Redefining the Dream
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"I think the dream that is represented in America is unsustainable, because the dream is born of a concept that is unsustainable. Right now, there's a lot of discussion about issues like sustainable development and environmentalism and rights of peoples….Our native culture is based on the the most basic notion that you never take more than you need. Inherently, capitalism is very much about always taking more than you need…capitalism is inherently disrespectful…I question that validity of that dream.
The chance that the rest of the world could live like we do is zero."
Source: LaDuke, Anthem, 270-71
The chance that the rest of the world could live like we do is zero."
Source: LaDuke, Anthem, 270-71
"The challenge at the cusp of the millennium is to transform human laws to match natural laws, not vice versa. And to correspondingly transform wasteful production and voracious consumption. America and industrial society must move away from a society based on conquest to one steeped in the practice of survival"
Source: LaDuke, All Our Relations, 197
The Green Path
Winona's message for the future is steeped in history. Her perspectives on how to live are informed by Anisinaabeg tradition, and the stories of the Ojibwe's movement westward toward the place where food grows on water. She sees a direct relationship between the "green" culture of post-modern, post-industrial environmental destruction and mainstream efforts to "green" the economy with the story of a "green path" given as a choice to this age's Ojibwe people, according to legend.
"There is another prophecy that is relevant to this story, though. Ojibwe legends speak of a time when our people will have a choice between two paths: one path is well worn and scorched, but the second path is not well traveled and it is green.
There is an alternate economic future for indigenous peoples, and it too is green. In order to stabilize carbon emissions in the United States, the country will need to produce around 185,000 megawatts of clean new power over the next decade, which could mean up to 400,000 domestic manufacturing jobs. The Intertribal Council on Utility Policy estimates that tribal wind resources alone represent 200,000 megawatts of power potential. In fact, Native American nations are some of the windiest places in the country."
Source: LaDuke, Orion Magazine, Jan/Feb 2009
"There is another prophecy that is relevant to this story, though. Ojibwe legends speak of a time when our people will have a choice between two paths: one path is well worn and scorched, but the second path is not well traveled and it is green.
There is an alternate economic future for indigenous peoples, and it too is green. In order to stabilize carbon emissions in the United States, the country will need to produce around 185,000 megawatts of clean new power over the next decade, which could mean up to 400,000 domestic manufacturing jobs. The Intertribal Council on Utility Policy estimates that tribal wind resources alone represent 200,000 megawatts of power potential. In fact, Native American nations are some of the windiest places in the country."
Source: LaDuke, Orion Magazine, Jan/Feb 2009
Anti-Imperialism and Radical Humanism
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When asked by Progressive, "What would a model of traditional governance and decentralization mean for the United States as a whole?" LaDuke answers:
"It would undermine the entire structure of empire. If leadership and political power truly rested with local communities, then multinationals would find it impossible to poison their locales in the name of a "greater good." Absentee landowners would cease to exist, and small communities could preserve their distinct integrity. Cooperating on a smaller level could help everyone--Indian communities, Amish communities, urban enclaves, and so on. These can all be healthy, but they need to be nourished. As it is today, they are being technologically and culturally homogenized.
The last 400 years have been about building empires. This is not sustainable. Empires are about taking what doesn't belong to you and consuming more than you need. In order to move forward, we need to acknowledge this ongoing history. This is the fundamental paradigm of appropriation that remains unquestioned in America. We need to ask, "What right does the United States really have to this place?"
Source: Paul and Perkinson, Progressive, 1995
Image Source: laprogressive.com
"It would undermine the entire structure of empire. If leadership and political power truly rested with local communities, then multinationals would find it impossible to poison their locales in the name of a "greater good." Absentee landowners would cease to exist, and small communities could preserve their distinct integrity. Cooperating on a smaller level could help everyone--Indian communities, Amish communities, urban enclaves, and so on. These can all be healthy, but they need to be nourished. As it is today, they are being technologically and culturally homogenized.
The last 400 years have been about building empires. This is not sustainable. Empires are about taking what doesn't belong to you and consuming more than you need. In order to move forward, we need to acknowledge this ongoing history. This is the fundamental paradigm of appropriation that remains unquestioned in America. We need to ask, "What right does the United States really have to this place?"
Source: Paul and Perkinson, Progressive, 1995
Image Source: laprogressive.com
Speak Out Now publishes this list of topics on which Winona LaDuke speaks internationally:
• Building the Green Economy: Indigenous Strategies for a Sustainable Future • The Next Energy Economy: Moving Forward with Grassroots Strategies to Mitigate Global Climate Change • Climate Change, Green Jobs and the Future of our Communities • Food Security in a Time of Climate Change • Seed Sovereignty: Who Owns the Seeds of the World, Bio-Piracy, Genetic Engineering and Indigenous Peoples • Creating a MultiCultural Democracy: Religion, Culture, and Identity in America • Native Women and Politics • Activism, Justice and Future Generations • Recovering the Sacred: Religion, Faith and the Land from a Native Perspective Clearly, this activist, who came of age during the era of "identity politics" took from that paradigm the most crucial truths. There is no easy or simple way to protect the earth and its people. The way is complex, varied, and includes all of the variables and values that define human life, beginning with a sense of our own roots, and the way our particular communities interact with the environment. Our relationship to one another, and to the earth is perilously unhealthy. Winona LaDuke's inspirational leadership is therefore committed to to global healing, grounded in local stewardship. Her legacy is far greater than 1500 acres of recovered land, ongoing recuperation food systems in White Earth, and the slow but steady reclamation of Ojibwe language and cultural practices for her people. Her legacy is the seeds of economic justice, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and hope for the future that she plants in each collaboration, interview, commencement or keynote speech, and in every partnership she forms, as the web of organizations she empowers grows and extends, year after year. Source: speakoutnow.org Image Source: blogs.evergreen.edu |
Evergreen Commencement Speech, June 2014
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