Former Green Party VP Candidate LaDuke at Ithaca

Winona LaDuke

Environmental activist Winona LaDuke, two-time vice-presidential running mate of Ralph Nader, spoke on "Native American Environments: Struggles for Land and Life" during her public speech at IC in November -- the keynote address for a series of events celebrating Native American culture. During her time visiting Ithaca, LaDuke also met with Native Americans at the Onondaga Nation.

Anthropology faculty members and coordinators of Native American studies Brooke Olson and Jack Rossen helped arrange LaDuke's visit. During her presentation, which drew an audience of more than 600, LaDuke spoke about environmental threats, political incompetence, intellectual property rights, genetic modification of plants, and the marginalization of Native people.

Says Olson, "Students in my Cultural Anthropology class spoke for many days about the information Winona presented, particularly of the difficulties in teaching children basic lessons such as 'Don't be greedy' and 'Clean up your mess before you make another one.' The problem is that our society is dominated by capitalism and multinational corporations driven by greed, despoiling the environment, making one mess after the other -- and not cleaning any of it up."

La Duke is an economist, writer, and activist for Native American rights. She lives in White Earth, an Anishinaabeg reservation in northern Minnesota, and heads the White Earth Land Recovery Project, which she founded. She is also cochair of the Indigenous Women's Network and program director for the Honor the Earth Fund. Harvard-educated, LaDuke was named in 1994 by Time magazine as one of America's 50 most promising leaders under age 40. In the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections she ran as the Green Party's candidate for vice president. In 1997 she was named by Ms. magazine as a "woman of the year." She has written several books, including Last Standing Woman (Stillwater, Minn.: Voyageur Press, 1997) and All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1999).