Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,047

This is the grave of Bernie Whitebear.

Born in 1937 in Nespelem, Washington, Bernie Reyes was half Sinixt and half Filipino, the latter on his father’s side. He grew up much more with an Native identity than an Asian one, as her father basically lived as his mother wanted. Mostly, he grew up on the Colville Reservation in northeastern Washington, a large piece of land where a lot of tribes were thrown after the genocidal conquest in the late 19th century, most famously the Nez Perce. The Sinixt were another of those tribes and I think his mother had grown up there. They ran a Chinese restaurant for workers building the Grand Coulee Dam, which borders the reservation. They had a Chinese partner. His mother later her left her husband and married the Chinese guy. The family was very, very poor, often with electricity and food itself was sometimes in question. His older sister Luana, who would make a major impact herself on American life later due to her work with the Indian Health Service, went off to boarding school, but the younger Bernie stayed with his grandparents for the most part and sometimes with his father.

Reyes was a pretty good student and went off reservation to Okanogan High, where he was a very fine trumpet player. Then it was off to the University of Washington. It was had for a Native and Asian kid at a university in the 1950s. He went for a year, dropped out, lived with his mother who was now in Seattle for a bit, and fell into some Native activists who were determined to fish for salmon regardless of what the state had to say about it. After all, they were guaranteed that salmon in treaties signed in the 1850s and if the state and racist Washington whites wanted to challenge them, they’d push back.

In 1957, Reyes enlisted in the Army and served a couple of years. Upon his return to civilian life in 1959, he changed his name to Bernie Whitebear to reflect his Native identity. He got more involved in the fishing rights issues being pushed by people such as Bob Satiacum and Billy Frank, Puyallups ready to be arrested in order to fish for salmon. The 60s became an enormous learning period for Whitebear. Termination, the Eisenhower-era genocidal attempt to eliminate special status for the tribes, forced many Native Americans to the cities, where they lived in great poverty. Whitebear was spending lots of times in Tacoma and Seattle. Indian bars were major gathering places. They were also violent spaces. Whitebear was learning about politics while also beating up other people and getting himself beat up plenty too. He and his Puyallup friends were basically a gang, but that’s to be expected in a poverty situation like this. Then, in 1961, the state of Washington appealed to the Kennedy administration to terminate the Colville Reservation, where Whitebear had grown up. The new administration had far less interest in this than the Republicans had, but it still had to be fought and Whitebear became prominent in defending his people’s land.

Whitebear moved to Seattle in 1961, got a job at Boeing, and became a major Native rights organizer in the city. This was the era of Pan-Indianism, as these different tribes forced into the cities began to realize that they had a lot in common with each other and that old animosities meant less than gathering together to fight white domination of all of them. Whitebear was a major player in this by organizing pow-wows in Seattle. These became such a big deal that by the late 60s, they were touring Europe to fascinated audiences.

Whitebear was also angry at the lack of health care for Native Americans. He and others started medical clinics specifically for Native Americans in Seattle. He was certainly not alone here; the Seattle indigneous community had become quite politicized and organized in the last few years. They started the Seattle Indian Health Board and Whitebear became the executive director. He later passed this on to his sister Luana, who still used the family last name of Reyes. In truth, he was distracted for the year he ran it because he got focused on gaining land for Native Americans in Seattle.

By all accounts, Whitebear was hyper focused on making life better for fellow Native Americans in Washington’s cities. That was his life mission. He was evidently a brilliant guy and someone who was pretty intense and driven, so he was the right person for the job. Land was the ticket. Land would provide a cultural center and an identity that would force white Seattle to wake up to the Native communities in their city, which was really quite large both because of the sizable indigenous population that had always lived there and because people such as Whitebear and so many others had moved there for economic opportunity or because they were shoved there during Termination.

Fort Lawton was an old military base in Seattle. It was used as a radar station in the 60s, but then the Army decided to shutter it. Seattle wanted to turn it into a park. But in 1969, led by Richard Oakes, the Indians of All Tribes had occupied Alcatraz Island and got a ton of attention over it. So Whitebear and his comrades, including Ella Aquino, Sid Mills, and Ramona Bennett–decided to try this at Fort Lawton. Oakes came up to help. They decided to occupy the fort. Now, Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, was probably the biggest center of anti-war militancy in the U.S. military. There was a ton of activism there, to the extent that the military restricted soldiers from visiting the antiwar coffeehouses that were the center of this activism. Well, as part of supporting the anti-war troops, Jane Fonda was in town. So she came up to help publicize this. Soon, a military patrol spotted and arrested them. Another occupation in April had the same result. Seattle’s government gave in and the activists received twenty acres of land to create the Daybreak Star Cultural Center, which remains open today, telling the story of Indigenous peoples in the Puget Sound area, holding powwows, and creating a preschool.

Now, some activists are in it to be activists and others are in it to build stuff. Whitebear had become the latter. He lead the fundraising for Daybreak, got a $1 million grant from the state to get it open, and built tons of connections with other civil rights organizations around Seattle, in the Black, Latino, and Asian communities. He was especially interested in working with the city’s large Asian community because of course he was half-Filipino himself. Daybreak would build to have a major impact in the community, engaging in cultural and political activities, childcare, and other social services. Whitebear would later serve on the Seattle Arts Commission and was appointed to the board of the National Museum of the American Indian when its planning was announced in 1995.

Unfortunately, Whitebear didn’t live to see the generally excellent NMAI open in 2004. He developed colon cancer, was diagnosed in 1997, and died in 2000. He was 62 years old. To the very end, he worked on his community in Seattle. Another thing he did not live to see open was his much desired People’s Lodge at Discovery Park, the centerpiece of the Indian Cultural Center there.

Bernie Whitebear is buried in Pia Mission Cemetery, Stevens County, Washington. If you would like this series to visit other Native fighters for justice, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Richard Oakes is in Stewarts Point, California and Billy Frank is in Nisqually, Washington. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.