Winona LaDuke, two-time V.P. candidate for the Greens spoke on Tuesday night, November 1st, at the Minnesota Peacemakers Forum at a Methodist Church in Minneapolis. About 300 people heard her pointedly discuss the indigenous struggle as it continues in the 21st Century.
Her central focus was on American identity and the right of self-determination: Who are we as a nation? What are our communities, our families, our relationships going to look like in 50 years? And, most importantly, who gets to decide what happens on these crucial questions? As a woman, as a Native, as part of a rural community, Winona brings a unique, and much needed point-of-view to the table.
With degrees from Antioch and Harvard, awards, accolades and her two years on the campaign trail, Winona now finds herself the director of a small land reclamation and economic development collective on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. She also is the mother for five teenagers! She knows what it’s about to “keep it real”.
Her message last night was strong and simple: Do not wait for others to help make the change and right the wrongs. (She didn’t quote Wellstone, but she could have: “Be the change you believe in.”) With her small cadre of Native entrepreneurs, she is not waiting for politicians in Washington or St. Paul to make things better on the White Earth Reservation. She is actively working, lobbying and speaking out on the important issues facing her community: who controls the land, whether genetically engineered wild rice should be introduced in Minnesota, developing renewable energy projects.
One quote stands out:
I am a patriot. But I am a patriot to this land, not to a flag.
She went on to describe how America’s character, our essential identity, is defined by our relationship to the land. On that score, America’s history does not presage a happy outcome. She questioned how sacred and eternal places like mountains could be named after individuals who are, after all, transitory and ephemeral, especially men whose life was all about destroying Natives and their traditional ways: Mt. Mckay near Thunderbay, Harney Peak in Colorado, Amhearst in Massachusetts, who she claimed killed tens of thousands with his blankets laden with smallpox.
She pointed out how, for Native people, ANWAR has always been referred to as “the place where life begins” because of the massive caribou migrations there. And how, for a mere equivalent of 60 days of U.S. consumption, we are apparently willing to pump out the remains of—and massively disrupt—this ancient natural sanctuary. She went on to chide America’s vaunted freedoms and democracy, delineating how Native people did not have a right of free exercise of religion until a1978 law expressly granted it to them.
It is this legacy, colonial, oppressive and worst of all, unrecognized and denied by generations, which has marked America’s great march westward into “manifest destiny.” It is filled with unfortunate and poorly understood names for landmarks which denote our relationship to this land and to the indigenous people that lived there. It is as if we are rubbing in their noses our total annihilation of Native culture and values, and doing it in willful ignorance.
And the struggle continues. Today, White Earth is facing a major threat from genetically engineered “wild” rice. Such genetic alterations can and would have serious consequences, not only for the quality of rice which is still hand-harvested, but also for the religious and spiritual dimensions that rice fulfills in their community. Yet, unfortunately, neither the Minnesota legislature, nor the University of Minnesota, which are sponsoring the genetic research, seem inclined to listen to the Native point-of-view and are pressing ahead with plans to develop—and patent—a new type of rice plant.
LaDuke finished by asking:
How do we get beyond this kind of legacy? How do we renew that which is sacred? How do we recover our relationships with each other?
Not by trusting others to bring us the answers or waiting for politicians to do the job. “The onus is on us,” she reinforced. “Do not relinquish your power. Do not allow them to take your voices. And do not allow them to take your vote.”
Winona LaDuke spoke fluid, proud and certain of the basic truth that we need to get a better plan. We need to have a real—and sustainable—vision of what our future will be like. And we need to do it now: on land, on food, on energy, and especially on who decides these important issues. As one who has survived the massive and continuous onslaught of America’s destructive colonialism, she has experienced first-hand the devastation that a mono-cultural, unfeeling market economy lorded over by greedy corporate and political elites can have at the level of community. She has been to the brink, witnessed the despair, isolation and poverty that accrues to those left in the wake of unsustainable development.
We would be wise to follow her words: The onus is on us, before it is too late. We need a better plan. We need a better vision of what we want our communities to be like in 50 years. And we need to start working on it now.
