Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabe) is an internationally respected Native American and environmental activist. She began speaking about these issues at an early age, addressing the United Nations at the age of 18, and continues to devote herself to Native and environmental concerns, as well as political and women’s issues.
The Harvard-educated activist is the founding director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, the co-chair of the Indigenous Women’s Network, and the program director of Honor the Earth where she provides vision and leadership for the organization’s Regranting Program and its Strategic Initiatives. In addition, she has worked for two decades on the land rights issues of the White Earth Reservation, including litigation.
In 1994, Time magazine named her one of America’s fifty most promising leaders under forty years of age, and in 1997 she was named a Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year. Other honors include the 1989 Reebok Human Rights Award, the Thomas Merton Award in 1996, the Ann Bancroft Award, the Global Green Award, and the prestigious International Slow Food Award for working to protect wild rice and local biodiversity.
LaDuke also served as Ralph Nader’s vice-presidential running mate on the Green Party ticket in the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections.
In addition to numerous articles, LaDuke is the author of Last Standing Woman (fiction), All Our Relations (non-fiction), In the Sugarbush (children's non-fiction), and The Winona LaDuke Reader. Her most recent book is Recovering the Sacred: the Power of Naming and Claiming(South End Press).
An enrolled member of the Mississippi band of Anishinaabe, LaDuke lives with her family on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota.
Check out this video of Winona speaking at the Montana Human Rights Network/Honor the Earth benefit 1-12-07: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxnj2tk54JY
She's also listed in 100 Native Americans Who Shaped American History.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
An Upriver Passamaquoddy
Drawing on his memories and an oral tradition, Allen Sockabasin returns to his Passamaquoddy village of Mud-doc-mig-goog, or Peter Dana Point, near Princeton, Maine. When Allen was a child in the 1940s and 1950s, his village was isolated and depended largely on subsistence hunting and fishing, working in the woods, and seasonal harvesting work for its survival.
Passamaquoddy was its first language, and the tribal traditions of sharing and helping one another ensured the survival of the group.
To the outside world they lived in poverty, but Allen remembers a life that was rich and rewarding in many ways. He recalls the storytellers, tribal leaders, craftsmen, basketmakers, hunters, musicians, and elders who are still his heroes, and he explains why preserving the Passamaquoddy traditions and language is so critical to his people's survival in modern times. Many rare photographs illustrate this fascinating memoir.
Get a copy of his book here: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?r=1&ean=9780884482932#TABS
Passamaquoddy was its first language, and the tribal traditions of sharing and helping one another ensured the survival of the group.
To the outside world they lived in poverty, but Allen remembers a life that was rich and rewarding in many ways. He recalls the storytellers, tribal leaders, craftsmen, basketmakers, hunters, musicians, and elders who are still his heroes, and he explains why preserving the Passamaquoddy traditions and language is so critical to his people's survival in modern times. Many rare photographs illustrate this fascinating memoir.
Get a copy of his book here: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?r=1&ean=9780884482932#TABS
$25 million raised to begin ambitious Penobscot River Restoration Project
By: Gale Courey Toensing
INDIAN ISLAND, Maine - The Penobscot Indian Nation and its public and private partners have raised $25 million for the first phase of the Penobscot River Restoration Project, an unprecedented collaborative effort between tribal, federal, and state governments, industry, and conservation groups, working to restore self sustaining populations of native migratory fish while fulfilling the need for hydro electric power generation.
The Penobscot River is the second largest river system in the northeast. The river and its tributaries and brooks are the arteries, veins and capillaries of an 8,570-square-mile watershed - the eastern third of the state of Maine.
From time immemorial until the 1800s, the river was a highway for Atlantic salmon - dramatic wild creatures of muscle and instinct that swam across the ocean to the coast of Greenland where they grew to adulthood, then navigated back to spawn in the clear water and gravel bottoms of the very same streams and brooks where they were born.
The Penobscot Indians traveled the river and its tributaries in birch bark canoes, following the paths of the salmon and other migratory fish that came and went with the seasons.
There's more here: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416611
INDIAN ISLAND, Maine - The Penobscot Indian Nation and its public and private partners have raised $25 million for the first phase of the Penobscot River Restoration Project, an unprecedented collaborative effort between tribal, federal, and state governments, industry, and conservation groups, working to restore self sustaining populations of native migratory fish while fulfilling the need for hydro electric power generation.
