The Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa Library and Research Center

 "For so long, indigenous people from across the globe have been unable to speak, to contribute to the solutions of the problems facing humanity... As our cultures disappear with the wilderness that sustained us, we are a vast library, a repository of knowledge, intelligence and an understanding of the earth that is being lost to the world, but we continue to be victimized and ignored. If we seek to embark on the elusive search for peace, we must first unlock the silence of our peoples, and other peoples like us. Ultimate peace lies in all of us working together, to make things better for future generations.

Unlock the silence, let us speak to the world."

Ingrid Washinawatok El Issa

(from a speech delivered before the United Nations, 1998)

Among the Flying Eagle Woman Fund's most important goals is the creation of an archive and research center that will provide information on what is one of the least well-documented of the American civil movements -- the national and international struggles of American Indians during the 20th century. Largely overlooked and little understood, the modern struggle of indigenous peoples to maintain their lands, cultures, and ways of life under almost constant encroachment and impossible conditions, is one of the most remarkable feats of sustained human determination

in history. 

To document the national and international struggles of Native American Indians and Indigenous Peoples of the world during the 20th Century, this library and research center will house the finest collection of materials concerning the struggles and accomplishments of Indigenous Indian Peoples for cultural survival, sovereignty, national, and international recognition. Contributions and donations to the Flying Eagle Woman Fund of archival collections and historical materials have already been received from, for instance:

• the International Indian Treaty Council archives, a treasure-trove of international Indigenous activities;

• the American Indian Movement archives, struggles of the mid 1970's;

• the American Indian Law Alliance archives, documenting international organizing, particularly thorough  the United Nations;

• the American Indian Community House archives, documenting the urban Indian struggles particularly in the North Eastern corridor of the United States.

These voices, so vital to the emerging Indigenous struggles of this 21st Century, and increasingly, to the entire human race, will finally be provided and made easily available to students, scholars and the Indigenous Indian Peoples of the world.

 A virtual library (searchable web site based), an important feature of the planned state of the art facilities of the library and research center will insure world wide access to this invaluable wealth of human knowledge.