George Spears helped troubled children
By Bill McAuliffe
Star Tribune
Even as a young Macalester College student, George Spears was looking for ways to enhance his strengths as
a man of his people.
"He was clear about what his role
was," said the Rev. John E. Robertson, a priest at the Bishop Whipple
Mission at the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Morton, Minn., who was a friend of Spears' older brother and a
fellow student at Macalester three decades ago.
"I don't like the term
'bridge-builder,' " Robertson added. "He was
a man who knew who he was, and wanted to provide the best he could from a
system that probably didn't understand completely who he was and the people he
represented."
Spears, a member of the Red Lake band of
Chippewa who went on to become a social worker with Indian children in troubled
homes in Minnesota and the Dakotas, died Sunday after suffering a heart attack
while running the Twin Cities Marathon. The lifelong runner, jewelry-maker,
advanced karate practitioner, father of seven and foster parent of eight was
49.
Spears had been a runner since attending
high school in New
Mexico, said
his son, George Jr., who also ran Sunday's Twin Cities
marathon but didn't learn that his father had died until after the race.
He said his father had run marathons in less
than 3 hours.
"He told my mom [Sunday] he was trying
to beat me," George Spears Jr. said Monday. "I rolled my ankle in the
middle of the race, and he probably could have. I knew something was wrong; I
just kept looking back."
George Spears Jr. said his father and all
his four sons often ran together. They also had plans to go deer hunting in the
coming weeks near Red Lake.
"He was a really good hunter with gun
and bow," he said. "He pretty much taught us all about tracking. He
was very talented at the more traditional kinds of things. He kept a real
traditional life."
Professionally, George Spears Sr. worked to
place Indian children in stable families under the terms of the Indian Child
Welfare Act. Sometimes that meant working with birth families to keep custody
of their own kids, Robertson said. Spears' approach to his work, Robertson
said, was the same as it was in his jewelry making.
"Whatever turquoise he got, that
determined his silver," Robertson said. "And he didn't cut the kids,
or put them into anything they weren't. He'd build their showcase around them.
He took and created beauty from what was presented, what was natural."
George Spears Jr. also noted that his father
was passionate about tribal politics, even running once for tribal treasurer
without winning.
"He was a servant for his people, I
guess," George Spears Jr. said. "That's pretty much how he lived his
life."
