AMPLIFY: Winona LaDuke

Alright folks, I’m two for two on the year for articles, so let’s hope I keep on this positive trajectory. Thanks for meeting me back here on HerStry for the next installment of Amplify. This month, we’re talking about Winona LaDuke. If you know her name already, I imagine you either were very involved with the specifics of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests or you were particularly interested in third-party political campaigns in 1996 and 2000, specifically the Green Party.

Winona LaDuke is a woman of many disciplines. She is a member of the Anishinaabekwe, enrolled with the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg and she is known as a Native American land rights activist, environmentalist, economist, politician, mother, and author (3). LaDuke is one of those Amplify subjects where I really need to stress that I am merely touching on major points in in her life, so I’ve included links for continuing education following this article. There are also a multitude of archived local newspaper profiles that are a quick [insert your favorite search engine here] search away.

In 1959, Winona LaDuke was born to Vincent and Betty LaDuke on August 18 (1, 6). Both Vincent and Betty were interesting characters in their own right, and separated early in Winona’s life (6). Vincent was a Native American actor, activist, and writer while Betty was a successful Jewish artist and art professor (1). Winona’s childhood was not without exception - she grew up with divorced parents and faced intense racism due to her Native American and Jewish origins. However, she would persevere and ultimately graduated from Harvard University in 1982 with a BA in economics (5).

It was while at Harvard that LaDuke began her activist trajectory; she met Jimmy Durham, a prominent Native American activist who ignited her passion for her people. At only eighteen, she addressed the United Nations on mining issues near Native American reservations (1, 3). After graduating from Harvard, LaDuke moved to the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota and began working as the principal for the reservation’s high school (3). Shortly after moving to the reservation, she became involved in the lawsuit to recover Anishinaabeg lands that were promised to the them in an 1867 federal treaty (3). The case was ultimately dismissed after four years of litigation. This loss prompted LaDuke to start the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) in 1989, four years after she founded the Indigenous Women’s Network in 1985. The Indigenous Women’s Network was created to focus specifically on Native American women, helping increase visibility and giving the women both the skills and confidence to participate in political, social, and cultural processes (3). Sometime in the late 1980s, LaDuke earned her MA in Community Economic Development in a distance-learning program from Antioch University in Ohio (6). The year she completed this degree has not been widely reported, but we can only assume it was completed not long after she graduated from Harvard.

The White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP)—a project founded because of the formerly mentioned dismissed lawsuit—was possible because of a $20,000 grant from a Reebok Human Rights Award given to LaDuke in 1989 (2). The initial goal of WELRP was to buy back the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg from the government and other non-Anishinaabeg’s, but the program has expanded to included Anishinaabeg language and wind energy programs, and to sell foods and goods made on the White Earth Reservation (4).

By the early 1990s, Winona LaDuke created a level of notoriety for herself in activist circles. Her name recognition only increased after co-founding Honor the Earth with the Indigo Girls in 1993, an organization that would be at the forefront of the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2016 (4). Honor the Earth was created to support Native environmental issues and to guarantee the survival of sustainable Native communities (5). By the late 90s, LaDuke was named one of Time magazine’s fifty most promising leaders under forty in America (1994), received the Thomas Merton Award (1996), was the running mate to Ralph Nader (for the first time, 1996), and was named Woman of the Year by Ms. magazine (1998).

The 2000s started out with LaDuke as Ralph Nader’s running mate yet again for the Green Party. In an in-depth profile from City Pages in October 2000, Peter Ritter portrays LaDuke as unapologetically authentic and I highly encourage everyone to check it out, if the link cooperates (6). A weird thing I’ve learned about the internet is that twenty-year-old links don’t always work like they should. Salon.com also has a great profile from 2000 in their online archives (linked in continuing education), where LaDuke’s level-headed demeanor is on full display.

The nice part about highlighting someone on Amplify from the modern era is that I don’t have to tell you when Winona LaDuke died, because she’s still alive and still fighting for Native American rights. In 2007, LaDuke was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame (3) and in 2017 she was honored with the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy, and Tolerance (5). Today, LaDuke is still active in the organizations she founded, writes a consistent blog on her website, and speaks at events throughout the country.

Dearest HerStry readers, I’d love to hear your feedback. Suggestions, criticisms, questions, corrections—I want it all! I’m trying to help educate the HerStry community on the badass women of our past (and present!), but I still have a lot to learn myself. And as always, thanks for reading.

Winona LaDuke’s Timeline

1959 - born in East Los Angeles on August 18, to Vincent & Betty LaDuke (1, 6)
1982 - graduates from Harvard University with a BA in economics (5)
1982 - moves to White Earth Reservation and becomes principal of the reservation’s high school and becomes involved in a lawsuit to recover Anishinaabeg lands that were promised to Native Americans in the area in 1867 with a federal treaty (3)
198? - graduates with a MA in Community Economic Development in a distance-learning program from Antioch University, the year is unclear but assumed to be at some point in the 1980s (6)
1985 - founds Indigenous Women’s Network (3)
1989 - founds White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) with a $20,000 grant from winning the Reebok Human Rights Award (2)
1993 - co-founds Honor the Earth with the Indigo Girls (4)
1994 - named as one of America’s 50 most promising leaders under the age of 40 by Time magazine (4)
1996 - receives Thomas Merton Award (4)
1996 - runs as Green Party’s Vice Presidential Candidate with Ralph Nader and voted in a Presidential election for the first time (1)
1998 - named Woman of the Year by Ms. magazine (4)
2000 - runs as Green Party’s Vice Presidential Candidate again with Ralph Nader (3)
2007 - inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame (3)
2016 - Honor the Earth is one of the leading organizations behind the Dakota Access Pipeline protests (4)
2017 - receives the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy, and Tolerance (5) 

Sources:
1 - https://www.ontheissues.org/Profile_Winona_LaDuke.htm
2 - http://www.unm.edu/~erbaugh/Wmst200fall03/bios/LaDuke.html
3 - https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/winona-laduke/
4 - https://www.mtpr.org/post/winona-laduke-be-ancestor-your-descendants-would-be-proud
5 - https://centerforneweconomics.org/people/winona-laduke/
6 - https://archive.is/oRAf

Continuing Education:
https://www.winonaladuke.com https://web.archive.org/web/20020606115616/http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/07/13/laduke/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/us/thanksgiving-for-native-americans-four-voices-on-a-complicated-holiday.html

Cover photo from the Minnesota Historical Society

Ashlee Christinsen lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is an Illinois native - grew up in the Chicago suburbs, went to school at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL, and lived in the city of Chicago up until 2015. In June 2015, she packed up with her partner and moved to the city she has absolutely fallen in love with, Pittsburgh! When she's not at work, she can typically be found in yoga class, working on the next edition of AMPLIFY, cuddling with George the cat, or enjoying trying to figure out what next home improvement task she is going to take on. Follow her nonsense on Twitter: @trashleeinpgh.