Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, beloved daughter, sister and wife to her family, and a relative and friend to thousands of Native and non-Native people throughout North America and many other lands, passed into the Spirit World on March 4, 1999.

She went to Colombia to help an Indian people struggling to survive. But contemporary Colombia is violence inexorable and Ingrid Washinawatok, whose wide, sweet smile seemed limitless, who was naturally charming and without guile, whose laughter could quiet a theater, was no match for the perpetual wrath of Colombia, where kidnapping and murder are the order of the day.

As director of the indigenous support foundation, Fund for the Four Directions, Ingrid's work was helping Indian people. No one was ever better suited or more integral to seek remedies to the needs of Indian communities. Simply put, she loved the People. She was a bright light, a uniquely positive beacon for her generation and the next. Everyone who knew her, and the list is quite extensive, loved Ingrid Washinawatok.

A luminary of her generation, Indrid was a woman of continous promise. From a proud, activist Menominee family, Ingrid joined the world of social change while a teenager in the 1970s. She is related to many among the founding families of the American Indian Movement, and logged many miles of travel to dozens of traditional Native communities, among which she is remembered and loved by a great many people.

Ingrid went to school abroad, married and settled in New York City, where she became a valued member of the American Indian community. She grew professionally and travelled widely as a young delegate for various international Indian organizations, including the International Indian Treaty Council. She became a board member of the American Indian Community House. She was a founder and main force behind the Indigenous Women's Network. She was a regular at the United Nations Working Group On Indigenous Peoples. She was on the committee for the UN Decade on Indigenous Peoples. She was a primary force for organizing the Native Council of New York, a representative network of Native professionals and organizations that has excellent reach in the city and internationally. As an Indian woman director of a major foundation, she was also a strong voice within the U.S. philanthropic community, consistently arguing for a better understanding of and intelligent assistance to Indian communities.

Of all visited places, she loved Cuba most, where she once studied at the University of Havana. She met her husband there. In the 1990s, she helped institute the annual Indigenous Legacies of the Caribbean conference in Baracoa, Cuba, a town which this week is in mourning for Ingrid Washinowatok.

In Colombia on February 25 to visit the beleaguered U'wa people, who have been fighting oil extraction on their lands, she was kidnapped along with two companions. She had gone to help, representing the Fund for the Four Directions. But security consciousness was minimal. The Uw'a people received her, welcomed her presence, but could not protect her. Two Uw'a men with the visitors were pulled aside, pistols to their heads, and left behind. No one could protect them. It was Colombia, the most dangerous country in the hemisphere, a cauldron of hostage-taking.

Many mobilized to help her. The world mobilized. All of her friends, all of her networks that were available played a role. Pressure was exerted. There was hope, if the kidnappers took their time, that they could be reached. Seasoned journalists on the scene took up the trail. The FBI got on it. The Catholic Church, experienced negotiators for such cases in Colombia, got on the case. With pressure from friends of Ingrid's such as Rigoberta Menchu and various embassadors and dignitaries, the Red Cross mobilized quickly. The Red Cross international delegate in the field, often the point of first contact in these cases, made contact with the likely abductors, identified a source, who set up a meeting for a week hence. Again, there was hope. If they want to, rebel forces can hold hostages for weeks, even years. But it was all a long shot, defeated by the twisted logic of a brutal, faraway war. The abductors never made any contact. They marched them for a hundred miles with orders to execute them. Never mind that Ingrid was an indigenous woman, as was her travelling companion, Lahe'ene Gay, who also died. Americans were to be killed; and the three were there, trying to help the people, but easy targets in a war without mercy.

Ingrid Washinawatok, Lahe'ene Gay and Terence Freitas died on Thursday morning. A ray of light that was walking upon the earth has been taken up. The one that walked among the people, who brought the people a reason for living, Ingrid, Flying Eagle Woman, passed on that Thursday morning. Beloved to her son and husband, beloved to her family, beloved to her Menominee people and beloved to all her chosen peoples, Ingrid Washinawatok is mourned and saluted as she lays down to rest upon the Mother Earth. Condolences to all her family.

