Detail from Reyes' 1972 sculpture Blue Jay.The eye of the blue jay, depicted here — a roughly 0.25 meter detail in this 9.15 meter-wide sculpture — is a depiction of a bear holding a white man, in tribute to Reyes' activist brother, Bernie Whitebear. The sculpture is modeled on Coast Salish tradition, although Reyes and Whitebear were (inland) Sin-Aikst.[2]Reyes' Dreamcatcher sculpture, installed at 32nd Avenue and Yesler Way in Seattle, is a public memorial to his brother Bernie Whitebear and sister Luana Reyes. The sculpture also relates to cultural diffusion among Native American tribes/nations. As noted on the plaque, dreamcatchers are originally an Ojibwa cultural artifact, but have now been adopted by Native Americans throughout the United States and Canada.
Lawney L. Reyes (1931 – August 10, 2022) was an American Sin-Aikst artist, curator, and memoirist, based in Seattle, Washington.[3]
^The biography[permanent dead link] on his official siteArchived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, accessed March 11, 2007, says that he was born in Bend, and that his family moved to the Colville Reservation in 1933, but does not give a date of birth.
