Winona LaDuke

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(18 August 1959–)

 

Winona LaDuke is a visionary activist, writer, and public speaker whose work has earned international acclaim. She often composes in direct, concise, powerful prose exposing both the injustices endured by Indigenous Peoples and their perseverance. Her writings reflect her commitment to what she calls the “Indigenous Green New Deal.” Much of her work centres on environmentalism, economics, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity, climate change, Indigenous land rights, rural development, culture and language revitalization, renewable energy, and human rights.

Born in Los Angeles, California, on August 18, 1959, and raised in Los Angeles and in Ashland, Oregon, Winona LaDuke is a Bear Clan citizen of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg of the Gaa-waabaabiganikaag, or White Earth Reservation, in northern Minnesota. Her father, also from White Earth, was Vincent LaDuke (1929–1992), also known as Sun Bear. He acted in westerns and advocated for his people through activism. Her mother, Betty (née Bernstein, born 1933), is of Russian Jewish descent and is a retired art professor. LaDuke’s parents divorced when she was five years old.

LaDuke married Randy Kapashesit, a Cree political leader and Chief from Moose Factory, Ontario, in 1988. With Kapashesit, she had a daughter, Waseyabin, in 1988, and a son, Ajuawak Kapashesit, in 1991. After her separation from Kapashesit in 1992, she had another son, Gwekaanimad, with her partner Kevin Gasco in 1999.

LaDuke’s interest in activism was sparked at age ten, when she attended a peace demonstration with her mother in Medford, Oregon. LaDuke attended Ashland public schools and graduated in 1976, and according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, she “credits much of her skill at oratory, logic, and persuasion to the Ashland High School competitive debate program.” At eighteen, LaDuke spent a summer in Nevada campaigning to halt uranium mining and nuclear testing on Diné bikéyah (Navajo land). Later that same year, in Geneva, Switzerland, she became the youngest person to address the UN. Part of her address concerned issues stemming from mining on Native lands.

LaDuke graduated from Harvard in 1982 with a degree in Native economic development. While there, she met Jimmie Durham, member of the International Treaty Council, and other new-generation activists who sought to combat racism. Afterward, she moved to the White Earth Reservation, where she became the principal of the high school while completing a long-distance master’s degree in community economic development at Antioch University. In 2015, she received an honorary doctorate from Minnesota’s Augsburg College.

In 1985, she founded the Indigenous Women’s Network, an international group dedicated to promoting Indigenous women’s functions in public and political arenas. In 1989, she became the founding director of White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) in Minnesota, one of the largest non-profit, reservation-based organizations in the country. WELRP works to rectify federal land treaties established in 1867 that were subsequently violated for the benefit of logging; under her leadership, WELRP has helped reclaim upwards of fourteen hundred acres. LaDuke also works to revitalize traditional cultural practices, such as the cultivation of manoomin (wild rice) instead of GMO rice and other plants, and the protection of manoomin from patents. She established the Native Harvest food brand and works to fight type 2 diabetes.

In 1993, with Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, of the popular singing duo Indigo Girls, LaDuke founded Honor the Earth, an Indigenous-led organization to fight settler colonialism, racial capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism. She served as its executive director until 2023, working in part to secure funds for Native environmental projects. Honor the Earth’s national concert series builds awareness of Indigenous and environmental issues. These efforts have generated over two million dollars for two hundred Indigenous communities.

LaDuke gave the annual E. F. Schumacher Lecture, “Voices from White Earth,” in 1993. She was named one of fifty most promising leaders under the age of forty in the United States by Time magazine in 1994. She was nominated for the Thomas Merton Award in 1996 and the Ann Bancroft Award for Women’s Leadership Fellowship in 1997. She won the prestigious Reebok Human Rights Award in 1998, and in the same year, Ms. Magazine named her Woman of the Year for her work with Honor the Earth. LaDuke was inducted into the United States’ National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2007, adding to her growing list of accolades for her accomplishments. Yet LaDuke is no stranger to adversity. In 2008, she suffered a house fire at White Earth; the fire completely consumed her home and many of her belongings. She rebuilt with an outpouring of help from her supporters.

In 1996, LaDuke was the Green Party’s nominee for vice president of the United States, alongside presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Although neither was successful, their campaign brought environmental and social justice issues to the forefront of American politics. LaDuke ran once again for vice president with Ralph Nader on the Green Party ticket in 2000. Again, their bid was unsuccessful. However, in 2016, LaDuke became both the first Native American woman to receive an Electoral College vote for vice president and the first person from the Green Party to receive one.

