Winona LaDuke
Winona LaDuke
Winona LaDukeis an American activist, environmentalist, economist, and writer, known for her work on tribal land claims and preservation, as well as sustainable development. In 1996 and 2000, she ran for vice president as the nominee of the Green Party of the United States, on a ticket headed by Ralph Nader...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
CountryUnited States of America
country military sheep
The military is the largest polluter in the country, and so you have a lot of military waste contaminating reservations - as, for example, on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, where 5,000 sheep died in some kind of experimental military nerve gas test 10 years ago. Many of our communities are dealing with that kind of waste, and an absence of political will to clean them up.
country cancer two
Uranium mining in northern Canada has left over 120 million tons of radioactive waste. This amount represents enough material to cover the Trans-Canada Highway two meters deep across the country. Present production of uranium waste from Saskatchewan alone occurs at the rate of over 1 million tons annually. Since 1975, hospitalization for cancer, birth defects and circulatory illnesses in that area have increased dramatically - between 123 and 600 percent in that region.
country father nice
The reality is that the founding fathers were land speculators. The fact was that you couldn't vote in this country if you did not own land, and that was basically you had to be a white man who owned land. Now how did they get that land? They basically had to steal it from someone, and that would be probably the Indians. And so most of the initial founding fathers were, while they may have had some really nice ideas about democracy, they had a lot of issues with people of color. They had a lot of issues with people who held things that they coveted.
develop enhanced grain happen plant rice scientists state wild
We don't think scientists have the right to contaminate the state grain -- and it could happen through cross-pollination, if they develop a genetically enhanced wild rice and plant it in Minnesota.
drew mess
We drew a line. Just don't mess with the rice.
everybody knows
She's an old ricer and knows everybody on this reservation.
abundant acres natural rice thousands wild
On my reservation, we had one of the most abundant fisheries in the world and hundreds of thousands of acres of wild rice beds. We've lost a lot of it, but there's still natural wealth that could support our communities.
climate eat economy food interested
I'm interested in what kind of food we're going to eat as the climate changes. I'm interested in what kind of economy we're going to have in another 1,000 years.
felt harvard introduce parties
I used to go to some Harvard parties with my athlete friends, and they would introduce me as 'Winona, the Indian activist.' It made me uncomfortable. I felt like a novelty.
arrested bad book factory gate good los people phone total trees using waste
Now that I think about it, I was arrested in 1992. Some people may think of that as a bad thing, but I feel good about it. I chained myself to the gate of a phone book factory, a GTE factory in Los Angeles. They were using thousand-year-old trees to make phone books. I think that's a total waste of a tree.
less mostly offices operating post rural save seven tribal
Eliminating some 3600 post offices - mostly rural - will save the USPS less than seven tenths of one percent of their operating budget, but nationally, a number of tribal communities will be hit.
economist
I'm Harvard-educated; I'm an economist by training. I'm an author, a journalist, as well as being active in community development.
accustomed america depiction entirely people
America is so accustomed to some depiction of native people that is entirely racist, and there's a perception that that is okay.
Actually, I consider myself to be pretty politically conservative.