Bernie Whitebear - Character and Legacy

Character and Legacy

Whitebear has been the subject of many tributes. One of the most unusual came from Washington governor Gary Locke, who in November 1997 declared him to be the state's First Citizen of the Decade, later remarking after Whitebear's death that it should have been "of the Century". Vine Deloria, Jr. called him the most important Indian of the last century.

Besides his prominence as an activist and administrator, Whitebear continued intermittently to perform on stage. He and his Gang of Four colleagues sang and danced annually at the Community Show-Offs, where they "usually stole the show".

Whitebear never married, nor had children, although Marilyn Sieber of the Nit Nat tribe was his "constant companion" for more than a decade in the 1970s and '80s, and the two were at one point engaged. However, in effect, he was like a parent to "every Indian kid in Seattle", He never acquired a personal fortune: he gave away most money that came his way to those he considered needier, even borrowing money from his siblings to do so. His only monetary self-indulgence was a collection of old cars that he tinkered with in his spare time. Most of them sat in his back yard; others ended up at Daybreak Star or in friends' yards.

Whitebear's death was front-page news in the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In fact, the Times ran front page stories on two successive days.

In memory of Whitebear, there is now a Bernie Whitebear Memorial Ethnobotanical Garden next to the Daybreak Star Cultural Center. He and his sister Luana are both memorialized by their brother Lawney's public sculpture "Dreamcatcher" at the corner of Yesler Way and 32nd Street in Seattle. The eleventh floor of King County's Chinook Building at Fifth and Jefferson is also named in his honor.