Turning to LaDuke’s literary works, her first novel, Last Standing Woman, was published in 1997. It traces Anishinaabe history, spanning from the Great Sioux Uprising in the 1860s, to the Indigenous occupation of the Minnesota White Earth Reservation in the 1970s, to contemporary problems on the White Earth Reservation, as it follows characters Ishkweniibawiikwe and Lucy St. Clair. Publishers Weekly wrote that the book “skillfully intertwines social history, oral myth and character study in ways reminiscent of Leslie Marmon Silko and Louise Erdrich.”

Her next book, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life, originally published in 1999, is a non-fiction, place-based accounting of environmental concerns on eight Indigenous lands: Akwesasne Mohawk, Seminole, White Earth, Northern Cheyenne, Western Shoshone, Oglala Lakota, Innu, and Hawai’i. Kim TallBear’s 2002 review in Wíčazo Ša Review characterized the book as a successful intermingling of LaDuke’s broad intertribal knowledge and personal perspectives, but also critiques LaDuke’s narrow definition of what it is to be authentically Indigenous and what TallBear saw as the book’s lack of detail and substance. Joseph A. P. Wilson, conversely, described the book as a “bellwether for many subsequent trends at the intersection of environmentalism and indigenism, anticipating the millennial renewal of radical leftist environmentalism and the Native American civil rights struggle in American politics.” Writing in 2017, he proclaimed that the book’s themes remain relevant, although the 2015 edition lacks updated material. He praised LaDuke as one of the most prominent voices unifying Indigenous people against environmental encroachment today. The intersection he describes is evident in this rationale, which LaDuke provides in the opening pages of the book:

There is a direct link in our community between the loss of biodiversity—the loss of animal and plant life—and the loss of the material and cultural wealth of the White Earth people. But we have resisted and are restoring. Today, we are in litigation against logging expansion, and the White Earth Land Recovery Project works to restore the forests, recover the land, and restore our traditional forest culture. Our experience of survival and resistance is shared with many others. But it is not only about Native people. In the final analysis, the survival of Native America is fundamentally about the collective survival of all human beings. The question of who gets to determine the destiny of the land, and of the people who live on it—those with the money or those who pray on the land—is a question that is alive throughout society.

Pivoting to children’s literature in 1999, LaDuke co-wrote with her daughter Waseyabin The Sugar Bush, an illustrated book that explains the traditional Anishinaabe practice of collecting maple sap and making syrup.

In 2002, LaDuke published The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings, an eclectic collection including poetry, excerpts from other writings, and her speech accepting the Green Party’s nomination as vice-presidential candidate, with a foreword by Ralph Nader. The Reader covers a broad array of topics such as Enron, sturgeon, dioxin, the Endangered Species Act, powwow emcee Vince Beyl, and the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in China. Asserting that LaDuke writes with precision and clarity, Gabrielle Shaw of Foreword Reviews considers the Reader a vital resource for social justice advocates.

Land reclamation and sacred practice are the focuses of LaDuke’s 2005 book, Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming. She covers repatriation of critical resources in chapters such as “Imperial Anthropology” and “Salt, Water, Blood, and Coal.” In his review, Byron Anderson writes that LaDuke’s focus extends to the power of naming, criticizing Indigenous-themed commercial products and institutional mascots, as well as anti-communal living brought about by the 1887 Dawes Act (which sanctioned a forced land allotment process) and the 1994 outlawing of farmer-to-farmer seed exchanges. Anderson recommends the book for those who want to understand Indigenous cultures.

In 2013, LaDuke collaborated with Indigenous community leader Sean Aaron Cruz on The Militarization of Indian Country. The book was published in Michigan State University Press’ Makwa Enewed series, which editor Gordon Henry describes as relying “less on formal academic critique, argument, methodology, and research conventions and more on experientially grounded views and perspectives on issues, activities and developments in Indian Country.” The Militarization of Indian Country analyzes the historical connection between Indigenous Peoples and the US military and the negative stereotypes and broader impacts that result from it, from “the use of Native names” like Geronimo as military codenames and war cries, “to the outright poisoning of Native Peoples [in military] testing.” The higher-than-average participation rate of Indigenous people in the military is not lost on the authors. V. Noah Gimbel of the Institute for Policy Studies writes about The Militarization of Indian Country:

Beginning with a description of the Ogichidaa—the Ojibwe title of the Indian warrior—the first part of the book deals with the contrasting perspectives on the conflict between Native Americans and US armed forces. LaDuke quotes the legendary anti-colonialist Lakota Chief Sitting Bull who said, “The warrior is not someone who fights, because no one has the right to take another’s life. The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself for others.” Whereas “the greatest honor a warrior could achieve was . . . touching his enemy without inflicting any bodily harm,” the US military has always wielded its power through pure force, inflicting maximal damage to acquire whatever the state desires.

