Vol. 11 No. 1 (2012)

This summer 2012 issue of the Fourth World Journal celebrates the 33rd Anniversary of the Founding of the Center for World Indigenous Studies (Founded in 1979), it also celebrates a new Journal design produced by our layout artist and layout editor Liz Rubin and we celebrate the coming of a Special Issue on Indigenous Health Research we have planned for release in October 2012 edited by Dr. Leslie E. Korn. All of these milestones affirm the resilience of the world’s peoples, their knowledge systems and the relevance of indigenous peoples to the capacity of the world to understand and explain solutions to challenges in the human condition. The cover of this issue depicts an Aymara elder being arrested and jailed in violation of his rights as an Aymara living in Bolivia. His crime? Advocating the rights of Aymara to their land, to their
foods and to their way of life. We selected these images to remind our readers that even as indigenous peoples achieve great successes, commercial interests, states’ governments, universities and suburban residents living a fairly vacuous life seek indigenous peoples’ knowledge, the challenges to indigenous peoples remain large and often frightening. We see that there are many leaders and ordinary people suffering the indignities imposed by states’ government societies throughout the world. While it is still largely up to indigenous communities and their leaders to extricate themselves from the vice of subjugation, all peoples must see their own indigenous roots in the knowledge and advocacy of indigenous peoples. In this new format, inaugural issue we benefit from the insights, thoroughness and interesting writing of three important researchers. They each offer a rich and unique perspective on their subject.