What is the Fourth World?
The indigenous peoples of the world - the fourth world as it is called sometimes - are about 250-350 millions. They exist on all continents, from the Indians of America - 2-3 millions in North America and tens of millions in Central and South America - to the peoples of the archipelago of the Pacific Ocean, Polynesians, Melanesians and Micronesians. More than 30 millions of people in Southeast Asia, more than 50 millions in India, and more than 70 millions of people in China belong to the fourth world.

Also, the Aborigines of Australia, hunter/gatherer peoples of Africa - well known are the "Pygmies" and the "Bushmen" - in Central and South Africa, and numerous groups of nomads in Africa, the Middle East and West Asia belong to the fourth world.

Also the circumpolar peoples - Inuits/Inuks ("Eskimos"), Aleuts, Saamis, Ainus in the North of Japan and the different indigenous peoples of Siberia - belong here, like many peoples in other parts of the former Soviet Union and in Central Asia.

In literature and massmedia these peoples are often used as symbols of a lost paradise - but their real, often very difficult, situation today is not high-lited. Nobody asks how they feel about their situation, how they view their own history. All too often they are characterized as "population fragments"- but 1 million Kurds live divided in the states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The examples can be multiplied.

In countries like Guatemala and Bolivia the indians are the majority of the population. There is no doubt that these peoples constitute, historically and in many cases still today, cultures representing integrated alternatives to the industrial and state societies.

Usually, the colonial powers determined their national boundaries right across these peoples traditional habitats. British colonials determined the boundary between India and Burma - right across the territoriy of the Naga people. The same applies to the approximately 70.000 Saamies, whose territories have been divided by Norway, Sweden, Finland and the former Soviet Union. Their collective human rights have been abused.

Indigenous peoples - a definition
The indigenous peoples should have the possibility to continue practice their costums and traditions including their religion in the way they prefer.

Many of these peoples have today been forced to undergo a process of assimilation into the cultural and political life of their official country. Their traditional territories have been drained of natural resources by the nationstates, often with no compensation to the traditional holders of the land, and seldom is the land recovered to the indigenous peoples after they have been officially recogniced.

The various cultures of the indigenous peoples are a part of the cultural patrimony of the entire mankind. But these peoples claim education in their own languages as well as their right to use their own. Still, there are many peoples among the indigenous populations that have the following decisive characteristics:

a. The people or the ethnic group are descendants to the people who lived in the territory when this was taken through conquest, invasion or in other ways by strangers. The Maoris of New Zeeland, the Inuits of Greenland, the Aborigines of Australia and the Indians of America are unmistakable examples.

b. These descendants are not currently the politically dominant group in the state in question.

c. There exist cultural differences between the indigenous people or ethnic group and the dominant people.

d. The people or ethnic group consider themselves an indigenous population.

Since immemorial times hunting-gathering, agriculture, fishing or cattle breeding have been the livelihood of these peoples - or a combination of these ways of living. Today some of them are "integrated" in the slums of the third world cities or live in urban areas.

The rights of the indigenous peoples
There is no UN-declaration concerning the specific rights of the 300 millions or so indigenous peoples. Still today, many of these peoples are not guaranteed their rights and autonomy. It is common in the world of today that nationstates have several different peoples/"tribes" within their boundaries. In the mass media, we have been able to follow how millions of Afghans fled to Pakistan to escape the Soviet air attacks and the following civil war - the fact that they are Pashtuns, Tadjiks, Uzbeks, Nuristans or Hazaras is hardly mentioned, still less is said about the hundreds of thousands of nomads in Afghanistan.

At one time the Misquito indians of Nicaragua were the centre of the attention, when they were found in the middle of the cross-fire between Sandinistas and US supported Contras. Who knows how the Misquito indians live today or what their situation is like now?

Peoples like the Chechenians, the Tibetans, Papuans or indigenous peoples of the Americas, are seldom allowed to give their own view - on their own terms - about a conflict situation. The massmedia machinery ignores their point of view and a colonial situation is permanented until today, in the moderns satellite communication IT-World.

In spite of the fact that they already have been deprived of big parts of their territories, their culture and in many cases have been extinguished also physically - they are still not left mentioned in the United Nation Declaration of Human Rights. These rights have,instead been claimed, for example at the conferences held by the World Council of Indigenous Peoples in Port Alberni in Canada 1975, in Kiruna in Sweden 1977, in Canberra in Australia 1981, in Panama in September 1984, in Lima in Perou 1987, in Tromsš in Norway 1990 and in Quetzaltenango in Guatemala 1994 and at the conferences of the UN in Geneva Switzerland, and other later conferences and meetings. But the world has not recognized this - yet. Most indigenous peoples are not yet granted their rightful place among the UN-nations of the world. The Kurds of Iraq and Turkey are represented in the UN by regimes that are hostile to them. If all nations are not being represented in the United Nations, it is not really accurate to talk about any Nations being united.

The work of the Fourth World Association
We want to spread informaton about the situation of the indigenous cultures of today and through history. Many of them are not even mentioned in the history books. We have three exhibitions that can be ordered: The Mapuche Indians, The Tribal Peoples of India, and Nomads in Turkey, and many other types of informative and documentary material, posters and badges.

The Fourth World Magazine
The Fourth World Magazine contains articles about the indigenous peoples and their earlier and actual ways of living. We in The Fourth World Association are striving to make the magazine a platform where representatives for these peoples can make themselves heard.

Other types of information are a series of lectures, videos and slides to be used in schools or in other relevant contexts. We also have a series of books all dealing with different aspects of the questions above.