The
Way to the River: Advisors
Our principal advisor for this project
is Charles Wilkinson, Moses Lasky Professor of Law at the University
of Colorado, Boulder.
Professor Wilkinson, in his recent book Messages from Frank's
Landing: Salmon, Treaties and the Indian Way, has this to say about Billy
Frank, Jr., one of the prime figures in our story:
“If we go deeper and truer, we learn that Billy is best understood as a plainspoken bearer of traditions, a messenger, passing along messages from his father, from his grandfather, from those further back, from all Indian people, really. They are messages about the natural world, about societies, about this society, and about societies to come. When examined rigorously—not out of any romanticism but only out of our own enlightened self-interest—these messages can be of great practical use to us in this and future years.”
Professor
Wilkinson is also the author of Fire on the Plateau: Conflict
and Endurance in the American Southwest; Crossing the Next
Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West; The
Eagle Bird: Mapping A New West; The American West: A
Narrative Bibliography
and a Study in Regionalism; and American Indians, Time,
and the Law: Native Societies in a Modern Constitutional Democracy.
He teaches
courses on American Indian Law, the American West, and Public Land
Law.
In addition to Professor Wilkinson, we have two other scholars who will help guide our project:
Alexandra (Sasha) Harmon, Associate Professor of History in the American Indian Studies Department at the University of Washington has offered her assistance. Professor Harmon’s book, Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities Around Puget Sound is one of the definitive books about Northwest Indian history and culture.
Leonard Forsman, member of the Suquamish Tribe, Research Archaeologist at Larson Anthropological Archaeological Services, Ltd. in Gig Harbor, has also offered his services. Mr. Forsman served on the Suquamish Tribal Council from 1987 to 2002 and remains active in the Suquamish Tribal community. On a personal note, we have worked with Leonard Forsman on two previous productions we made for the Suquamish Museum, Come Forth Laughing: Voices of the Suquamish People, and Waterborne, Gift of the Indian Canoe.