|
|
|
Reviews
BERNIE WHITEBEAR: AN URBAN INDIAN'S QUEST FOR JUSTICE
|
by Lawney Reyes
|
| University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2006.Photographs, maps, bibliography, index. 192 pages. $35.00 cloth, $17.95 paper. |
|
|
| This book is an encore to the first book Lawney Reyes wrote. If you read that book, White Grizzly Bear's Legacy: Learning to be Indian, then skip the first some forty pages of his new publication. The new book has extended information from that of the previous book and with biographical information about Bernie Whitebear, Reyes's brother, who was essentially eulogized before. Why the difference in the last name? Bernie was born Bernard Reyes and he made the name change after getting out of the military in 1959. Because of his remarkable contribution as an activist for the rights of Native Americans, Bernie Whitebear made history. He was in the right place at the right time to pick up the torch of the burgeoning Red Power militants in the last half of the twentieth century. |
1
|
|
Whitebear became prominent during the time when Indian culture was making its Phoenix-like recovery. I had many telephone calls with activist Robert Satiacum when he was exiled in Canada. It was Satiacum who introduced Whitebear to the tough times and became his mentor, challenging him to take on an activist life far different from what he was acquainted with. Whitebear and his two siblings — one a sister, Launa — were born and raised by their father of Philippine descent on the Colville Indian Reservation in eastern Washington. It had been a life of struggle and poverty. They were smothered in racist behavior by neighbors and strangers and shunned by their white school classmates and peers at work — when they were lucky to find work. |
2
|
|
The three Reyes children came off the reservation life with no anger, or bitterness. They each took positive positions. They became educated. They became leaders. Lawney Reyes is an acclaimed artist, and Launa Reyes was an outstanding administrator and manager. After their education and military service for the brothers, they moved over the Cascade Mountains to live near their mother in Tacoma. She had divorced their father when they were small children. Whitebear soon met Satiacum, who took him to work in the fishing business. The fishing grounds were violent turfs, with the Indians up against the whites, who had superior gear and law enforcement on their side. Indians were terrorized with the destruction of their fishing gear and rocks pelted at them. It was this experience that sharpened Whitebear's determination to participate in demonstrations in the battle for the rights of Indians, particularly for their fish. That battle was eventually won with Judge George Boldt court decision of February 12, 1974, which gave Indians 50 percent of the annual harvests of salmon. Whitebear did not stop there. One of his cronies was Robert Taylor, who Lawny Reyes writes was "a Yakima [sic] transplanted from the Yakima [sic] Indian Reservation" (p. 78). Whitebear became quite active in many endeavors in the Seattle area. The most outstanding was when he joined three other Indians who set up an Indian health center. He left his work at Boeing to become the first director of the Seattle Health Board. Launa Reyes was director of the Health Board for ten years, building a staff of nearly two hundred and making it a multi-million-dollar operation. |
3
|
|
Reyes titles Whitebear's successful pinnacle as "Another Warpath." That was the March 8, 1970, invasion of the dismantled Fort Lawton military base, all orchestrated by Whitebear, who brought in four hundred people, mostly Indians. His next battle was with the City of Seattle to whom the property had been given to carve out a land base for Indians. Whitebear called off the troops when the city handed him twenty acres of the six-hundred-acre plot. He established the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, the administrative organization that built Daybreak Star Center in what became Discovery Park. At the ceremony setting aside the acreage to the foundation, Whitebear said, "I do not consider this a treaty. History has proven that white people do not keep their word or honor their treaties. This is a legal and binding agreement" (p. 107). |
4
|
|
Anyone who knew Bernie Whitebear or who is interested in the Red Power years should read this book. This memoir is a tribute from a loving brother to his younger sibling. |
5
|
| Robert H. Ruby
|
| Moses Lake, Washington |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|