Indigenous America is in mourning. Across both continents, native peoples are full of anger and sorrow that Ingrid Washinawatok, of the Menominee nation, Lahe'ena'e Gay, a native Hawaiian, and Terence Freitas were murdered after meeting with the U'wa people of Colombia regarding the creation of indigenous-based educational programs. They were found riddled with bullets in a cow pasture in Venezuela.

Bill Means, president of the International Indian Treaty Council, said that Washinawatok "probably resisted to the damn end." And that's why they shot her so many times.

Their deaths are entangled in uncertainty regarding who killed them and why. The U'wa people initially said the victims were kidnapped by leftist guerrillas. Many indigenous people (and the human rights community) say that all the telltale signs point to right-wing paramilitary death squads.

Pan-Indian alliances are growing across the Americas. Yet Indians are not safe anywhere in the Americas, as recently proven by these tragic deaths.

Catherine Davids, an American Indian activist in Flint, Mich., told us: "I cannot stop weeping for these relatives who died in Colombia. Today, I feel hundreds of years of American Indian deaths in my heart. ... More news space will be devoted to Joltin' Joe DiMaggio than to the hundreds of thousands of Indians being murdered in Guatemala, Colombia and Chiapas."

Regarding Washinawatok, Means said: "She was the epitome of young Indian women leadership. She (left) some very big moccasins to fill. We'd like our daughters or our granddaughters to be an Ingrid. She left us a strong spirit to carry on in our children."

Apesanahkwat, chief of the Menominee nation, said that even if leftist guerrillas were responsible, the plight of the poor and the indigenous, and the movement for democracy in Colombia will still be credible.

The cowardly execution of the three only hints at the violence, kidnappings and executions that are part of everyday life in Colombia. Despite the contradictory messages emanating from every sector imaginable, the community of human rights activists and indigenous people in the Americas is clear that these deaths should not be in vain, and that they must lead to the cessation of the bloodiest war in the hemisphere, which has caused more than 3,000 political killings per year.

The sad reality, said Robin Kirk, a spokesperson for Human Rights Watch, is that most of these casualties involve noncombatants, and all parties, but mostly the right wing, are involved in kidnappings, murders and the drug trade.

"We cannot allow what happened in Guatemala to happen in Colombia," said Luz Guerra, an activist from Austin, Texas, who was Washinawatok's friend. "We can't wait 25 years for a truth commission to tell us what is happening in Colombia today."

Additionally, what should be remembered are the pleas of the U'wa people -- the indigenous community from Colombia, who in the past have threatened a mass suicide if petroleum companies are allowed to desecrate their lands, lands they hold to be sacred.

The International Indian Treaty Council is calling upon the United Nations to investigate the deaths and is also contemplating its own independent investigation. These killings are bringing native peoples together once again.

In 1992, elders across the Americas said that the Eagle and the Condor, meaning native peoples in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, had united in fulfillment of ancient prophesies. An offense against one Indian became an offense against all.

That consciousness permits indigenous people to monitor human-rights violations anywhere in the Americas. Diné (Navajo) activist Eulynda Toledo-Benalli, who recently went with an indigenous delegation to Chiapas, said that Indians recognize no borders and, therefore, have the right to travel to Mexico, Guatemala or Colombia. "We're all related," she said. "This is deep in our culture. When an Indian person needs a helping hand, you reach out."

This consciousness goes beyond solidarity in that all indigenous people have the duty to actively assist other native communities, Toledo-Benalli said. For instance, she has been instrumental in registering an indigenous brigade from New Mexico to participate in the national Zapatista "consulta," or political referendum, regarding the status of indigenous peoples in Mexico, which will take place there next week. "It's important for people in Chiapas to know that Indian people in the United States care about them."

Finally, as Guerra pointed out, all eyes will now be on Colombia, ensuring perhaps that the martyrs' deaths will bring about peace with justice to that war-torn nation.

COPYRIGHT 1999 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE

*** In a communique after our column went to press, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (FARC) admitted to its role by some of its members in the kidnapping and execution of Ingrid Washinawatok, Lahe'ena'egay and Terence Freitas.

