“At 12, (Phil) Lane says an older white child got him drunk and sexually abused him, an experience that launched Lane into years of self-hatred, shame, fear and rage. Lane tried to mask his pain and fury with drugs, alcohol and violence – he once delivered such a brutal beating to a 6-foot-5” U.S. Marine who had just returned from Vietnam that the Marine had to have one eye removed. Witnesses said the Marine started the fight, exonerating Lane from prosecution. Lane also had plenty of other fights and abusive, unhealthy relationships with women.
“Sometimes I didn’t care if I lived or died,” Lane says. “The only thing that saved me from a painful, premature death was the spiritual and cultural teachings, prophecies and stories of the greatness of our Indigenous peoples that were shared with me by my beloved parents, elders, extended family and loved ones, as well as learning about the spiritual teachings and prophecies of the great spiritual teachers who have always guided the human family.” A spiritual experience in 1968 helped Lane free himself from his self-destructive addictions and he devoted his life to serving the Creator and his people. But his suffering was not over.
After two years in Bolivia, Lane’s wife was raped by the drunken son of a wealthy Bolivian family responsible for many years of brutality and abuse of Indigenous peoples. Years later, Lane’s 9-year-old daughter was sexually abused and his spiritual sister sexually assaulted. But, like many Indigenous peoples, Lane endured, healed and learned the difficult art of forgiveness.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever had to learn in my life is the same thing that Chief Gall told my great-grandfather … and that is to love and forgive those who spitefully use you. It’s not easy. But the ability to forgive and forget is paramount in spiritual traditions all over the world if you look at the essence of the actual scriptural or spiritual teachings.
“How can you learn to be forgiving and develop the spiritual quality of forgiveness if people do things to you that you don’t deserve? How can you learn to be forgiving unless you’re treated unjustly … unless you’re treated mercifully? How do you learn that quality?”
Willard Bill Sr. said that Lane is “is very good at bringing people together. He has invited many groups to come in to have dinners and spiritual gatherings. He’s very interested in giving people access.” Adds Maestas, “Phil Lane has an international perspective, he’s a true global citizen. He’s obsessed with the notion that we are all one fabric, like Martin Luther King said. He’s been to Geneva, Venezuela, the Hague, the United Nations, pow wows, healing ceremonies, everything. I don’t know how he does it. He’s tireless.” From birth, it seemed Lane was destined to accomplish great things for his people.
“Many young people are already moving forward in The Fourth Way. If we really listen to hip-hop, in its most uplifting, universal form, we find symbolism of The Fourth Way. I believe young people have taken a major step out of the prejudices, the narrow-mindedness of the past. I believe that young people have a much greater sense of the global community than my generation ever had because of this everywhere spirit that binds us all together now in which we’re able to communicate with people in different places in the world.”
Lane, who is now married to his second wife, Suthida has four daughters and one son. He realizes that trying to implement The Fourth Way could be the most difficult project of a life and career spent trying to empower, develop and heal Native populations, but he’d have it no other way.
“I believe that every human being’s elder part of their life should be their greatest. Why should we live a life only to have the last quarter of it, the last part of the circle be the least fulfilling, it should be the most fulfilling. So, whatever it is to make a contribution, I would hope it would be the greatest contribution I’ve ever made or else why was I building the foundation in the years that went before? I don’t believe the best years of your life according to some economic charts because you can produce the most money at 45 or 46. I believe the greatest fulfilment in our lives is to become older, to become elders.“
~ http://www.unitedindians.org/publications_articles001.html
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