Lawney L. Reyes was an American Sin-Aikst artist, curator, and memoirist, based in Seattle, Washington.
Reyes in 2016
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.
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.
The Sinixt are a First Nations People. The Sinixt are descended from Indigenous peoples who have lived primarily in what are today known as the West Kootenay region of British Columbia in Canada and the adjacent regions of Eastern Washington in the United States for at least 10,000 years. The Sinixt are of Salishan linguistic extraction, and speak their own dialect (snsəlxcín) of the Colville-Okanagan language.
Interior of a Sinixt pithouse in the Slocan Valley
Frog Mountain in the Slocan Valley is sacred to Sinixt People
Kp'itl'els (Brilliant, BC), Sinixt village site on the confluence of the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers and historic home of the Alex Christian family