The Penobscot River is the second largest river system in the northeast. The river and its tributaries and brooks are the arteries, veins and capillaries of an 8,570-square-mile watershed - the eastern third of the state of Maine.
From time immemorial until the 1800s, the river was a highway for Atlantic salmon - dramatic wild creatures of muscle and instinct that swam across the ocean to the coast of Greenland where they grew to adulthood, then navigated back to spawn in the clear water and gravel bottoms of the very same streams and brooks where they were born.
The Penobscot Indians traveled the river and its tributaries in birch bark canoes, following the paths of the salmon and other migratory fish that came and went with the seasons.
There's more here: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416611
The Cold War Threat to the Navajo
Editorial: New York Times
It is alarming that the nuclear power industry is talking about resuming uranium mining near a Navajo reservation. A mining company has applied for permits for a new mine on privately owned land in New Mexico just outside the reservation’s formal boundaries but within what is commonly known as Navajo Indian Country. Regulators must not allow this to proceed until the enormous damage inflicted by past mining operations has been fully addressed.
Residents of the Navajo Nation are haunted by radiation threats from more than a thousand gaping mine sites abandoned after the cold war arms race. After decades of uranium mining — and accumulating evidence of spikes of cancer and other diseases — mining companies walked away from their cleanup responsibilities.
The federal government has also shamefully failed its tribal trust obligation to deal with what Representative Henry Waxman has aptly termed “an American tragedy.”
The California Democrat is investigating a history of shocking neglect that would not be tolerated elsewhere. Among the horrors: shifting mountains of uranium tailings; open mines leaching contaminated rain into drinking water tables; wind-blown radioactive dust; home construction from uranium mine slabs; and even the grim spectacle of children playing in radioactive swimming holes and ground pits.
Tribal elders finally forbade mining, alarmed at the sudden rise in cancer deaths. Federal help across the years has been sporadic at best, with only half the mines ever sealed. Prodded into action by Congressional hearings and detailed reports in The Los Angeles Times, a half-dozen agencies are now vowing stronger remedies, including the resumption of long-stalled toxic testing. Far greater resolve is called for. The House oversight committee is rightly demanding a coordinated five-year remediation plan from the agencies most involved.
The government must finally honor its obligation to seal the mines and deal with their myriad dangers. Talk of opening even one new mine — which could, of course, lead to others — adds grave insult to the severe injury already done.
It is alarming that the nuclear power industry is talking about resuming uranium mining near a Navajo reservation. A mining company has applied for permits for a new mine on privately owned land in New Mexico just outside the reservation’s formal boundaries but within what is commonly known as Navajo Indian Country. Regulators must not allow this to proceed until the enormous damage inflicted by past mining operations has been fully addressed.
Residents of the Navajo Nation are haunted by radiation threats from more than a thousand gaping mine sites abandoned after the cold war arms race. After decades of uranium mining — and accumulating evidence of spikes of cancer and other diseases — mining companies walked away from their cleanup responsibilities.
The federal government has also shamefully failed its tribal trust obligation to deal with what Representative Henry Waxman has aptly termed “an American tragedy.”
The California Democrat is investigating a history of shocking neglect that would not be tolerated elsewhere. Among the horrors: shifting mountains of uranium tailings; open mines leaching contaminated rain into drinking water tables; wind-blown radioactive dust; home construction from uranium mine slabs; and even the grim spectacle of children playing in radioactive swimming holes and ground pits.
Tribal elders finally forbade mining, alarmed at the sudden rise in cancer deaths. Federal help across the years has been sporadic at best, with only half the mines ever sealed. Prodded into action by Congressional hearings and detailed reports in The Los Angeles Times, a half-dozen agencies are now vowing stronger remedies, including the resumption of long-stalled toxic testing. Far greater resolve is called for. The House oversight committee is rightly demanding a coordinated five-year remediation plan from the agencies most involved.
The government must finally honor its obligation to seal the mines and deal with their myriad dangers. Talk of opening even one new mine — which could, of course, lead to others — adds grave insult to the severe injury already done.
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