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White Earth, Green Party
Two-time Green Party VP candidate Winona LaDuke sits down with the Indy
. . . by Seth Bockley
[Illustration by Joey Frank]

Winona LaDuke is an internationally renowned activist for indigenous, environmental, and women’s issues. She is a tireless organizer, public speaker and writer (Last Standing Woman and All Our Relations). In 1996 and 2000, LaDuke ran on the Green Party ticket for Vice President of the United States alongside Ralph Nader. She lives on the White Earth reservation in rural northern Minnesota where, since 1989, she has directed the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP), which works to reclaim the reservation’s land, language and culture for the native Ojibwe.

LaDuke’s local work is also global. Through Honor the Earth and the Indigenous Women’s Network she strives to support indigenous self-determination and address environmental issues on an international scale. She lives on White Earth reservation with her extended brood, which includes seven children (three her own), a few dogs, some chickens in her bathroom, and her partner Kevin. I caught up with Winona on Monday, before her speech at the Women’s History Month Convocation.

I thought we could start with the war against Iraq. How is your corner of northern Minnesota responding to the preparations?

Next week on Monday, I’m debating in the town of Detroit Lakes on the subject of the war, which may not sound like much to everybody, but Detroit Lakes is a very redneck town. I just spent about three weeks trying to find someone to debate me. No one wants to debate; they like to talk about why they want to bomb Iraq, but no one actually wants to come out and publicly say it. You know Minnesota. It’s that northern thing. It’s that northern ‘This is how we think but we don’t have the courage to say it in public.’ So I finally found someone who is a reactionary right wing radio talk show host. So that should be quite a subject but I’ve been trying for about a month to get the high school to allow me to organize a debate or have the kids debate.

Which high school?

Detroit Lakes High School, where my daughter goes. And to illustrate the problem in Minnesota, the principal won’t return my calls.
We have our little protests. The first week we had it in January my family comprised a good half [laughs] of the protestors down at Detroit Lakes. Gave my [two year old] son had the honor of being the youngest protestor in Becker County. He held up this little sign that said, “Honk for Peace.” I think there were nine of us.

What about on the reservation? Is there a different sense of the war in native communities?

I think it’s a huge issue in the community because we’re one of the highest rates of enlistment.
We’re actually in the middle of this dialogue, trying to think about it in our community. Indians enlist for economic reasons and Indians enlist because of the long history of defending their community and over time that becomes represented through defending the United States. So what we’re trying to do is have a dialogue about that, about what is a just war.

The term ogitchidae, an Ojibwe word, is used as ‘warrior’ but actually means those who defend the people. In the Ojibwe religious practices, our mideewin lodges, there’s no concept of pre-emptive war. So we need to figure out how we think about that.

Indigenous Women’s Network started doing some organizing and we’re putting out a magazine on the impact of the military on indigenous communities and why we should think about not supporting the war. There was a peace rally on Saturday in Bemidji and a lot of Indians there—the new mayor of the town of Cass Lake who is the first Indian woman elected mayor of a Minnesota city. She talked about how what we need is infrastructure, and what we need is health care. They’re closing down Indian centers in Minnesota because they don’t have the funding. But they’ll give the money for this war. It’s a very complex issue.

With the nation’s focus on foreign policy and war, is it hard to put environmental and indigenous issues on people’s radar screens?

Yeah, we’re trying to work on that stuff. Plugging in, trying to fight the bad guys. There’s this whole interrelationship between the military and Indians, which is still pretty screwed up. Plus we’re trying to look at issues of a community—not just reparations; it’s reconciliation in the face of the state of the world. And of course that’s not even back-burnered; it’s just not even any anybody’s radar. It wasn’t on anybody’s radar during Clinton’s administration, let alone […] now.

I read an article you wrote about the Spirit Mountain site. [A burial ground and Ojibwe holy site near Duluth MN that’s being threatened by developers who want to build a golf course.]

Yeah we’re not winning so far on that.

The golf course is going in..?

I went to the Duluth City Council meeting, and it’s totally packed, and there was like one guy in a bad suit who represented the golf course. There wasn’t a pro-golf course movement. So how does that work? How does democracy work, exactly, is what I want to know. It was the city’s choice, there was one developer, and there’s a huge Native anti-golf course movement. So the council votes against it, and the mayor overrules. The mayor wasn’t even at the meeting. That’s kind of the state of things.

Your speech tonight kicks off Women’s History Month here at Brown. How does women’s history influence you as an activist and public intellectual?

I know that women are doing this amazing work. But American society by and large has not acknowledged the work of women. So that is why we have women’s history month is to begin that process of acknowledgment.

I think about that and I think about these two Indian women out in Nevada known as the Dan sisters, Carry and Mary Dan. They’re like sixty-five and seventy, they’re Western Shoshone women, who for the past 30 years have been fighting the federal government who claims it owns all this land. BLM [Bureau of Land Management] claims this. And these women are ranchers, and the federal government is rounding up all their livestock and stealing it. This is happening right now. And I think about the fact that these women refuse a settlement. The government’s tried to buy their title, they refused it, said it wasn’t for sale. They just want to live there. Does the government want to turn these women into welfare recipients? They have a livelihood, and the government is stealing their livelihood. It’s not making the news—well there was a New York Times story on that, but it’s not making Oprah. Maybe it’ll make Erin Brockovich. Instead we hear this bullshit all the time in the media about what’s important. And that is what I think about women’s history month is that there are some women who are living history and deserve to be acknowledged.

As a mother of a teenage girl in 2003 [Winona’s daughter is 14] do you find any challenges in communicating feminism and women’s history to a younger generation?

I do think that, sure, the dominant culture is so pervasive in terms of sexuality, particularly for teenage girls and all that, you know gangster rap. But then I look at my kid. I look at her and I realize that she’s actually absorbed a good portion of what I can teach her. So she may not like me half the time because I’m her mother; and I’m not her friend, I’m the source of her boundaries. But I know this: who’s quarreling about the war with her teachers? Oh, that’d be my kid. Who’s quarreling with the cops about something else—that’d be my kid. And who was it who was pro-choice in an entirely not pro-choice school?

So. You do have to keep instilling those things. Teach them by example, that’s the best thing you can do. You can talk about it and have them learn about it, but expose them to it because then they get it a little bit more.

Will we see you and Ralph on the ballot in 2004?

I think Ralph will run. I’m not running in 2004. I want to put up wind towers. Renewable energy, I’m really into that. I’m hesitant to say it’s my thing, but… Also I want to get a cannery going in White Earth. If I were running I’d have to start campaigning now. If I’m going to get into politics, I have to really do it, you know? So I want to put my kids through school first. If I go back into politics I think I’ll run for governor of Minnesota. Then I might actually win.

Seth Bockley B’03 is not running either.

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