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.
