Renowned Native American environmentalist and activist Winona LaDuke will present Carleton College’s weekly convocation address on Friday, Nov. 3 from 10:50 to 11:50 a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel. Widely recognized for her work on environmental and human rights issues, as well as her international advocacy for Indigenous peoples, LaDuke’s presentation is entitled, “Economics for the Seventh Generation: Moving Forward.”
LaDuke explains, “We are at this point, known in prophecies as the time of the 7th fire, where we have a choice. This a choice between a well-worn, scorched path and a new, green path. It is time to make the right choice and develop economics that support the new, green path.”
Carleton convocations are free and open to the public. They are also recorded and archived for online viewing at go.carleton.edu/convo/.
LaDuke is Program Director of the Honor the Earth (www.honorearth.org), where she works nationally and internationally on issues of climate change, renewable energy, and environmental justice with Indigenous communities. In her own community, she is the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, one of the largest reservation based non-profit organizations in the country, and a leader in the issues of culturally based sustainable development strategies, renewable energy and food systems. In this work, she also continues national and international work to protect Indigenous plants and heritage foods from patenting and genetic engineering.
In 2007, LaDuke was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, recognizing her leadership and community commitment. In 1994, LaDuke was nominated by Time magazine as one of America’s fifty most promising leaders under forty years of age. She has been awarded the Thomas Merton Award in 1996, Ms. Woman of the Year (along with the Indigo Girls in l997), and the Reebok Human Rights Award, with which in part she began the White Earth Land Recovery Project.
The White Earth Land Recovery Project has won many awards as well, including the prestigious 2003 International Slow Food Award for Biodiversity, recognizing the organization’s work to protect wild rice from patenting and genetic engineering.
A graduate of Harvard and Antioch Universities, she has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues. She is a former board member of Greenpeace USA and is presently an advisory board member for the Trust for Public Lands Native Lands Program as well as a board member of the Christensen Fund. The author of six books, including “The Winona LaDuke Chronicles: Stories from the Front Lines in the Battle for Environmental Justice,” “Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming,” “All our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life,” and the novel “Last Standing Woman: History & Heritage,” she is widely recognized for her work on environmental and human rights issues. LaDuke lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota.
This event is sponsored by the Office of College Communications and the Office of Intercultural & International Life. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4308. The Skinner Memorial Chapel is located at First and College Streets in Northfield.
