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 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.
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I'm voting my conscience on November 2; I'm voting for John Kerry.
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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.
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The University of Minnesota has basically said, 'Well, we aren't intending to do it. But we want the right to.' And that's the problem, is that open door. I understand academic freedom. I'm a big supporter of academic freedom. But I feel like there should be some academic responsibility.
everybody knows
She's an old ricer and knows everybody on this reservation.
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The United States - you know, native people are large landowners, but the military has a huge chunk of our territories. And in those, there are a number of places that are our sacred sites.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.