The Lumberjack

Issue date: 2/6/08 Section: Community

Media Credit: Seventh Generation Fund

Tia Oros Peters recalls a day when armed police barricaded indigenous people and their issues from crossing a New York City street into United Nations headquarters.

That was 30 years ago. This year, on Jan. 22, Oros Peters returned to New York City. She was not met by armed police. Instead, a newly installed U.N. officer, her colleague Tonya Gonnella Frichner, greeted her.

"We've come a long way," Oros Peters said.

Indigenous people worldwide have struggled for a seat at the U.N. table for decades. Now the U.N. hosts a permanent forum dedicated to the discussion of indigenous issues. As a citizen of the Onondaga Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and founding president of the American Indian Law Alliance, Frichner began a three-year term as the North American representative on the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

"We wouldn't have been there [at the U.N.] without Tonya," Oros Peters said on behalf of Seventh Generation Fund, a 31-year-old Arcata based non-profit organization. The coalition's philosophy is to make every action with the wisdom and respect of seven generations past and with the hope and vision of seven generations to come - looking out, not just for their own, but for those of the past and future.

Frichner also serves as vice chairwoman of Seventh Generation Fund's board of directors, a seat she earned in the '90s while working with the American Indian Law Alliance.

The American Indian Law Alliance, based in New York, advised Seventh Generation Fund regularly and the groups shared a common goal: indigenous peoples' rights. That shared goal brought them closer together and closer to the U.N.

Frichner's U.N. platform focuses on advocating for the rights of indigenous women and girls, an underrepresented population that Oros Peters said continues to be the most victimized group of people in the world.

Oros Peters cited a national study conducted by the Community Resource Alliance in Minnesota which found that American Indian women are 8 and a half times more likely to be victims of domestic, physical or sexual abuse than any other ethnicity.

But Frichner's work will not stop at the rights of women alone. Her job with the U.N. includes representing all of North America, including Canada.

Tupac Enrique Acosta is the founder of Tonatierra Community Development Project in Arizona. She is also a member of the Seventh Generation Fund board of directors. "This is a very positive step in a sequence of empowerment globally and specifically in North America," she said.

Continued...

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