Winona LaDuke Quotes

In Minnesota, they say we made nice about it a long time ago. They say, "You Indians should get over it." Well that's really nice to say when you are holding all the assets. Why are Indian people the poorest people in this country in every economic or social statistic at the bottom or the top of where you don't want to be? Is that because we're stupid? No. It's because we have structural poverty enforced by intergenerational appropriation of our wealth. That's the reality.

The rights of the people to use and enjoy air, water, and sunlight are essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These basic human rights have been impaired by those who discharge toxic substances into the air, water, and land. Contaminating the commons must be recognized as a fundamental wrong in our system of laws, just as defacing private property is wrong. On that basis, the Seventh Generation Amendment to the Constitution of the United States declares, "The right of citizens of the U.S. to enjoy and use air, water, sunlight, and other renewable resources determined by the Congress to be common property shall not be impaired, nor shall such use impair their availability for use by the future generations."

The tar sands is a boreal forest. You know, and you turn something that is the oxygen of the North—I mean, the boreal forest of northern Canada—of Canada is the equivalent of the lungs. It’s the Amazon of the North. It’s the Amazon of the North. And that is what is being destroyed by the tar sands. Wetland—this is just going through our wetlands. The value of a wetland—you know, I’m an economist by training, but how do you value a wetland for what it does for Mother Earth and for the planet and for your water and for insects and for where the wild things are?

The reality is that there is a direct relationship between the "development" of the United States and the "underdevelopment" of Native America. Just as much as there is a direct relationship between the development of Europe and the underdevelopment of Africa; and the development of the United States and the underdevelopment of Africa. Some get rich and some get poor. Some take other's land, natural resources, and people, and some are left to deal with the consequences of it. Which is the history.

The white man, or the American government, has a way of saying they are sorry, which is to pay you. That's pretty much their approach. Now what our elders have said in our reservation and in Indian country in general is that actually the only compensation for land is land. That you cannot pay us with money that you took, that you made off of our land. That's kind of the analysis that goes behind that. Because the only thing that is actually of value to our community is the land itself. It is not the compensation.

The first 100 days of the Bush Administration have been an unbelievable nightmare.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution envisioned life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in that document, but had little idea of what was to come. Since that time we've seen the land of the continent change dramatically-culturally, politically, ecologically, and economically. Today, the social and technological foundation of the society has, in fact, outstripped the law itself. It's time to amend the Constitution to preserve "the commons" for all of us. It's time for a Common Property, or Seventh Generation, Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The preamble to the U.S. Constitution declares its intent to be to "secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves, and our posterity." In reality, U.S. laws have been transformed by corporate interests to cater to elite interests in society.

To the Native community, (Trump)’s kind of like the new incarnation of Andrew Jackson: you know, bad president for Indian people, bad president for everybody. But, you know, to us, and to be super honest, I mean, we don’t have a lot of experience with great presidents. You know, what we have experience with is that we’re going to fight this out, and we’re going to make the next economy. We’re going to make our future. That’s what self-determination is about.

Consumption causes the commodification of the sacred, the natural world, cultures, children, and women. And unless we speak and take meaningful action to address the high levels of consumption, we will never have any security for our individual human rights as women.

There is this saying in Indian country that I think is true, which is that, a long time ago, when the white people came, the Indians had the land and the white people had the Bibles. And now the Indians have the Bibles and the white people have the land.

There is, in many Indigenous teachings, a great optimism for the potential to make positive change. Change will come. As always, it is just a matter of who determines what that change will be.

There should be beauty in "process," whether it is harvesting with intelligence, whether it is the use of recycled materials, or whether it is observing energy efficiency.

"Minobimaatisiiwin," or the "good life," is the basic objective of the Anishinaabeg and Cree³ people who have historically, and to this day, occupied a great portion of the north-central region of the North American continent. An alternative interpretation of the word is "continuous rebirth." This is how we traditionally understand the world and how indigenous societies have come to live within natural law. Two tenets are essential to this paradigm: cyclical thinking and reciprocal relations and responsibilities to the Earth and creation.

Winona LaDuke became involved in Native American issues after meeting Jimmy Durham, a well known Cherokee activist, while she was attending Harvard University. At the age of 18, she spoke in front of the United Nations regarding Native American rights and has remained one of the most prominent voices for American Indian economic and environmental concerns.