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Annie Mae Pictou Award to be Presented, May 13, 2004 at the United Nations, 777 UN Plaza 7:00 PM. Award Ceremony held as part of "Honoring Indigenous Women Of The World" event.

New York, NY - The Flying Eagle Woman Fund, American Indian Community House,the United Nations Secretariat for the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples and the Indigenous Women's Network will commemorate the United Nations Year of the Indigenous Woman by hosting a special event the evening of May 13 in New York City entitled Honoring the Indigenous Women of the World. The event will be held at the United Nations, 777 UN Plaza, at 7:00 pm.

Honoring Indigenous Women of the World will bring together activists from Indigenous and women's communities across the globe in an inspiring event to recognize Indigenous women's leadership internationally. The honoring will also pay tribute to the courageous life of two Indigenous women tragically murdered in the course of their work for indigenous communities: Annie Mae Pictou and Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa.

Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa was an internationally recognized and beloved humanitarian killed after visiting the U'wa community in Columbia in 1999. The Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa Flying Eagle Woman Fund was established by her husband, Ali El-Issa, to carry on her legacy and memory. Annie Mae Pictou was a Indigenous activist murdered on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. The Annie Mae Pictou Award was created in 1998 by the Indigenous Women's Network to honor Annie Mae's life by affirming the strength and vision of Native women whose work is often unrecognized.

As part of the Honoring the Indigenous Women of the World event, the Indigenous Women's Network (IWN)will present this year's Annie Mae Pictou Award. IWN will honor three remarkable Indigenous women activists who are defending the sovereignty of Indigenous communities and struggling for dignity and justice: Mililani Trask, an international human rights activist from Hawaii, Noeli Pocaterra, an indigenous rights activist in Venezuela and Katrina Cantrell, a Shoshone reproductive rights and women's health activist.

Past recipients of the Annie Mae Pictou award include Katsi Cook, a Mohawk midwife and leader in the women's health movement, Cecilia Rodriguez, former director of Obrera Mujeras, the Funding Exchange, and the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico, and Nilak Butler, the late Inuit human rights and environmental justice activist.

For More Information please e-mail indigenouswoman@unitelc.com or iwn@indigenouswomen.org.

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ANNIE MAE PICTOU AQUASH AWARD RECIPIENTS, 2004

Katrina Cantrell, a Shoshone woman from the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada, is Director of Women's Health Specialists, a feminist Women's Health Center in Redding, California. She serves on the board of the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center and the National Women's Health Network.

Katrina lives in northern California where much of her life has been spent engaged in local activism in support of women's reproductive and native peoples' rights. Her passion has been creating an environment in which women can achieve their reproductive goals free from coercion, fear, or prejudice. Choosing a path of providing women's reproductive health care, including abortion services, in a rural, conservative, economically depressed community has been a constant challenge. During one five year period, there were four arson fires at the clinic. Despite these odds, the clinic, the only abortion provider in rural northern California, has survived and continues to grow.

Noeli Pocaterra was born in Moina, Venezuala, where she has spent most of her life fighting for the rights of Indigenous communities throughout Venezuala and the world. Her international activism has taken her to the United Nations on several occasions, advocating for children's rights,community health, women's rights and traditional indigenous culture.

Noeli is Wayuu, and speaks her native language wayunnaiki. She has held numerous offices in Venezuala, including her position as the President on the Rights of Indigenous People and State Relations, President of the Commission of Indigenous Communities at the National Assembly, and Second Vice President of the National Assembly. Her influence on Indigenous rights has been felt all over the world. At the international level, she organized the Inaugural meeting of the International Indigenous Communities, and was a key player in enacting the OEA Las Naciones Unidas, United Nations Indigenous Rights Declaration. Noeli is a social worker, a mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.

Mililani Trask is a Native Hawaiian attorney with an extensive background in Native Hawaiian land trusts, resources and legal entitlements. She is also an indigenous expert to the United Nations in international and human rights law.

In 1993, Miliani was invited to become a member of the Indigenous Initiative for Peace (IIP), a global body of indigenous leaders, and since that time she has worked in the global arena for passage of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Mililani participated in the United National Global Consultations in Cairo, Beijing, Copenhagen and Vienna. In 1995, she was elected the second Vice Chair of the General Assembly of Nations of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organizations (UNPO), an international body, founded by the Dalai Lama, which comprises the unrecognized nations of the world. She studied and worked for seven years with Mother Theresa of Calcutta, and has served for 11 years as Governor/Prime Minister of the Native Hawaiian Nation. In 2001, she was nominated and appointed as the Pacific representative to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples. Currently, Mililani serves as the Executive Director of the Gibson Foundation, a private, non-profit dedicated to assisting Native Hawaiians with housing issues and programs.