[2] Forbes was raised in neighboring El Monte and Eagle Rock, where he began his writing career at the high school newspaper.
[3] In the early 1960s, Forbes became active as an organizer in the Native American movement, which asserted the rights to sovereignty and resisting assimilation into the majority culture.
Native Americans on the West Coast were active, gaining national attention with such demonstrations as the occupation of Alcatraz Island.
They pushed for better education, and departments of Native American studies to be established at major universities, as well as civil rights.
In this same era, various tribes filed land claim suits against the federal government or states over long-contested issues.
[9] Near his retirement, Forbes published Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples (1993), considered to be "his signature work," the product of two decades of study.