Four Winds American Indian Council

Four Winds American Indian Council is an American Indian Liberated Zone located in the heart of Denver, Colorado, in the original territories of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute Nations. FWAIC is a facility where Native people are free to use the buildings without apology to the colonizer society that now surrounds us. 

FWAIC is based in an old church and parsonage on land that was returned to the Denver Native community after the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre. We have since transformed the church's previous uses to a vision of Indigenous liberation and self-determination as defined and executed by grassroots working class, poor, and homeless Native Americans in Denver. 

We believe that our daily lives as Indigenous peoples cannot be separated from our traditional lifeways, and that to be spiritual is to be political. In many of our traditional languages, there are words or phrases that tell us how to live in relationship with each other, the Earth, and all living things in order to be happy and to live a good, harmonious life as individuals and as communities. Therefore, we see liberation as creation. It means exercising our right to collectively design the community we want to live in, and self-determine how we relate to ourselves, each other, the land and the water, and our plant, insect, and animal relatives.