The week before last, on a weekday morning, I found myself driving through the wheat fields and coulee country of Eastern Washington.
There's an Old Testament feel to the landscape: a lonely, hard, severe beauty, where redemption, if not survival, is a daily task. You pass through small towns with one street, one silo and one steeple; the late September sun a stone. If you live out here, you'd better lead a rich inner life.
I passed the calm blue waters of Lake Roosevelt. Formed by Grand Coulee Dam, it's a favorite spot for fishermen and house boaters.
And I thought of Lawney Reyes.
Reyes, who comes from a Filipino father and Lakes tribe mother, grew up in Inchelium, a small Indian village overwhelmed by the dam's backwaters that sent its occupants, along with the rattlesnakes, scurrying to the high ground. He told me the Indian looks on the slow, smooth waters of the Columbia and sees a big, dead lake.
Once the river was swift.
"You could hear it," Reyes said. "You could go to sleep to the sound of it. It was like a big concert. Now it is silent."
Reyes, who lives on Beacon Hill, wrote a wonderful book, published two years ago, about growing up near the Columbia in the 1930s, "White Grizzly Bear's Legacy: Learning to be Indian." The Reyes family led a picaresque, poverty stricken life, but something special, despite the hardship, was instilled into the Reyes kids.
Reyes grew up to become an internationally known artist who worked as art director for Seafirst Corporation. His sister Luana played a significant role in the administration of health care for this country's Indians. And little brother Bernard, a faint, undernourished presence in the book, went on to become Bernie Whitebear.
Whitebear, the late leader of the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, died in the summer of 2000 following a three-year battle with cancer. A former Green Beret, he was the one who scaled the white cliffs of Fort Lawton in 1970 to stake out a place for the Indian in the new Discovery Park. It was his vision of a People's Lodge that divided the city. And it was at his funeral at the Washington State Convention Center that emotional tributes were paid him by Patty Murray, Gary Locke, Ron Sims, Dan Inouye, Mike Lowry and others.
Dan Evans once called Whitebear a personal hero. Bill Clinton knew and liked him. Henry Jackson and Warren Magnuson were old allies and friends.
Pretty good for a poor kid from the banks of the Columbia who grew to only 5 feet 4 inches tall.
Now Reyes has written a book about his little brother Bernie. A precious piece of cultural history cast in 229 manuscript pages, it's now in the hands of the University of Washington Press, his previous publisher.
I brought up the Peoples Lodge, a big part of the Whitebear story. I told Reyes I thought it was possible for honorable people to oppose the project's original scale, since reduced.
Reyes, an unassuming man, smiled. He recounted how he paced off the original dimensions with his brother one day. After their rather long stroll, Reyes told Whitebear: "It's too damn big."
The manuscript recounts the famous 1997 banquet held for Whitebear at Union Station. Word had spread quickly after Whitebear was told he had only five months to live. The cavernous place was packed with politicians, friends and admirers. Hattie Kaufman played emcee. After a long line of emotional tribute speeches, it was time for Whitebear, looking gaunt and tired, to speak.
He mounted the rostrum, thanked everybody, and then told, grim faced, how the doctor had given him the bad news. You could hear the proverbial pin drop.
"With all due respect doctor, I would like a second opinion," Whitebear said.
The crowd, enthralled, never suspected the hovering Rodney Dangerfield moment. Whitebear related how the doctor studied him for a moment and then pronounced, "Well, all right, you are ugly, also." The crowd roared, and the night's tension vanished.
Whitebear never lost his sense of life as play, no matter how serious. Yet he stood by his convictions -he was driven to help his people-and the world finally came around to his doorstep. And he never lost his uncanny, clear-eyed vision.
His last words, spoken to his brother and sister, were: "I think this is it."
If the UW Press doesn't take the book, Reyes believes someone else will. Let's hope so. The Bernie Whitebear story could serve as a primer for a life well lived.
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