The Way Forward with Tonska Brock Pierce and Hereditary Chief Phil Lane Jr.

Описание: Tonska Brock Pierce is best known globally as an independent presidential candidate, entrepreneur, child actor, investor, founder of Blockchain Capital, and philanthropist for various ventures across different industries, including entertainment and technology. He's been credited with pioneering the market for digital currency and has raised more than $5B for companies he has founded.

His philanthropy in this area focuses on the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Center for Individual Rights, and the Brennan Center for Human Rights. Pierce is a frequent lecturer at Singularity University and has spoken at the Milken Global Conference, Mobile World Congress, Wired, INK, Stanford University, USC, and UCLA. He has been featured in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Wired, and Rolling Stone.

But very few people know about Tonska Brock and his great love and support for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and beyond. He received two sacred Lakota names for his support of the Oceti Sakowin in their stand at Stand Rock to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline that was planned to cross the Ogallala Aquifer and extend across Nebraska to the oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico past Huston. He has also greatly supported the peoples in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and the Kojis in Columbia. Most recently, he and his team attended and made possible the Lighting of the Eighth Fire in Hidalgo, Mexico.

Hereditary Chief Phil Lane Jr. is an enrolled member of the Ihanktonwan Dakota and Chickasaw Nations and is an internationally recognized leader in human and community development.

During the past 55 years, he has worked with Indigenous Peoples from the Americas, Micronesia, South East Asia, China, India, Hawaii, and Africa. In 1982, while serving as a tenured member of the University's Faculty of Education, Chief Phil founded the Four Worlds International Institute (FWII) with Indigenous elders and spiritual leaders across North America.

FWII became an independent Institute in 1995. With Chief Lane’s guidance and applied experience, FWII has become an internationally recognized leader in human and community development because of the Institute’s unique focus on the importance of culture and spirituality in all development elements.

Chief Phil has been the recipient of multiple awards and recognition. He was the first Indigenous person to win the prestigious Windstar Award, presented annually on behalf of the late John Denver and the Windstar Foundation. In 2000, he received the Year 2000 Award for Freedom and Human Rights from the Swiss Foundation. Other award winners include Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, the Dalai Lama, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and Yevgeni Velikhov, Vice President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

In 2008, Chief Lane received the Ally Award presented by the Center for Healing Racism. Particular emphasis for this award was for his dedicated work, for more than 19 years, as one of the vital Indigenous leaders in the resolution of Canada's Residential School issue, which involved the sexual, physical, cultural, psychological, and emotional abuse of thousands of Aboriginal children in Canada. The process resulted in a settlement of more than $4 billion for Residential School survivors.

On August 15, 1992, recognizing his hereditary lineage of leadership and longtime service to Indigenous Peoples and the Human Family, Indigenous Elders from across North America recognized Phil as a Hereditary Chief of the Hinhan Wicasa and Deloria Tiospayes of the Ihanktonwan Nation through a Traditional Headdress Ceremony.

In November 2023, he received the 2023 Stellar Award for Service to Humanity. His Co-Award Winner was his sister Monica Polacca, a Native American spiritual elder from Arizona.

Grandmother Mona has worked to further social justice for Indigenous people from an early age. She is an author in social sciences, has held posts of responsibility as Treasurer for her tribe, served on several committees for Indigenous Peoples within the United Nations, and is widely known for her "leadership in the Native American revitalization movement. In recent years, Mona has gained international recognition for her work as one of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers - a group of spiritual elders, medicine women, and wisdom keepers founded in 2004.

Chief Lane is a member of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) Council of Elders, an Honorary International Advisor to the Help Foundation of the Beijing Women's and Children’s Development Foundation, and a co-founder of the United Religions Initiative (URI).
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