Phil Lane Jr. is an enrolled member of the Yankton Dakota and Chickasaw First Nations and is an internationally recognized leader in human and community development. He was born at the Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas in 1944, where his mother and father met and attended school.

During the past 45 years, he has worked with Indigenous peoples in North, Central and South America, Micronesia, South East Asia, India, Hawaii and Africa. He served as an associate professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada (1980-1996). With elders from across North America, Phil co-founded the Four Worlds International Institute (FWII) in 1982. FWII became an independent Institute in 1995. Phil is a Director of the Four Directions Corporation, an Indigenous owned company, incorporated in 1996 as Four World’s economic development arm.