Former vice-presidential candidate Winona LaDuke said Tuesday that she has been motivated to involve herself in environmental activism because she is an American Indian and a mother.
LaDuke, who ran on the Green Party ticket with Ralph Nader in the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections, spoke to a packed lecture hall about her reasons for fighting against corporations that she believes devastate land and people while seeking profit.
An Anishinabe from the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, LaDuke said she believes in the oral histories and teachings of her people. She discussed the prophets who visited her ancestors and warned of pivotal events that would make her community and its ways of life disappear.
LaDuke said the prophets foretold that the people of the current generation would begin to wake up and remember the people's teachings, songs, dancing and ways of life. She said the people in the next generation would be called the "New People."
She discussed how being a mother has challenged her to fight for a world where her children can grow up with a positive future. She said she tries to be a good mother and teach her children values, but when they enter mainstream society they have a different, more destructive set of values foisted upon them.
LaDuke, who presides over a household of eight children, said that children are exposed to society's values beginning at home when watching television. She said the average child watches 1,400 hours of commercials a year, which gives them a wholly different view on how life should be.
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"I live on a dirt road," she said. "How do you get your whites the whitest?"
LaDuke said she teaches her children not to steal, but she, her family and community are surrounded by land they believe was stolen by the government. She said every national park in the nation is carved out of "Indian country" and that the environmental movement has not historically been in favor of returning American Indian lands.
She said she teaches her children not to be greedy, but the United States is the greediest nation in the world. She said the problem is that nobody asks how people get rich, they just assume the person worked hard.
LaDuke called the disparity between wealth and poverty obscene, adding that 225 individuals have the same wealth as the equivalent of 25 billion people and some of the largest economies in the world belong to corporations.
"The reason I don't like the republic of Wal-Mart is that it has a higher economy than 100 other countries," LaDuke said.
She said that corporations having limited liability in what they do to people or land is not only insane, but it is devastating to all communities.
LaDuke encouraged people to begin getting involved at any level, especially in the electoral process. She said that good people need to begin running for office for real change to occur.
She said there must be some other way of getting voices heard than being tear gassed. She added that change is inevitable, but the question will be who will lead that change.
"There's so much work to do, but that is how democracy is made healthy," LaDuke said. "That is how we are made healthy."