Despite the mourning and the disconcerting nature of all that has happened, all those whom we have spoken throughout the country desire that the legacy of the three will result in peace in Colombia -- a nation which has been ripped apart by a genocidal war reminiscent of Central America. More information regarding the situation in Colombia can be obtained by writing to the Colombia Support Network at: csn@igc.apc.org or visit their website at: www.igc.apc.org/csn

The three Americans who were killed while on a mission to help the Uwa people of Colombia had distinguished themselves in the United States and in international organizations as passionate defenders of the environment and of the rights of indigenous people, associates said Saturday.

Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, of Brooklyn, began fighting for the rights of American Indians as a teen-ager in her own backyard, on the Menominee Reservation in Keshena, Wis., where her father was a prominent tribal judge. From that springboard, she travelled to dozens of countries as an advocate for women's and Indian causes.

Terence Freitas, 24, a California native who had recently moved to Brooklyn, had spent much of the last three years trying to focus attention on the Uwa tribe's battle to preserve its land from oil exploration. The Uwa "considered him one of theirs," a friend said.

Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, of Hawaii, chairwoman of the Pacific Cultural Conservancy International, worked to bring educational opportunities to indigenous people and recognition for her own Polynesian culture. To shed light on that culture, she was writing a book about her own roots in Hawaiian royalty.

"These people are so committed and courageous," said Laurie Parise, executive director of the Rainforest Foundation U.S., a 10-year-old organization in New York City, who knew two of the slain Americans. "They knew the danger, but they still went down there."

Washinawatok grew up on the Menominee Reservation, where a tribal spiritual leader gave her the name Peqtaw Metamoh when she was a child. It means Thunderbird Woman.

"Her whole life was about humanity, about respecting people's ability to be who they are," said Apesanahkwat, the chairman of the Menominee Nation. "She was just a wonderful person, a mom and a sister and a daughter, an Indian woman who epitomizes all those values that not many people possess," he added.

Washinawatok was a co-chairwoman of the Indigenous Women's Network and was active in forums sponsored by the United Nations and other international groups on Indian and women's rights issues. Since 1992, she was also a member of the board of directors of the American Indian Community House in Manhattan. She worked for the Fund of the Four Directions in Manhattan, a foundation that supports Native American culture.

Washinawatok's advocacy work began early. At age 14, she helped her father, James, organize on the reservation, and three years later came to New York City as an intern with the International Treaty Council, which monitored Indian rights in the hemisphere.

Ali el Issa, her husband of 16 years and a former Rite Aid drug store manager, said he last spoke with his wife a week before she was kidnapped. "I told her, if it's not safe, come back. Don't use your sympathy, use your brain." El Issa said she responded, "I feel I am with my people, like I'm back on the reservation."

The couple has a son, Maehki, who is 14.

Freitas, a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz, was trained as an environmental biologist and worked in various environmental law projects after college. His passion was not for books and formulas, though. It was for the wild, said Leslie Wirpsa, a close friend.

"It was his natural habitat to be out in the woods," she said, adding, "His spirit is inextricably linked to the land."

Freitas had been involved with the Uwa fight to keep oil companies from drilling on their land for nearly three years and founded a group called the Uwa Defense Working Group, which he said was dedicated to the principle of non-violent social change.

He helped bring an Uwa tribal leader to California last year for public debates with spokesmen for the Occidental Oil and Gas Corporation, the Bakersfield, Calif., company whose affiliate, Occidental de Colombia, has been trying to explore for oil on and near the Uwa lands.

"The Uwa considered him one of theirs," Wirpsa said. The feeling was mutual. "He was awestruck when he was in the Uwa territory," she added. "I remember when he showed us a slide --red birds against a rich verdant green backdrop-- and you could feel his heart jump when he showed that slide."

Melina Selverston, director of the Coalition for Amazonian Peoples and their Environment, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group, said Freitas had received death threats on his telephone answering machine. She said they came from the right-wing paramilitary groups that operate in the Arauca area of Colombia where the Americans were abducted.

"Terence was a deeply, deeply committed young man," Ms. Selverston added. "He was the one person the Uwa trusted as a connection to the outside world."

Gay, 39, was a native Hawaiian of Scottish, Mohawk and French descent, with varied interests and talents. A photojournalist and writer, she led delegations of indigenous Polynesians to various international forums and was active in Hawaii in fighting for their official recognition.

