Winona LaDuke. All Our Relations. -

After months of theory, LaDuke’s text was a nice, simple read. Each section of the text moves from tribe to tribe, from the Mohawks on the polluted Akwesasne in New York to the Seminoles in the dammed and destroyed Everglades to the Inuit suffering from low warfare plane flying and Quebec Hydroelectric damming to the Northern Cheyenne and their battles with the coalmining industry to the Spokane and Washington State and Yakama battles against uranium mining/ . La Duke, an environmentalist above all else, recognizes “the direct relationship between the loss of cultural diversity and the loss of biodiversity” (1). Each section of the text turns to the proportionate decline, creating a structural framework to the text that is reflected in each tribe’s resistance to this decline. The Akwesasne, a matriarchal culture, have created a metaphor for their resistance by decrying the concentrations of PCBs in the mother’s breastmilk, the mother being the source of life. In the Everglades, the Seminoles are compared to the black panthers (of which only 30 were left in 1999 when the text was published), as they both have lost vast amounts of land (Jackson and Trail of Tears) and both are at the top of the food chain, consuming extremely concentrated levels of mercury as the groundwater has no ability left to cleanse the toxins from the soil and water since most of the area has been dammed by the American Government—here she cites Clinton’s efforts to repair this, but I wonder how much has been undone since Bush took office in 2000. She compares the Inuit’s relation to the spiritual animals which they hunt—from which they have been distanced by government regulations on hunting and by the lowflying jets (which can fly low enough to decapitate caribou—is this possible?).  The text repeatedly refers to the lack of consideration for the rights of Indians—as they are poisoned, they are merely advised to limit their fish intake; if they are in the way, they are asked to move or forcibly moved. All because of titleship (the Indian lands are owned informally, which gives the paperholders precedence to enter and confiscate and manipulate). LaDuke not only applies her analysis on a communal level, but expands her argument as to impact national and international ecology. The text ties significantly to our coursework on women’s freedom struggles, as seen in LaDuke’s examples of Gail Small (representative for the Northern Cheyenne and environmental lawyer), Virginia Sanchez (anti-uranium harvesting advocate) and Katsi Cook (Akwesasne midwife and environmental advocate).

My immediate attraction to Winona LaDuke is her heritage. I've published on Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna/Sioux), Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna/Pueblo), and Linda Hogan (Chickasaw) (all beautiful poets), and I am currently enrolled in the Newberry American Indian graduate seminar for the AISC and CIC. And, being American Indian assumes post-colonization. I began my research by reading a short biography on the website Voices from the Gaps, a site that compelled my interest in the previous feminist American Indian authors. Her father's lineage is Anishinabe from the Mokwa Dodaem (Bear Clan) of the Mississippi Band of the White Earth reservation in Northern Minnesota, while her mother is Jewish.

She is a staunch defender of American Indian ownership of lands, and her latest text, published in November of 2004, criticizes the current government's treatment of the environment as well as its failure to repatriate Native remains and to protect sacred grounds. In her struggle to support her people, she has also founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project (http://www.welrp.org/index.html), which promotes Native land ownership and provides a catalogue for the purchase of American Indian products. She is currently touring the university circuit, speaking on such issues as her leadership in Honor the Earth and its desire for the regranting of lands (and she's coming to the University of Illinois on March 1st, so I suppose I should gas up the jetta). Her stances on political issues are neatly summarized on the political issues Campaign 2000 site (http://www.issues2000.org/Winona_LaDuke.htm), where she claims, in true post-colonial style, that English-only classrooms will alienate other indigenous languages (somehow America is exceptionalized in most cases surrounding its colonial history/rap sheet).

A search of the online databases as well as the library produced little to nil, except for a text arguing against multinational corporations and globalization for which LaDuke penned the foreword.

Sources

Gedicks, Al. The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles Against Multinational Corporations. Cambridge: South End Press, 1993.

Honor the Earth. 2005. Accessed January 16, 2005. http://www.honorearth.com/aboutus/composition/staff/winona.html.

LaDuke, Winona. All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. Cambridge: South End Press, 1999.

---. Last Woman Standing (Ishkwegaabawiikwe). Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 1997.

---. Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Reclaiming. Cambridge: South End Press, 2004.

--- and Ralph Nader. The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 2002.

White Earth Land Recovery Project. Accessed January 16, 2005. http://www.welrp.org/index.html.

"Winona LaDuke: On the Issues." On the Issues: Every Political Leader on Every Issue." 2000. Accessed January 16, 2005. http://www.issues2000.org/Winona_LaDuke.htm.