LaDuke ended her role as executive director at WELRP in 2014. The same year, Anadarko Petroleum subsidiary Kerr-McGee paid one billion dollars to the Navajo Nation to clean up uranium-laced water and as compensation to people living with the health effects of uranium contamination.

Also in 2014, LaDuke helped to establish a “Reject and Protect” encampment of nine teepees on the National Mall near the White House to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. Explaining why she opposes Keystone and Enbridge, another pipeline encroaching on Indigenous lands and threatening wild rice and other lifeways, LaDuke told The Nation’s Laura Flanders,

I don’t oppose pipelines—I like infrastructure—but I heard that the Keystone XL pipeline was going to carry tar sands oil from the lands of the Cree and Dene all the way to the Gulf of Mexico across the Ogallala aquifer, one of the largest aquifer systems in the world. It’s bad for the climate, bad for the people, and it’s all about profits. The risk is on the people who live in the middle, and the profits are at the beginning and the end.

She further argues that these projects bring drugs and violence to these communities and increase the divide between wealth and poverty. In the same spirit and for many of the same reasons, in 2016 LaDuke helped organize the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

Staying true to her environmentalist roots, LaDuke was honoured with the Global Green Award and the prestigious International Slow Food Award for Biodiversity in 2003 for working to protect wild rice and local biodiversity. In 2016, she became a founding member of the world’s first Indigenous slow food organization, the Slow Food Turtle Island Association, and in 2017 she received the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy, and Tolerance.

LaDuke documents the issues she fights and earns recognition for. She opens her 2017 book The Winona LaDuke Chronicles: Stories from the Front Lines in the Battle for Environmental Justice by describing life that emerges after fire, and she writes tributes to Russell Means, Hugo Chavez, and other visionary leaders, including her former husband. She again tackles a broad array of topics ranging from foods and pipelines to history and colonial rule.

In addition to writing books, LaDuke has authored numerous articles on a wide array of subjects. In 2019, LaDuke celebrated the legal rights of wild rice in “The White Earth Band of Ojibwe Legally Recognized the Rights of Wild Rice,” published in Yes! magazine. In that article, she explains that the rights were bestowed by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and guarantee fresh water, a pollution-free habitat, and reduction of the harms of patenting, GMOs, and climate change. According to LaDuke,

In US case law, corporations are considered natural persons and protected legally. In the meantime, much of the “commons,” or natural world—including water, sacred places, and sacred landscapes—have not been protected. This law begins to address that inequality, and challenges the inadequacy of US and Canadian legal systems.

These rights are patterned after the legal concept of “rights of nature,” which has been adopted by countries such as Ecuador and Bolivia, and by Indigenous communities such as the Ho-Chunk of Wisconsin and the Ponca of Oklahoma. Some nations have granted personhood and other rights to specific entities, such as the Whanganui River and Taranaki Maunga peak in New Zealand, the Mutesheku Shipu River in Canada, the Ní’skà (Arkansas River) and Ni’ží’dè (Salt Fork River) in the Ponca Nation, and all rivers in Bangladesh.

Also in 2019, LaDuke authored the foreword to Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States, republished in Sierra magazine as “In Praise of Seeds and Hope.” LaDuke writes that the Indigenous food renaissance and slow food movement were prophesied by the Sixth Fire, a time when Indigenous Peoples would regain their mission and strength in culture and spiritual practices, including seed-saving and corn revitalization. She characterizes the spirit of the book as follows: “Food sovereignty is an affirmation of who we are as Indigenous Peoples, and a way, one of the most sure-footed ways, to restore our relationship with the world around us. That is the story of this book. These are stories of heroes of the time of the Seventh Fire.”

That same year, LaDuke penned “Enbridge Throws Its Indigenous Peoples Policy to the Fire Over Pipeline,” an op-ed for Truthout that was a scathing criticism of the oil pipeline industry. In it she describes White Earth’s tribal legal counsel’s cease-and-desist order against Enbridge, a Canadian energy company. She explains that the order targets illegal archaeological training and unapproved business on reservation lands, moves that she claims have caused growing disputes between the company and White Earth.

