Billy Frank Jr., Native American activist, demonstrated the nation’s highest values. Timothy Egan | The New York Times Amanda Koster for The New York Times | May 5, 2021, 2:44 a.m. The United States is in a muddle over how to tell our history, stuck between an aggressive revisionism that would leave few commemorative statues standing, and a stubborn clinging to all the founding myths, no matter how odious or inaccurate. It’s shameful that a mob fringe has even come for Abraham Lincoln. His statue was torn down by extremists in Portland, Oregon, last fall. But there’s some good news on this front: Washington state has chosen to immortalize Billy Frank Jr., a Native American truth-teller, genuine hero and role model, who died in 2014, at the U.S. Capitol in the National Statuary Hall Collection.