Winona LaDuke
Winona LaDuke (August 18, 1959) is an American environmentalist, economist, and writer.
Quotes
- We have a lot of teachings and language about how a people can live a thousand years in the same place and not destroy things. The phrase anishinaabe akiing, for example, means the land to which the people belong. It’s not the same thing as private property or even common property. It has to do with a relationship that a people has to a place—a relationship that reaffirms the sacredness of that place…
- On her native teachings of cohabitating harmoniously with nature in “An Interview with Winona LaDuke” in Yes! Magazine (2008 Jun 17)
- And in our covenant with the Creator, we understand that it is not about managing their behavior—it’s about managing ours, because we’re the ones who cause extinction of species. We’re the youngest species, and we don’t necessarily have the most smarts. We’ve bungled up along the way, and we acknowledge these mistakes in our stories and in our history as Indian people. The question is whether you have the humility and the commitment to get some learning out of these experiences.
- On the notion of nature being superior to humans in “An Interview with Winona LaDuke” in Yes! Magazine (2008 Jun 17)
- A Navajo woman said to me, “In our old mythologies and stories, they talked of monster slayers.” She says we need a new generation of monster slayers. I think that’s such a powerful analogy, and it’s so true. It’s a David and Goliath moment, and we’ve got to hang in there because they are weakening…
- On employing “monster slayers to stop pipelining in “We Are the Seventh Generation: A Conversation with Winona LaDuke” in Edge Effects (2017 Nov 14)
- It’s so ironic and so tragic, this dichotomy between the large oil corporations and the people who have always stood for their land. To all of us it was a Selma moment, that’s how I look at it. And if you contextualize it in the history of American movements and social movements, Standing Rock is a Selma moment when we all woke up, we all woke up and said, “This is what it looks like on the front lines.”…
- On the people of Standing Rock protesting against an oil corporation in “Interview with Winona LaDuke: The Windigo Economy” in Indian Country (2018 Jul 17)