In 2020, she published a second op-ed for Truthout, “Mauna Kea Isn’t Just about a Telescope, It’s about Who Will Decide the Future,” in which she covers protests against the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea, a fight she explains as “the first major Indigenous-led occupation since Standing Rock.” She explains that the reason the Kanaka ‘Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) Mauna Protectors are protesting is because Mauna Kea is significant in their cosmology, “a Hawaiian equivalent to Christianity’s Garden of Eden.” Dozens of protestors, including Native political leader Mililani Trask, have been arrested for their roles in this fight. LaDuke describes the years-long opposition of Kanaka ‘Ōiwi to both telescopes and US military development, such as Military Pōhakuloa Training Area, a 133,000-acre live-fire bombing range which has been in operation since World War II. LaDuke writes:

At least 7 million rounds of ammunition are fired annually at that base alone. Pohakuloa¹ has the “highest concentration of endangered species of any Army installation in the world,” according to former commander Lt. Col Dennis Owen, and it has over 250 ancient Hawaiian archaeological sites.

For these reasons, she argues that this site is suitable for a Rights of Nature and a Rights of a Mountain designation.

On Thanksgiving Day, 2020, LaDuke weighed in with another opinion piece published in The Hill, “Thanksgiving Is Time for Reparations,” in which she does not shy away from the horrific violence of the first Thanksgiving but rather connects it to modern-day injustices:

After dining, there were beheadings of Native leaders, and their heads were displayed on spikes for decades in Puritan towns. Fast forward to 2018 when the Trump administration issued a decision to remove the Wampanoag Cape Cod reservation from trust status, harkening back to the termination era.

She suggests that reparations with substance, such as the Elliotsville Foundation’s donation of over seven hundred acres to the Penobscot Nation and the return of an island to the Wiyot Tribe of northern California, are among the only bona fide ways to help achieve justice. She calls for the return of Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills to the Lakota, as well as the return of other National Parks lands to Indigenous Peoples.

In To Be A Water Protector: The Rise of the Wiindigoo Slayers, a collection of essays published in 2020, LaDuke returns to the topics of water protection efforts at Standing Rock and the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline, divestment, and green economy issues, widening her lens to include international resistance work in Latin America, Libya, Mexico, and elsewhere. In the chapter “Turning on a Dime,” she iterates that we can change and even reverse our course of action when it comes to the economy of environmentalism:

That is what we must do. Really, at some level, this predatory, extractive economy must do that. And, it can be done. Ecologically is what I am speaking about; it’s also essential that the national political thinking, the trends in health care, education, compassion and ethics, also change. It’s beyond the Green New Deal or Canada’s LEAP agenda. The next economy is, after all, about survival, not conquest. It’s also about cooperation not competition. It’s restoring balance and relationships.

In 2017, LaDuke established Winona’s Hemp and Heritage Farm, where she has garnered awards for her work, including the Emerald Cup Awards’ 2021 Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award and the WAFBA Awards of Excellence’s 2022 Mother Earth Award. Her farm co-op and its webpage champion hemp materials, including clothing and building products, as alternatives to petroleum-based materials.

LaDuke has served as program director of the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples and has sat on the boards of Greenpeace USA, the Christensen Fund, the Trust for Public Lands Native Lands Program, and the Indigenous Women’s Network, which, according to Mariana Brandman, is a “coalition of 400 Native women activists and groups dedicated to bolstering the visibility of Native women and empowering them to take active roles in tribal politics and culture.” In her writings, LaDuke frequently expresses her belief in the Anishinaabe prophecy that each of us must choose the “green path” rather than the “scorched path” that we are currently on, arguing that the “green path” offers a future without petroleum production resulting in oil or plastic.

In early 2021, LaDuke took on Enbridge again in “Stopping the Last Tar Sands Pipeline Will Take All of Us,” in the National Catholic Reporter. Describing the protests in Palisade, Minnesota as an “occupation,” she outlines the origins of the struggle and the ensuing legal battles brought by the Minnesota Department of Commerce and the Red Lake and White Earth Nations against Line 3, a pipeline expansion proposed in 2014 to bring potentially a million barrels of tar sands per day from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin. She clarifies what is at stake:

Akiing, the Anishinaabe word for “the land to which the people belong,” is half land and half water. Waters deep and shallow filled with wild rice, sturgeon and muskies, and all the mysteries of the deep waters. This is the only place in the world where wild rice grows. Each year in succession the manoomin returns, the only grain native to North America. This is the homeland of the Anishinaabe.

