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the catalyst 243blood of all who hear him and he leaves a lesson of love wherever hegoes.”Billy also earned high marks for influencing votes at the UnitedNations in support of a moratorium on driftnets. The thirty-miletraps ensnare marine life, like dolphins and even whales, in massivesweeps of the ocean floor. Dubbed the walls of death, more thanthirty thousand miles of driftnet were deployed each day by foreignfleets before the moratorium was secured.Japan initially fought the ban, noting it would put ten thousandfishermen out of work and make the harvesting of flying squid, aJapanese delicacy, difficult.A pact was reached at the United Nations in December 1989, for amoratorium everywhere on the high seas after the spring of 1992.Japan agreed to pull half its driftnets by mid-year and the remainingby year’s end. The agreement also reduced driftnet fishing in theSouth Pacific.Hank Adams and Jolene Unsoeld, the environmentalist and congresswomanwho worked at Billy’s side, say the elder swayed votes byselling the concept of a sustainable fishery: “There’s nothing phonyabout him. I don’t know of anyone [of his stature] who has been atsuch a detailed level of pushing policy. He certainly mourns for thethings we humans aren’t doing, but there’s no bitterness.”In September 2006, the camera found the Nisqually elder at workin America’s northern-most city, Barrow, Alaska. “These are our FirstNations,” he professed, stretching his arms above the icy waters ofPrince William Sound. The elder hosted a segment of the 2008 series,This Is Indian Country, that demands that corporate America pay theforgotten victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Alaskan Natives livingin coastal communities were among the hardest hit by the accident.“These are our first nations,” Billy told viewers. “These are our firststories. This is where our lives begin.”There is no place on earth like this part of Alaska. Its untarnishedsurroundings, its stunning landscape, and its marine life lead you far