<Begin Segment 12>

TI: Earlier you were talking about Bernie Whitebear meeting there about sort of doing some demonstration at Fort Lawton, and the FBI guys were on the outside.

BS: Yeah.

TI: So whatever happened with that one?

BS: Well, Bernie Whitebear, he was a veteran. He was a paratrooper and he fought in the Vietnam War, and he'd just got out and he became involved in the fishing rights movement with a guy named Bob Satiacum, who was chief of the Puyallups. And Bernie became involved in the movement. And his name was Bernard Reyes. His father was Filipino, and when he started getting involved in the Native American movement he changed his name to reflect his Indian heritage and he named, he named himself Bernie Whitebear. His father was White Grizzly Bear, so he took part of the name from his grandfather and made Whitebear. And he was very, Bernie was a very charismatic guy and he... and when he was getting his people together, about a week or two before he got the representatives from the tribes together, a group of Indians had occupied Alcatraz Island, the old prison that was vacant. They closed it down, so these Indians got in a boat and they sort of occupied Alcatraz and they were there for a couple of weeks and they got rousted out. And that became the impetus of Bernie, because the federal government had just surplused Fort Lawton, an army base out in Magnolia, and so the army surplused the land to the original owner, the city of Seattle. Well, Bernie and those guys said, "Well bullshit, we're the original owner. We should have the land, this government land, this whole fort." So Bernie decided to get his people together, and they got fifty, sixty people together, and they climbed over the fence at Fort Lawton and they occupied Fort Lawton grounds. They set up teepees and stuff. There was, it was illegal occupation. And the army didn't know what to do, right? They didn't know what was going on. They they were in an area that wasn't bothering the military, whatever the military was doing. It was mostly the reserves then, and so they were left alone for a couple of weeks. And Bernie was having his meetings, he'd come out of the, he would come out of Fort Lawton and he'd have his meetings at St. Peter Claver Center. Said, "Bob, can we use your space to have our meetings here to plan what we're gonna do after we're forced out of the fort and how we're gonna deal with acquiring the land?" They had to bring in lawyers and everybody else, and so to have this meeting at St. Peter Claver Center, all these young Indians are there, and you know, you been to an Indian, a Native American ceremony? You know they, they have the sage and the smoke from the sage cleanses your spirit and it, whatever it does. Well, after the meeting Bernie has one of the nuns -- the Maryknoll nuns were still, they were still living in the convent - - comes running up to me and says, "Mr. Santos, Mr. Santos. Those kids are starting to smoke the sage." I said, "It's okay, Sister. It's okay. They're cool." Well, they were, yeah, it wasn't the sage. It was somethin' else.

Anyway, so Bernie and I met and we became very, very close 'cause he wanted to know more about his Filipino heritage from me. It was about the same time all this stuff was happening and all these groups are meeting at St. Peter Claver Center. Larry Gossett was the leader of the Black Student Union and aligned himself with the Black Panthers.

TI: So the Black Student Union at the University of Washington?

BS: At the University of Washington, and him and some of his buddies, there was an issue at Franklin High School where two young African American girls were sent home because they were going, they were attending school with their afros, and the administration at Franklin said, "Tthat's not proper. That's not proper dress for school attire. You have to have your hair cut." And so there was this big occupation of Franklin High School by Larry Gossett and some of his folks from the Black Student Union, and so they disrupted the whole afternoon, and the students, the black students came into the auditorium to hear Larry Gossett and the only teacher to show up with the students was a guy name Bob Maestas, a teacher at Franklin High School, history teacher. And that was Roberto, and it was from there that Larry and Roberto became very close, right after that. They had met a couple, Roberto started attending more of the meetings and the demonstrations and the rallies, that kind of stuff, and became very militant. Roberto became very militant, quit the school and brought a bunch of Latinos together, and after Bernie occupies Fort Lawton, Roberto occupies the vacant school, Beacon Hill School, to be used as a cultural center for the Latino population. It was about two months before Roberto occupies Beacon Hill School that Larry Matsuda, John Eng, and some Asian guys got together, were planning the occupation of Beacon Hill School for Asian, for an Asian community center.

TI: Oh, I didn't know about this. So the Asian community had a similar idea?

BS: Yeah, had the idea before the Latinos did, but for some reason it sort of, it sort of died out, that issue, and without knowing the Asians got together, Roberto got his people together and they actually physically occupied the building, the school building. And as --

TI: So was there any behind the scenes conflicts between the Asian group and the Latino group about that?

BS: No. It was, you know, they beat us to it, so we have to move on to something else. At that time a lot of issues were happening in the International District, so a lot of the Asians started to pick up some of the concerns about the construction of I-5 through the International District, I-90. And this was even before the Kingdome was planned, but there were a lot of, our attention was starting to focus on issues in the International District.

TI: And this is, like, the beginning of InterIm and things like this?

BS: Yeah. This is towards the end of the '60s.

TI: Okay, so we're gonna take another break right here before we go into that next phase.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.