attended the University of Washington for two years, from 1961 to 1963.[8] While in school, he commuted to the Quinault Reservation to help combat a suicide epidemic.[8] He left university in November 1963 immediately after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and pursued full-time work on suicide prevention for Native American youth.[8] That year also marked the start of his long partnership fighting for treaty rights with activist Billy Frank Jr. (Nisqually).[2]