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Winona LaDuke, an American Indian activist and former
Green Party vice presidential nominee, attended Harvard, drives a luxury
automobile, runs a business, and was recently involved in a major
land-acquisition deal. But it’s not what you think.
LaDuke, who spoke this week at the University of
Illinois at Springfield, is the founding director of the northwest
Minn.-based White Earth Land Recovery Project, whose mission to re-obtain
the original land base of the White Earth Indian Reservation. The
organization recently acquired 1,700 acres of land on which members of LaDuke’s
Ojibwe tribe grow organic wild rice, coffee, corn, and berries and run
5,000 maple-syrup taps.
Her car, a 1983 Mercedes Benz, was modified to run on
biodiesel, manufactured from spent cooking grease. LaDuke is working to
procure a biodiesel-powered ice cream truck, which would be used to sell
frozen soy-based treats, for the kids on her reservation. “Land is power,” LaDuke says. “If
you control your land, you control your destiny.”
LaDuke, a mother of five, says the United States often
doesn’t abide by rules that American parents are expected to teach
their children. “Don’t steal” and “Don’t
be greedy” are good lessons, she says, although she notes the irony
of her tribe’s having to pay market price for land they originally
owned and points out Americans’ fascination with the rich and famous.
Part of UIS’s Earth Week activities,
LaDuke’s speech on politics, women, motherhood, and environmental
justice preceded a panel discussion to be held tonight (Thursday, April 19)
on “The Future of Renewable Energy in Illinois.”
Among the participants are John Caupert, director of
the National Corn-to-Ethanol Center, located at Southern Illinois
University-Edwardsville; Rebecca Stanfield, state director of Environment
Illinois; Stephen Long, a plant-biology and crop-sciences professor at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and David Pimentel, a Cornell
University ecology professor and critic of corn-based ethanol. The event,
which begins at 7 p.m., will take place in UIS’s Brookens Auditorium.
A rural-development economist by trade, LaDuke says
that her next endeavor is to purchase a wind turbine to meet the
reservation’s energy needs. The tribe now spends about 25 percent of
its budget on energy, but LaDuke says she expects to see substantial
savings once the northern-Minnesota wind has been harnessed.
“I’m avoiding the question ‘How many
Ojibwe does it take to put up a wind turbine?’” she jokes, but,
more seriously, she adds: “If you want to take control of your
economy, take a look at your energy-consumption habits.”
Contact R.L. Nave at rnave@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Apr 12-18, 2007.