"Her work was her passion," John Livingstone, who described himself as Gay's common-law husband, said in a telephone interview from his parents' home in Connecticut. "She dedicated her life to indigenous causes and saving traditional cultures."

Hawaiian elders had trained her in what Livingstone called traditional anthropology, and she was using those skills to trace the history of the royal family from which she was descended. She was writing a book about her roots called The Ancestral Voices.

Livingston said that Ms. Gay understood the dangers of a trip to the Uwa in Colombia, where she was exploring the possibility of setting up an education program modeled on one she had established in Panama.

"They took my heart," Livingstone said, sobbing. "She was the love of my life. She was just a phenomenal, beautiful person, and it was a senseless brutal act."

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Terence Freitas knew he'd made enemies during his quest to defend the culture of an Indian tribe in the remote Colombian rain forests.

"Back off or die," warned the voices on his answering machine.

Freitas, just two months shy of his 25th birthday, was on his fifth trip to work with the U'wa when a band of armed men dragged the lanky biologist and two American companions from their car.

Their bodies were found a week ago, bound and blindfolded in a field just across the Venezuela border. All three had been shot in the face and chest; the women shot four times each, Freitas six.

"My son understood clearly the dangers involved in his trips to Colombia," his mother, Julie Freitas, said at her North Hollywood home. "Terence took those threats seriously, but because of his deeply felt connection to the U'wa, he chose to return and try to help organize an educational project."

The bodies of Freitas, Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, and Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, were returned to the United States on Wednesday, the same day that Colombia's largest rebel group took responsibility for their executions. A senior commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- FARC -- admitted that a guerrilla commander had kidnapped and killed the three. Raul Reyes said the officer had "captured them and executed them without consulting higher ranking bodies."

Mrs. Freitas said her son had feared right-wing paramilitary groups -- the alleged source of threats against him -- more than the leftist FARC rebels. But she said assigning blame for the deaths, which threatened to disrupt Colombia's peace process, should not undermine the purpose of her son's mission.

"No matter who is responsible for my son's murder we will continue to carry on his work," Mrs. Freitas said. "The last thing we want is for this personal tragedy to turn into a tragedy for an entire nation. That will happen if the peace talks end."

The three had traveled to Colombia under the auspices of Hawaii-based Pacific Cultural Conservancy International, said Marianne Herbert, a program director for the group.

In December, the 8,000-strong U'wa voted to reject the state educational system. The women were invited to the reserve to explore installing educational models in the communities, Ms. Herbert said.

"Their intentions were purely educational -- it had nothing to do with the previous work Terence had been doing concerning oil drilling," she said. "They were aware of the political climate and potential danger, but they were cautious."

Freitas had joined the U'wa effort in May 1997 after serving as an observer during a meeting between Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. and tribal president Roberto Cobaria. The oil giant had invested $12 million on seismic tests in hopes of drilling in the region.

Later that month, Freitas made his first trip to Colombia and returned to the United State to form the U'wa Defense Working Group, a coalition of about 14 organizations.

"He traveled there to support the U'wa people in their fight to prevent Occidental Petroleum from drilling on their ancestral land," Mrs. Freitas said. ``The U'wa thought of him as one of their own."

Friends of the two women executed along with Freitas described them as similarly dedicated and determined.

Washinawatok, who lived in the Brooklyn borough of New York City with her husband and 14-year-old son, Maeh-ki, made caring for others her top priority, friends and relatives said.

"If she knew that you were not well, ... she would make it her business to find time to come and be with you," said Esmeralda Brown, chairwoman of the Committee for the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples and a friend of Washinawatok. "If you were in pain she would come and cry with you, she was that warm."

Gay, 39, was a "female Indiana Jones" who survived several bouts with death while dedicating her life to others, a friend told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald in Hilo. "She's an inspiration in my life," said Darlene Fergerstrom. "She would put others before herself."

Fergerstrom said Gay recovered from cancer and a heart attack, survived a restaurant shootout in El Salvador and saved a girl from an attacker on Oahu even though she was stabbed several times in the process.

"I've always thought of her as kind of indestructible," she said.