With straightforward language, LaDuke notes the conflict between police forces, armed forces, and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources; the violent death of a worker as well as multiple arrests; the secretive walling-off of work so that the protestors were further removed from the natural violence occurring there; and her discovery of a right-of-way stake being intrusively installed at a waaginoogan, or ceremonial teaching and prayer lodge. For taking on the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, LaDuke was charged with trespassing, harassment, unlawful assembly, and public nuisance for praying on an easement at the Shell River, and she spent three days in jail in 2021.

Also in 2021, LaDuke published an op-ed titled “Indigenous Tribes Are Reviving Traditional Hemp Economies” in Civil Eats, a progressive food and agriculture news site. In this op-ed, she extols the virtues and utility of hemp and traces growing initiatives like that of Alex White Plume, whom she calls “the Hemperor,” a leader of the Oglala Lakota who planted his first hemp crop at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The article describes the bitter struggles of White Plume and others during raids from the Drug Enforcement Administration in the early 2000s. She also details the new development of green business growth in light of the USDA’s 2019 approvals of several tribes’ hemp farming plans and describes her part in what she calls the “New Green Revolution” through her own hemp farming experience.

In “Winona LaDuke: Return to Rice Lake,” in the Esperanza Project: A Green Magazine for the Americas, LaDuke shifts her focus from hemp back to wild rice. This article marks a maawanji’idiwag, or celebration, of “Ogichidaa: Protect Niibi—Protect Manoomin,” a twenty-six-mile relay run around Lower Rice Lake in tribute to the wild rice economy and protection measures at White Earth. LaDuke observes the important timing of the gathering, as the 2021 Rice Lake water levels hit dangerous lows amid drought conditions and the state allocation of billions of gallons of water for Line 3. LaDuke reiterates the history of and continued fight for social justice, taking aim at Enbridge once again:

The rice harvest unifies community members; it’s a time of great excitement and delight in the village. Not surprisingly, Rice Lake village has opposed Enbridge’s plans since Day 1, demanding hearings be held right here, and joining thousands of other foes who took a stand against it at the Headwaters of the Mississippi. Enbridge’s work to divide the White Earth community with lucrative contracts to tribally owned Gordon Construction and the corporation’s plays in tribal politics are not viewed well here. This gathering is attended by most of the tribal council, who witness the strong resistance to the Canadian tar-sand oil conduit, Line 3.

At the close of the article, LaDuke expresses her gratitude for the rice, her people, and their supporters.

In “From Columbus to Enbridge: Colonial Exploitation Continues,” first published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in October 2021, LaDuke marks Indigenous Peoples’ Day by squarely focusing on Enbridge and Line 3, calling the energy giant “the new Columbus.” While lamenting the problems associated with tar sands production, LaDuke celebrates a few victories for the water protectors, including Enbridge’s lost profits due to pipeline capacity, divestment losses caused in part by water protectors’ efforts, and the resulting reduction of emissions. She highlights the company’s failures, including a pierced aquifer that leaked millions of gallons of water, resulting in subsequent fines; its lack of adequate insurance coverage; and its support of violent police actions against water protectors that gained the attention of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

LaDuke has published and reprinted several articles on Winona’s Blog. In “What’s Tragic About This Story Is Everything: Christmas in Mankato,” from January 2022, she recounts her participation in the 230-mile horseback ride in commemoration of the 1862 hanging of thirty-eight Dakota men, linking the experience to other grisly historic events in areas such as Fort Thompson and Crow Creek; for example, the aftereffects of the 1862 Morrill Act, which enabled approximately thirty-five “land grant” universities to build on Indigenous lands—a policy that led to the “Dakota uprising” and mass hanging. She notes the University of Minnesota’s attempted reparation offering of a tuition waiver for Indigenous students, and calls for a true reconciliation measure instead—land back.

Also in January 2022, LaDuke penned the opinion piece “The Latest Bad Idea: Huber Mill Near Leech Lake Reservation” in MinnPost. In this article, she sharply criticizes Huber Manufacturing’s proposed construction of one of the largest plywood plants in the US near Leech Lake Reservation. She points to Governor Tim Walz’s violation of his executive order to consult with tribal entities, Minnesota’s eighty million dollars in subsidies to the North Carolina company, and the state’s offer to exempt the project from an environmental impact statement as reasons for her objections. She also discusses the toxic effects of this type of mill, citing the worker health impacts of now-shuttered plants that also manufactured plywood. Furthermore, she adds, the harvesting of trees would especially harm the biodiversity of Leech Lake, threaten plant and animal species important to Indigenous lifeways, and violate sovereign territory granted in an 1855 treaty. She closes with the recommendation that the project consult with local Indigenous programs working towards sustainability with alternatives such as hemp wood.

