Source: mural wall in White Earth, WELRP.org
"Time after time, I'm talking about trying to get back our land and people say, 'What are you going to do with it?' The inference is that we have to log it, or that we have to grow agricultural products on it. I usually say, 'Don't worry, we've got plenty to do with our land.' But, sometimes I want to say to those guys, 'I just want to look at it.'"
Source: LaDuke, Anthem, 272.
Land Recovery & Cultural Evolution
Winona LaDuke developed her political consciousness from childhood into her twenties, and at the age of thirty, gave that consciousness a home in founding the White Earth Land Recovery Project. Since 1989, roughly 1500 acres of land have been reclaimed through the efforts of WELRP, bit by bit, piece by piece. LaDuke, unlike many of her contemporaries, has led WELRP to purchase back native land rather than continue to discuss legal control and ownership and treaty agreements over the past 200 years with the federal government, or claim reparations through casino development. She has identified a multi-faceted approach to land reclamation that is about territory, health, culture, and sustainability. WELRP is a model for local, sustainable, cultural preservation. Its goals are a mirror of the goals she espouses as an international leader. The microcosm of WELRP is applied to all other global issues she confronts, researches, and discusses in her work as a guide for radical, progressive, and ironically, traditional practices.
Upper Minnesota, White Earth at western edge, held today as Grand Portage Trust Land.
Image Source: grandportagetrustlands.org
Image Source: grandportagetrustlands.org
"The White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) was founded in 1989. We’re a multi-issue, Native American, non-profit organization based on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. Our approach to systemic change is honed with almost two decades of experience, and today we’re one of the largest reservation-based non-profit organizations in the United States. We emerged from a land rights struggle–a pitched battle in our community for many generations. The reality is that our tribe controls less than ten percent of our reservation land base, and our people have been made paupers and refugees–today, over three quarters of tribal members live in the Twin Cities or elsewhere."
Source: WELRP.org
Image Source: http://www.hopeforthefirstnations.com
Source: WELRP.org
Image Source: http://www.hopeforthefirstnations.com
"It seems to me that the government says a tribe is sovereign if it has a casino or a dump. But when a tribe wants to regulate pesticides or maintain water rights,
its sovereignty suddenly disappears."
"The White Earth Land Recovery Project has been successful because we attack problems pragmatically. We know that America has to change. As a complement to rural, community-based organizing, we need to have smart, connected folks arguing on our behalf in urban areas. Our organization has hundreds of non-Indian members. A lot of them are yuppies. This helps us politically when we need to influence state leaders. We can get rich people in Minneapolis to be our advocates. They have a recognized voice that we don't. Working with non-reservation people also helps change the predator-prey relationship. We're forging ties across the divide of those who consume and those who produce."
Source: LaDuke, Progressive, Paul and Perkinson, 1995
Image Source: welrp.wordpress.org
its sovereignty suddenly disappears."
"The White Earth Land Recovery Project has been successful because we attack problems pragmatically. We know that America has to change. As a complement to rural, community-based organizing, we need to have smart, connected folks arguing on our behalf in urban areas. Our organization has hundreds of non-Indian members. A lot of them are yuppies. This helps us politically when we need to influence state leaders. We can get rich people in Minneapolis to be our advocates. They have a recognized voice that we don't. Working with non-reservation people also helps change the predator-prey relationship. We're forging ties across the divide of those who consume and those who produce."
Source: LaDuke, Progressive, Paul and Perkinson, 1995
Image Source: welrp.wordpress.org
The White Earth Land Recovery Project is a holistic recovery program that identifies and supports the interconnected components of environmental, cultural, economic, and political issues in order to preserve and strengthen White Earth and its people, and in turn, the world. Its programs include, but are not limited to:
- Recovery of Land held in trust by the federal government
- Water safety and the preservation of locally harvested Mahnoomin (Wild Rice)
- Food Sovereignty and Security
- Indigenous Farming
- Indigenous Diet as Medicine
- Creation of an Indigenous Seed Library
- Energy Justice
- Energy Sovereignty
- Prevention of Frakking
- Prevention of Oil Pipeline Construction
- Sustainable Community Development
- Women's Rights
- Language Preservation
- Tribal College
- Farm to School Food Program
Why Reclaim White Earth, or any particular land and its people, itself?
There is a direct relationship between the loss of cultural diversity and the loss of biodiversity. Wherever indigenous peoples still remain there is also a corresponding enclave of biodiversity…it is these relationships that industrialism seeks to disrupt. Native communities will resist with great determination.
Source: LaDuke, All our Relations, 1-2
LaDuke frequently speaks as an expert on the federal government's policies of withholding land rights from American Indians. Here, she discusses the impact of these policies on the efforts of WELRP to reclaim White Earth. In her final summation, racism is at the heart of the federal perspective.
Click the button below to hear a segment from Facing History and Ourselves' speaker series.
Source: Facing History and Ourselves, 2008
Click the button below to hear a segment from Facing History and Ourselves' speaker series.
Source: Facing History and Ourselves, 2008