FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, October 4, 2006 Contact: J.J. Stein, 206-829-2220

PRESS RELEASE

Indigenous Leaders and Organizations Launch Strategic Security Initiative for Peace and Economic Prosperity Across the Americas

(Seattle, WA) Beginning today, after a nine-year consultation and participatory development process with Indigenous leaders and communities across the Americas, United Indians of All Tribes Foundation (USA) and Four Worlds International (Canada) have joined forces to launch The Fourth Way -- An Indigenous Contribution for Building Sustainable and Harmonious Prosperity in the Americas. This global movement, beginning in the Americas, is simultaneously being launched at international and national conferences and through exclusive media interviews in Canada, Hungary, Mexico, Switzerland, and the United States. As well, The Fourth Way is being communicated in English and Spanish across the Americas and internationally through the extensive email networks of United Indians, Four Worlds and their supporters. Indigenous leaders Mel Tonasket (Colville), and Phil Lane Jr., (Yankton Sioux and Chickasaw), will coordinate the implementation of The Fourth Way on behalf of the Board of Directors of United Indians of All Tribes Foundation (UIATF) and the Elder’s Council of Four Worlds International. Tonasket and Lane are well prepared to facilitate this hemispheric initiative, with each having more than forty years of experience serving Indigenous communities locally, nationally, and internationally.

A founding member of the UIATF Board of Directors, Tonasket's vast experience includes serving as President of the National Congress of American Indians, Chairman and Tribal Council Member of the Colville Tribal Business Council, member of the American Indian Policy Review Commission, US Delegate and Co-Founder of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Northwest Renewable Resource Center and the Washington State Governor's Indian Advisory Committee. Tonasket is well known and highly respected by First Nations across Canada and the USA for his wise and dedicated leadership in reversing the US Government's policy to terminate Native American Tribes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and for his lifelong work to protect Mother Earth and American Indian Treaty rights, especially water, forestry, mineral and fishing rights.

Lane was unanimously appointed CEO of UIATF in 2005 and is also the International Coordinator of Four Worlds International. In 1970, after establishing the first Native American self-help prison group in Canada and the USA and implementing Native American cultural and history programs at elementary schools, high schools, and colleges, Lane moved to Bolivia to work with Indigenous peoples. While in Bolivia, Lane dedicated his life to supporting community development efforts to revitalize Quechua and Aymara cultures and to establish literacy programs in Indigenous languages. In 1972, vowing some day to come back with reinforcements from the North, Lane left Bolivia after his wife was brutally raped by the drunken son of a wealthy landowner. After returning to North America, Lane joined UIATF and served in the leadership positions of Planning Director, Assistant Director, and Director of the Education Division. Under the guidance and mentorship of the organization’s greatly loved founder and first CEO, the late Bernie Whitebear, Lane utilized a community input process to co-create the cultural, educational and social development programs that are continuing to unfold to this day in fulfillment of Black Elk’s Daybreak Star Prophecy and other related Indigenous prophecies across the Americas. These ancient prophecies clearly foretell a rapidly emerging future when the Indigenous peoples of the Americas will play a key role in establishing world peace.

Before returning to UIATF as CEO, Lane spent 25 years in Canada, where he served as Associate Professor of Native American Education at the University of Lethbridge (Alberta CA), and co-founded Four Worlds International with Indigenous elders and spiritual and community leaders in 1982. Four Worlds became an independent institute in 1995 and is known worldwide for its innovative and principle-centered approaches to Human and Community Transformation, Healing and Development. Lane has received many recognitions and awards for his leadership and service to Indigenous Peoples, including the Windstar Award and the International Award for Freedom and Human Rights. Other winners of these awards include Oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of Kenya’s Greenbelt Movement Wangari Maathai, Vice President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Yevgeni Velikhov, the Dali Lama of Tibet, former Secretary General of the United Nations Boutro Boutros Ghali, and British Lord Yehudi Menuhin, musician and philosopher.

The UIATF Board of Directors consists of nineteen distinguished Indigenous representatives who serve or have served as highly respected leaders of The National Congress of American Indians and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, as well as respected Native American lawyers and Indigenous education, community, economic, spiritual, cultural and international development leaders. On behalf of the UIATF Board of Directors, in an exclusive interview with the Editor of Pacific Publishing Company, Tonasket and Lane shared, “We present The Fourth Way with full faith and confidence that it embodies a Sacred Path to ending escalating cycles of poverty and violence and helping to build sustainable and harmonious prosperity across the Americas. From our perspective, the current path is one of escalating conflict, chaos, violence, and potential terrorism. We offer The Fourth Way as a ‘strategic security strategy’ for all concerned because we believe it will be far more effective than heavy-handed diplomatic or military approaches. Clearly, Indigenous people have the vision, the guiding principles and values, the growing capacity and collective resources to co-create a peaceful and harmonious future for all of our children and grandchildren, and hold a key to sustainable peace and security and well being for all members of the Human Family.”

UIATF and Four World's first actions towards the full implementation of The Fourth Way across the Americas includes an immediate response to Bolivian President Evo Morale's September 20, 2006 address to the United Nations General Assembly. In this address, President Morales said that Bolivia is a very rich nation with great poverty and requested support from top world organizations to rebuild his country. Speaking on the dot of midnight, wearing a jacket with Indigenous designs, Morales said, "The time has come to recover our natural resources… My government will respect private property. We need true partners, not bosses." Morales also called for a real and effective alliance to fight drug traffic while stating, "The War Against Drugs cannot be a pretext to intervening in Andean communities."

Shared Phil Lane Jr., "Our very respected Indigenous Brother President Evo Morales asked for our support. We all need to work together in spiritual unity to respond to this heartfelt request in every way possible. With the leadership of Indigenous peoples in the North, in partnership with the Democratic government of the State of Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. County, and the City of (Chief) Seattle, along with Washington State and international business and philanthropic communities, we have the capacity to support our Indigenous relatives in Bolivia and their allies, to become leaders in harmonious development and prosperity, not only in the Americas, but around the world. We in the North have much to learn from the spiritual strength, greatness and wisdom of our Indigenous relatives to the South. Although they are deeply suffering – as are many of our relatives in the North -- from material poverty, I can testify through the years I spent in Bolivia with beloved Quechua and Aymara elders and communities that our relatives to the South still manifest a sacred sense of community. In order to rebuild our Indigenous communities in the North, we must fully learn how to manifest this sacred sense of community that was almost destroyed by the misguided, unmerciful and genocidal governmental policies of Canada and the US. These policies included the culture and community-destroying implementation of church and government-operated boarding schools and years of sustained efforts to terminate our tribes and nations. Despite the challenges of the past 500 years, together in unity we have the collective economic and spiritual power, not only to become leaders in the Americas, but around the world. After the long spiritual wintertime, as prophesized by our Ancient Ones, the springtime of the Reunion of the Condor and Eagle and The Fourth Way is upon us, and there is no physical power, in heaven or earth, that can ultimately prevent the full manifestation of our ancient prophecies. As we move faithfully and steadily forward and face the inevitable tests and challenges given to us by the creator for our own perfecting, may we always remember, in spiritual sense, the sacred path demonstrated by the life and death of Crazy Horse. ‘You cannot be remembered as a good leader of warriors until you have been in front of the fiercest battles and received the deepest wounds.’”