In “Stop the Indian Wars, and Make New History,” LaDuke writes about the commemoration of another massacre, the September 1863 Battle of Whitestone Hill in which hundreds of Dakotas were killed, including some women and children. She honoured the dead by riding horses with her grandsons. In the article, she recounts the gruesome details of the massacre and again connects it to more recent events still plaguing Indigenous people in North Dakota. These include Energy Transfer LP’s 2016 bulldozing of sacred sites in order to construct the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, where some of the survivors of the Battle of Whitestone Hill fled to in 1863. When water protectors opposed the construction of the pipeline, they were subdued with pepper spray and bitten by guard dogs.

LaDuke interprets current incursions into Dakota lands as part of a longer trajectory of the Indian Wars, and she calls for an end to the injustice—a sentiment echoed by another September 2022 event: Duluth’s “Water Is Life” concert, which united like-minded people who supported efforts to resist affronts to the land, such as water and mining, and atrocities committed against Indigenous protectors, including starvation, attacks, and even death.

Turning again to her blog, in November 2022 LaDuke again pressed for the rekindling of the “seventh-generation principle,” which she attributes to the Six Nations Confederacy (whose centuries-old, fully representational democracy inspired the Constitution of the United States). The seventh-generation principle is a guiding philosophy of the Six Nations Confederacy that requires decisions to be made with the well-being of the next seven generations in mind. It guides leaders to consider the welfare of all living beings and to strive for peaceful relations. She calls for reviving the Green Party’s Seventh Generation Amendment, which she championed in her bids for vice president, and which seeks to add protections for “common property”—“the air, the water, the soil.”

LaDuke published a series of articles in various venues covering the trial in which Energy Transfer LP sued Greenpeace for its connection to protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline—a tactic known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). Her April 2025 Circle piece, “Punishing the Allies—SLAPP Suits Aim to Silence Activists,” summarizes the case, which centred around concerns about the contamination of the water source for the Standing Rock Sioux and captures the zeitgeist regarding threats to peaceful assembly. The lawsuit alleged that Greenpeace was responsible for actions including defamation, civil conspiracy, trespass, and nuisance. Greenpeace was held liable by a Morton County jury and fined US $670 million, a decision LaDuke characterizes as having been facilitated by “the New Order, the one where corporations are now considered natural people under the law,  . . . to extract and are protected by law enforcement and the judicial system.” She cited the outcomes of this and similar suits as violations of free speech, with energy corporations’ physical quelling of protests supported by the increasing view of law enforcement as having “qualified immunity” for shooting at protestors. She calls for unity and perseverance among water protectors and thanks allies for support.

Today, Winona LaDuke remains steadfast in her commitment to environmental and Indigenous rights. She enjoys writing and working the soil on her farm.

 

Bibliography

Books

Last Standing Woman. Voyageur Press, 1997.

All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. South End Press, 1999; Haymarket Books, 2016.

The Sugar Bush, by LaDuke and Waseyabin Kapashesit. Rigby, 1999.

The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings. Voyageur Press, 2002.

Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming. South End Press, 2005.

The Militarization of Indian Country, by LaDuke and Sean Aaron Cruz. Michigan State UP, 2013.

The Winona LaDuke Chronicles: Stories from the Front Lines in the Battle for Environmental Justice. Spotted Horse Press and Fernwood, 2017.

To Be a Water Protector: The Rise of the Wiindigoo Slayers. Fernwood, 2020.

 

Other

Preface. Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide, and Expropriation in Contemporary North America, by Ward Churchill, Courage Press, 1993, pp. 11–14.

“A Society Based on Conquest Cannot Be Sustained.” Al Gedicks, The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles against Multinational Corporations, by Al Gedicks. South End Press, 1993, pp. ix–xv.

Introduction. Walleye Warriors, An Effective Alliance against Racism and for the Earth, by Rick Whaley and Walter Bresette, New Society, 1994, pp. 1–8.

Foreword. Cutting Corporate Welfare, by Ralph Nader, Seven Stories Press, 2000, pp. 7–12.

Foreword. Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community, by Heid E. Erdrich and Laura Tohe, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002.

“Bi-Azhi-Giiwewag.” Otter Tail Review: Stories, Essays and Poems from Minnesota’s Heartland, edited by Tim Rundquist, iUniverse, 2003, pp. 22–32.

