United Indians of All Tribes (also known as the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, or UIATF) is a non-profit foundation that provides social and educational services to Native Americans in the Seattle metropolitan area and aims to promote the well being of the Native American community of the area. [1] [2] The organization is based at the Daybreak Star Cultural Center in Seattle, Washington's Discovery Park. [3] UIATF has an annual budget of approximately $4.5 million as of 2013. [4]
Many tribes historically inhabited the Seattle area and, to a greater extent, the surrounding Puget Sound area, because of the rich resources of food and fish. Major groups of local contemporary native peoples or tribes include the Suquamish, Duwamish, Nisqually, Snoqualmie, and Muckleshoot (Ilalkoamish, Stuckamish, and Skopamish) tribes. [5] Many Alaskan Natives and Native Americans from the Inland Northwest have also come to live in Seattle. As a result, the city has a large and very diverse urban Indian population. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 86,649 American Indians/Alaskan Natives living in the Seattle, Tacoma, and Bremerton area. The Seattle area has become a nexus of many different tribal cultures from all over the country, with large influences from Coast Salish, Tlingit, Haida, and Plateau Indian cultures.
UIATF was established in 1970 during the struggle by Northwest Natives to gain ownership or control of a portion of Fort Lawton, as the United States Army had shrunk its base there. Bernie Whitebear emerged as the group's CEO, a position he held until shortly before his death from cancer in 2000. After winning the concession of a renewable 99-year lease on 20 acres (81,000 square meters) in what was to become Discovery Park, Whitebear led the fund-raising for Daybreak Star. Whitebear's brother, the designer and sculptor Lawney Reyes, set forth the "philosophy, nomenclature, and organizational needs of UIATF," working with Northwest architect Arai Jackson to design the center. Whitebear negotiated with then-governor Daniel J. Evans for a $1 million construction grant from Washington State; he also obtained an $80,000 grant for artwork for the building's interior from the Seattle Arts Commission, of which he became a member. Further donations came from tribes and corporations, including many of the materials used in the building. [6]
Beginning in 1975 with the grant for artwork, the foundation opened the Sacred Circle Art Gallery at Daybreak Star. The Sacred Circle Art Gallery features both a permanent collection as well as a temporary exhibit space. Until 2001, the gallery featured contemporary art by renowned Native artists such as James Lavadour, Edgar Heap of Birds, and Marvin Oliver. After Whitebear's death, a new group of leaders made changes to the gallery, such as changing its name from the Sacred Circle Art Gallery to the Daybreak Star Indian Art Gallery, whittling two viewing rooms down to one, and shifting the focus away from contemporary Native American art. The gallery carries some contemporary work and continues to rebrand itself. Daybreak has also put on several art markets throughout the year.
The United Indians of all Tribes Foundation also provides programs such as Indian child welfare services, therapy, and treatment; elder services, including a lunch program; a GED education program; and youth services, including advocacy, substance abuse treatment, and housing for homeless youth. Other programs have included the Ina Maka family program, education and employment services, a child development center, and the ECEAP (Early Childhood Education & Assistance Program) preschool. [7] The foundation also organizes the annual Seafair Indian Days, one of the larger pow-wows in the Northwest, held in conjunction with the city's festival called Seafair. The pow-wow draws tribal members from across the state, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Canada.
Youth services include the 25-bed home Labateyah Youth Home (sometimes written La-ba-te-yah) at 9010 13th Avenue NW, near Holman Road in Seattle's Crown Hill neighborhood. Since 1992, Labateyah has offered transitional and state group housing to youth between the ages of 18 and 24. The name Labateyah is Lushootseed for "the transformer". The program is not exclusively for Native American youth, who compose about a quarter of the facility's clients. [8] [9]
Another initiative contemplated by Whitebear was the People's Lodge at Daybreak Star, intended to include a Hall of Ancestors, a Potlatch House, a theater, and a museum, [10] later called the "Daybreak Star Village" proposal, [11] a project now indefinitely postponed for financial reasons. [12] There is also the Pacific Northwest Indian Canoe Center, intended as part of the ongoing development at South Lake Union, just north of downtown, [10] —for which ground was broken February 28, 2007. [13] Both the People's Lodge and the Canoe Center were conceived by Whitebear but left in the planning phases at the time of his death. [10]
Current UIATF initiatives include:
Proposed UIATF initiatives include:
A $3.5 million grant received October 2007 from the Northwest Area Foundation should allow the Bernie Whitebear Center, Daybreak Star College—two of the proposed projects—and the Northwest Canoe Center to proceed. The Canoe Center will be on South Lake Union. The grant will also fund various economic development activities focused on employment and small business development. [18]
The Tlingit or Lingít are Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America and constitute two of the 231 federally recognized Tribes of Alaska. Although the majority, about 14,000 people, are Alaska Natives, there is a small minority, 2,110, who are Canadian First Nations.
The Makah are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast living in Washington, in the northwestern part of the continental United States. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Makah Indian Tribe of the Makah Indian Reservation, commonly known as the Makah Tribe.
The Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center is a Native American cultural center in Seattle, Washington, described by its parent organization United Indians of All Tribes as "an urban base for Native Americans in the Seattle area." Located on 20 acres in Seattle's Discovery Park in the Magnolia neighborhood, the center developed from activism by Bernie Whitebear and other Native Americans, who staged a generally successful self-styled "invasion" and occupation of the land in 1970. Most of the former Fort Lawton military base had been declared surplus by the U.S. Department of Defense. "The claim [Whitebear and others made] to Fort Lawton was based on rights under 1865 U.S.-Indian treaties promising reversion of surplus military lands to their original owners."
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Fort Lawton was a United States Army post located in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington overlooking Puget Sound. In 1973 a large majority of the property, 534 acres of Fort Lawton, was given to the city of Seattle and dedicated as Discovery Park. Both the fort and the nearby residential neighborhood of Lawton Wood are named after Major General Henry Ware Lawton.
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Joan Hill, also known as Che-se-quah, was a Muscogee Creek artist of Cherokee ancestry. She was one of the most awarded Native American women artists in the 20th century.
Lawney L. Reyes was an American Sin-Aikst artist, curator, and memoirist, based in Seattle, Washington.
Luana Reyes was an American Indian health care administrator. As executive director of the Seattle Indian Health Board (SIHB) 1972–1982, she grew that institution from a staff of five to nearly 200 and made it a model for urban Indian institutions; subsequently, she worked for the federal Indian Health Service, eventually becoming deputy director of that 14,000-person institution.
Bernie Whitebear, birth name Bernard Reyes, was an American Indian activist in Seattle, Washington, a co-founder of the Seattle Indian Health Board (SIHB), the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, and the Daybreak Star Cultural Center, established on 20 acres of land acquired for urban Indians in the city.
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Ella Pierre Aquino was a Lummi-Yakama-Puyallup civil rights activist and community organizer who was a matriarch of the Native American community in Seattle. She advocated on behalf of foster children and co-founded the American Indian Women's Service League in 1958. She published the Indian Center News and served as editor and columnist for the Northwest Indian News. Aquino was one of the key organizers of the occupation of Fort Lawton in 1970, which led to the establishment of the Daybreak Star Cultural Center in Discovery Park. She was the subject of the 1987 documentary Princess of the Pow Wow.