{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://dennyheck.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/us-house-votes-to-rename-nisqually-refuge-after-native-american-leader", "U.S. House votes to rename Nisqually Refuge after Native-American leader Billy Frank Jr.", "2015-12-01", "2015", "2015-12", "Democrat", "House", "WA", "Denny Heck", "H001064", "dennyheck.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "We honor and cherish today those we put in jail years ago.\nThe U.S. House of Representatives voted late Monday to rename the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge after Billy Frank Jr., the champion of Native-American treaty rights \u00a0arrested more than 50 times in the 1950\u2019s and 1960\u2019s for illegally fishing on the river.\nThe vote honoring Frank came on the 60th anniversary of the day when an African-American woman, weary from a long day\u2019s work, refused to surrender her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus. The arrest of Rosa Parks helped trigger a civil rights movement that changed America.\n\u201cWhat Martin Luther King Jr., meant to civil rights, what Nelson Mandela meant to South Africa, Billy Frank Jr., meant to the entire Northwest,\u201d Rep. Denny Heck, D-Wash., a friend of Frank, said in an emotional House floor speech.\nHeck explained that Frank not only championed fishing rights, guaranteed under the 1854 Medicine Creek treaty, but also worked to restore decimated salmon runs.\u00a0 (The Northwest is defined as every place to which a salmon can swim, author Timothy Egan once wrote.)\n\u201cHe got along with everyone: He was open and inclusive,\u201d said Heck. \u201cHis story is in the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.\u201d\nThe House did a roll call vote on renaming of the refuge.\u00a0 It passed on a vote of 413-2.\u00a0 The two \u201cNo\u201d votes were cast by Reps. James Sensebrenner, R-Wis., and Justin Amash, R-Mich.\nOne of the few House members to miss the vote was Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., who represents a Southwest Washington district that formerly included the Nisqually.\nThe legislation calls for erection of a national memorial to mark signing of the Medicine Creek Treaty, the first Indian treaty signed in the state of Washington.\nThe wildlife refuge, just off Interstate 5 north of Olympia, has become a laboratory of salmon restoration.\u00a0 With money secured by then-U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., old dikes at the mouth of the river were removed in the last decade, re-creating salt water estuaries where young salmon can grow up before migrating to the Pacific Ocean.\nEven the Bush administration\u2019s notoriously unresponsive Interior Secretary Gale Norton seemed impressed when she witnessed the reborn estuary.\u00a0 The current U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell listened to Frank at a symposium in Suquamish less than two weeks before his death.\nCompanion legislation has been introduced in the Senate by U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.\u00a0 It is expected to pass as early as this week.\nLast week, President Obama bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Frank, who died in the spring of last year.\u00a0 An estimated 10,000 people attended Frank\u2019s memorial service.\n\u201cI loved him like a beloved uncle,\u201d said Heck.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019ll give thanks for Billy Frank for the rest of our lives.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://dennyheck.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/us-house-votes-to-rename-nisqually-refuge-after-native-american-leader"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.19684187322855, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}