Foreword. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, by Andrea Smith, South End Press, 2005; Duke UP, 2015, pp. xv–xviii.

Introduction. Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism, by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, pp. xi–xvi.

Foreword. Daughters of Mother Earth: The Wisdom of Native American Women, edited by Barbara Alice Mann, Praeger, 2006, pp. xv–xvi.

Foreword. Ojibwe Waasa Inaabidaa: We Look in All Directions, by Thomas Peacock and Marlene Wisuri, Afton Historical Society Press, 2009, pp. 10–11.

Foreword. How to Say I Love You in Indian, by Gyasi Ross, Cut Bank Creek Press, 2013, p. i.

Foreword. Earth Meets Spirit: A Photographic Journey Through the Sacred Landscape, by Douglas Beasley, Continents, 2019.

“Foreword: In Praise of Seeds and Hope.” Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health, by Devon A. Mihesuah and Elizabeth Hoover, U of Oklahoma P, 2019, pp. xiii–xvi.

 

Selected Periodical Publications—Uncollected

“The White Earth Band of Ojibwe Legally Recognized the Rights of Wild Rice.” Yes! Magazine, 1 Feb. 2019, https://yesmagazine.org/environment/2019/02/01/the-white-earth-band-of-ojibwe-legally-recognized-the-rights-of-wild-rice-heres-why.

“In Praise of Seeds and Hope.” Sierra Magazine, 14 Oct. 2019, https://sierraclub.org/sierra/praise-seeds-and-hope.

“Enbridge Throws Its Indigenous Peoples Policy to the Fire Over Pipeline.” Truthout, 22 Oct. 2019, https://truthout.org/articles/enbridge-throws-its-indigenous-peoples-policy-to-the-fire-over-pipeline.

“Mauna Kea Isn’t Just About a Telescope, It’s About Who Will Decide the Future.” Truthout, 29 March 2020, https://truthout.org/articles/mauna-kea-isnt-just-about-a-telescope-its-about-who-will-decide-the-future.

“Thanksgiving Is Time for Reparations.” The Hill, 26 Nov. 2020, https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/527668-thanksgiving-is-time-for-reparations.

“Stopping the Last Tar Sands Pipeline Will Take All of Us.” National Catholic Reporter, 15 Jan. 2021, https://ncronline.org/earthbeat/justice/stopping-last-tar-sands-pipeline-will-take-all-us.

“Indigenous Tribes Are Reviving Traditional Hemp Economies.” Civil Eats, 5 Mar. 2021, https://civileats.com/2021/03/05/op-ed-indigenous-tribes-are-reviving-traditional-hemp-economies.

“Winona LaDuke: Return to Rice Lake.” Esperanza Project, 28 June 2021, https://esperanzaproject.com/2021/agriculture/return-to-rice-lake.

“From Columbus to Enbridge: Colonial Exploitation Continues.” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 9 Oct. 2021, https://filmsforaction.org/articles/from-columbus-to-enbridge-colonial-exploitation-continues.

“What’s Tragic About This Story Is Everything: Christmas in Mankato.” InForum, 12 Jan. 2022, https://inforum.com/opinion/columns/laduke-whats-tragic-about-this-story-is-everything-christmas-in-mankato.

“The Latest Bad Idea: Huber Mill Near Leech Lake Reservation.” MinnPost, 31 Jan. 2022, https://minnpost.com/community-voices/2022/01/the-latest-bad-idea-huber-mill-near-leech-lake-reservation.

“Stop the Indian Wars, and Make New History.” InForum, 28 Sept. 2022, https:// inforum.com/opinion/columns/laduke-stop-the-indian-wars-and-make-new-history.

“The Seventh Generation Amendment.” Spotted Horse Press, 22 Nov. 2022, https://winonaladuke.com/winona-blog/2022/11/21/7generationsamendment.

“Punishing the Allies—SLAPP Suits Aim to Silence Activists.” The Circle, 5 April 2025, https://thecirclenews.org/environment/punishing-the-allies-slapp-suits-aim-to-silence-activists.

 

Interviews

Wakshul, Barbra. “Reflections from the Front Line: An Interview with Winona LaDuke.” Winds of Change, vol. 16, no. 2, spring 2001, pp. 16–18.

Van Gelder, Sarah. “An Interview with Winona LaDuke: On Wild Rice, Wind Power, Thunder Beings, Self-Reliance, and Our Covenant with the Creator.” Yes! Magazine, 18 June 2008, https://yesmagazine.org/issue/just-foreign-policy/2008/06/18/an-interview-with-winona-laduke.

