Winona LaDuke was born in Los Angeles, California, to a Jewish mother and an Ojibwe father from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. From a young age, she was fascinated by her father’s powwows and tribal culture and traditions.
At 5, her parents divorced, and LaDuke moved with her mother to Ashland, Oregon. After high school, she attended Harvard University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in economics in 1982. During school, she joined a group of Indigenous activists and assisted the civil rights activist Jimmie Durham in his research on the effects of uranium mining in Navajo reservations.
After graduating, LaDuke moved to White Earth to work as the reservation high school’s principal. Soon, she became involved with the Anishinaabeg’s lawsuit to reclaim lands promised to them in a federal treaty in 1867. Initially, the reservation spanned 837,000 acres, but due to government policies allowing lumber companies and non-Native groups to seize the land, more than 90 percent were taken away by 1934.
In 1985, at 26, LaDuke founded the Indigenous Women’s Network – a collective of 400 Native women activists and organizations committed to enhancing the representation of Native women, empowering them to participate in tribal politics and cultural endeavors actively. She also worked with Women of All Red Nations to raise awareness of the forced sterilization of Native American women.
In 1989, LaDuke received her master’s in community economic development from Antioch University. That same year, LaDuke founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP), a non-profit organization that works on buying back reservation lands. By 2000, WELRP bought 1,200 acres, preserving them in a conservation trust for future transfer to the tribe’s possession. Focusing on sustainable development, WELRP has supported many initiatives, including indigenous farming, local food systems, local wild rice crop protection from patenting and genetic engineering, renewable energy, sanitation improvement, and a diaper service that reduces waste from disposable diapers while saving money.
In the early 1990s, LaDuke joined forces with the musical due Indigo Girls to arrange a series of concerts to raise awareness of Native issues. In 1993, they founded together Honor the Earth, a non-profit organization promoting financial support for Indigenous environmental justice.
In 1996 and 2000, LaDuke delved deeper into politics when serving as Ralph Nader’s running mate on the Green Party presidential ticket. She also was involved with the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests and led the protests against the Line 3 pipeline of 2020-2021.
LaDuke is a strong advocate for the cultivation of marijuana and industrial hemp on Indigenous tribal lands to generate economic benefits and foster local economic self-reliance.
Since 2017, she has devoted most of her time to farming and established Winona’s Hemp & Heritage Farm to create an economy led by Indigenous women that focuses on local food, energy, and fiber while prioritizing environmental sustainability.
Minobimaatisiiwin - the good life | Winona LaDuke | TEDxSitka
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Winona LaDuke draws on her experience as a leading Native-American activist in her talk about indigenous economic thinking for the 7th generation.
Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservations, and is the mother of three children. She is also the Executive Director of Honor the Earth, where she works on a national level to advocate, raise public support, and create funding for frontline native environmental groups.
A graduate of Harvard and Antioch Universities, she has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues. Author of now six books, including The Militarization of Indian Country (2011), Recovering the Sacred: the Power of Naming and Claiming (2005), the non-fiction book All our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (1999, South End Press), and a novel – Last Standing Woman (1997, Voyager Press). She is a former board member of Greenpeace USA and serves, as co-chair of the Indigenous Women’s Network, a North American and Pacific indigenous women’s organization. In 1994, Winona was nominated by Time magazine as one of America’s fifty most promising leaders under forty years of age, and in 1998, Ms. Magazine named her Woman of the Year for her work with Honor the Earth.
About TEDx, x = independently organized event In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
“In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures.”
“In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures.”
Fun Facts
- She is divorced and has six children, three biological and three adopted.
- She wrote eight books and co-authored 12 more, mainly concerning issues facing the Native American community. Among them are the novel Last Standing Woman and To Be A Water Protector: The Rise of the Wiindigoo Slayers.
- Her name, Winona, means “first daughter” in Dakota language.
- Time magazine included her in its Fifty Leaders for the Future list in 1994.
- In 1998, she was named Woman of the Year by Ms. Magazine.
- On November 9th, 2008, while visiting Boston, her house in Ponsford, Minnesota, burned down, and all her personal property, including her library and indigenous art and artifact collection, were destroyed.
Awards
- The Thomas Merton Award (1996)
- The BIHA Community Service Award (1997)
- The Reebok Human Rights Award (1998)
- Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame (2007)
- The University of California, Merced’s Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance (2017)
- Honorary doctorate from Augsburg College
Visit Her Landmark
Sorry, no records were found. Please adjust your search criteria and try again.
Sorry, unable to load the Maps API.
Minobimaatisiiwin - the good life | Winona LaDuke | TEDxSitka
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Winona LaDuke draws on her experience as a leading Native-American activist in her talk about indigenous economic thinking for the 7th generation.Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservations, and is the mother of three children. She is also the Executive Director of Honor the Earth, where she works on a national level to advocate, raise public support, and create funding for frontline native environmental groups.
A graduate of Harvard and Antioch Universities, she has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues. Author of now six books, including The Militarization of Indian Country (2011), Recovering the Sacred: the Power of Naming and Claiming (2005), the non-fiction book All our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (1999, South End Press), and a novel – Last Standing Woman (1997, Voyager Press). She is a former board member of Greenpeace USA and serves, as co-chair of the Indigenous Women’s Network, a North American and Pacific indigenous women’s organization. In 1994, Winona was nominated by Time magazine as one of America’s fifty most promising leaders under forty years of age, and in 1998, Ms. Magazine named her Woman of the Year for her work with Honor the Earth.
About TEDx, x = independently organized event In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