The three were kidnapped Feb. 25. Mrs. Freitas said she was worried about her son's work in a country torn by feudal interests and armies. But, she said, her son always had reassured her: "Ma, I promise you, I always will come back."

Three Americans who were kidnapped last week in the Colombian rain forest were found slain Thursday just across the border in Venezuela, the authorities said yesterday.

The two women and a man, members of a group that is trying to preserve an indigenous tribe threatened by oil exploration, were found bound, blindfolded and shot several times, according to the Venezuelan military, which discovered the bodies in a wooded area on the outskirts of Rio Arauca.

Initial reports suggested that the three had been abducted by leftist guerrillas in Colombia, who often use ransoms from kidnapping to finance their military activity.

The State Department condemned the killings, for which it blamed a prominent leftist guerrilla group, and it called on the Colombian Government to arrest and extradite to the United States those responsible.

The State Department has identified the three dead as Terence Freitas, 24, and Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, both of New York, and Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, of Hawaii. The three had traveled to Colombia to study conditions among the U'wa Indians in a community of 5,000 that is 200 miles northeast of Bogota.

In recent years, Occidental de Colombia, an affiliate of Occidental Petroleum of Bakersfield, Calif., has been trying to explore the region, a move that anthropologists and environmentalists say would devastate the U'wa and their land. In 1997, the U'wa won a legal battle against the company that prevented it from drilling on their reservation.

The three Americans, members of the Hawaii-based Pacific Cultural Conservancy International, had been invited by U'wa leaders for a weeklong visit when they were abducted. "Everyone is in shock," said Myra Scheer, a spokeswoman for The Rainforest Foundation, on whose board Ms. Washinawatok served. "They went there to help people. We just can't understand why they were killed."

Friends and family members said they had assumed that the three would be released unharmed, as was a group of American bird watchers who last month were held captive by Colombian guerrillas for more than a month.

Ms. Gay and Ms. Washinawatok were shot four times each, and Mr. Freitas was shot six times, according to Col. Luis Eduardo Tafur, a Venezuelan police commander in La Victoria, which is just across the Arauca River from Colombia. He said officers had been drawn to the site by the sound of automatic gunfire.

Friends and relatives of the dead said the three had been aware of the potential danger in the region but were deeply committed to helping the U'wa people preserve their way of life. A graduate in biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Mr. Freitas had traveled to the area three times in the last few years, family members said. "I'm proud of my son," said his mother, Julie Freitas, who lives in Los Angeles. "He lived the life he wanted to live."

Ms. Washinawatok, a member of the Menominee tribe in Wisconsin, lived in Brooklyn with her husband and their 14-year-son. She was a filmmaker and a lecturer on Native American issues and was active with the American Indian Community House in lower Manhattan.

No group has claimed responsibility for the killings, but a representative from the U'wa Indians who was with the group when they were abducted blamed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Latin America's largest and most experienced rebel group.

In recent months, the rebels have been holding preliminary peace talks with the Colombian Government to end an armed conflict that has cost more than 30,000 lives in the last three decades.

Politically, the new killings made little sense, and they were far different from other abductions the FARC has carried out, raising some question about the rebel group's involvement. The abductions occurred at a roadblock in Arauca, where right-wing paramilitary groups have been waging a campaign of extermination among trade unionists, leftists, human rights activists and suspected rebel supporters.

In addition, the FARC's roadblocks are typically manned by uniformed troops in full combat gear, not lightly armed fighters in civilian dress. Covering Arauca is the group's 43rd Front, which organizes its fighters into squadrons of 12 rebels headed by a veteran combatant, making it unlikely that a handful of FARC teen-agers, as described by the U'wa, could carry out an attack.

The rebels stand to win nothing from killing foreigners now. Since the overtures with the Government began, the FARC has sought the support of foreign powers. In Washington, its alleged role in abducting two missionaries from the New Tribes Mission in 1994 continues to hamper the ability of Clinton Administration officials to support the peace effort.

And the abductions did not bear other trademarks of FARC operations. Last year, when the group seized three American bird watchers at a roadblock outside Bogota, the rebel group announced that they would be investigated for possible intelligence links and either executed or released. This time, the FARC has yet to confirm or deny the abduction.

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