Flanders, Laura. “Q&A: Winona LaDuke.” The Nation, 18 June 2014, https://thenation.com/article/archive/qa-winona-laduke.

Goodman, Amy. “Winona LaDuke Calls for Indigenous-Led ‘Green New Deal’ as She Fights Minnesota Pipeline Expansion.” Democracy Now!, 7 Dec. 2018, https://democracynow.org/2018/12/7/winona_laduke_calls_for_indigenous_led.

 

Note

1. This quotation reflects the original text of the Truthout article, which spells Pōhakuloa without a macron.

 

Works Cited

Anderson, Byron. Review of Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming by Winona LaDuke. Electronic Green Journal, vol. 22, 2005, https://doi.org/10.5070/G312210620.

Brandman, Mariana. “Winona LaDuke.” National Women’s History Museum, Apr. 2021, https://womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/winona-laduke.

“Follow the Life of Winona LaDuke, Vice Presidential Candidate and Environmental Leader.” National Trust for Historic Preservation, 2022, https://savingplaces.org/guides/follow-the-life-of-winona-laduke-vice-presidential-candidate-and-environmental-leader.

Gimbel, Noah V. Review of The Militarization of Indian Country by Winona LaDuke. Institute for Policy Studies, 4 July 2011, https://fpif.org/review_the_militarization_of_indian_country.

Harrison, Emma. “Winona LaDuke Receives the 2022 ‘Mother Earth (Lady of Agriculture) Award.’” Winona’s Hemp and Heritage Farm, 20 Apr. 2022, https://winonashemp.com/news/motherearthaward-noco.

“Last Standing Woman.” Publishers Weekly, https://publishersweekly.com/9780896582781.

Marinaro, Claudia. “Biography: Winona LaDuke—Environmentalist, Economist.” The Heroine Collective, 27 Nov. 2017, https://theheroinecollective.com/winona-laduke.

Ritter, Peter. “The Party Crasher.” City Pages, 11 Oct. 2000. today, https://archive.is/oRAf.

Shaw, Gabrielle. Review of The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings by Winona LaDuke. Foreword Reviews, Oct. 2002. https://forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-winona-laduke-reader.

TallBear, Kimberly. Review of All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life by Winona LaDuke. Wíčazo Ša Review, vol. 17, no. 1, spring 2002, pp. 234–42.

Walljasper, Jay. “Celebrating Hellraisers: Winona LaDuke.” Mother Jones, 28 June 2017, https://motherjones.com/politics/1996/01/celebrating-hellraisers-winona-laduke.

WCCO Staff. “Honor the Earth Ordered to Pay $750K in Sexual Harassment Case, Leader Winona LaDuke Resigns.” WCCO News, 5 Apr. 2023, https:// cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/winona-laduke-resigns-from-honor-the-earth-after-organization-loses-sexual-harassment-case.

Wilson, Joseph A. P. Review of All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life by Winona LaDuke. International Social Science Review, vol. 93, no. 2, Dec. 2017, pp. 1–4, https://jstor.org/stable/90016722.

“Winona LaDuke.” Americans Who Tell the Truth, 2022, https://americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/winona-laduke.

“Winona LaDuke.” Schumacher Center for New Economics, 2022, https://centerforneweconomics.org/people/winona-laduke.

Winter, Deena. “Winona LaDuke Released from Jail After Three Days Amid Enbridge Line 3 Protests.” The Minnesota Reformer, 22 July 2021, https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/07/22/winona-laduke-released-from-jail-after-three-days-amid-enbridge-line-3-protests.

Winter, Hannah Murphy, and Reed Dunlea. “The Fight Against Minnesota’s Line 3 Pipeline: Bill McKibben and Winona LaDuke in Conversation.” Rolling Stone, 23 Apr. 2020, https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/minnesota-line-3-pipeline-winona-laduke-bill-mckibben-conversation-988155.

 

Melissa Borgia-Askey, PhD, is an artist and retired professor and independent scholar with over twenty years of experience in education, spanning K–12 through graduate-level higher education, in the areas of ESL, TESOL, education, English/composition, Indigenous language preservation, and cultural studies. She has taught courses in critical writing and reading, rhetoric, composition, honours, Western humanities, and English language learning. Her consulting work has included research and data transcription for the Seneca Nation of Indians’ Tribal Historic Preservation Office, as well as work at a Seneca school, Ganöhsesge:kha:’ Hë:nödeyë:stha, where she was involved in several projects pertaining to language maintenance and cultural revitalization.