Winona LaDuke

Winona LaDuke

Birth : 1959-08-18, Los Angeles, California, USA

History

Winona LaDuke is an internationally renowned Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) activist working on issues of sustainable development, renewable energy, and food systems. She lives and works on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota, and was a two-time vice presidential candidate with Ralph Nader for the Green Party.

Profile

Winona LaDuke

Movies

Nuuca
Thanks
In this evocative meditation, a disturbing link is made between the resource extraction industries’ exploitation of the land and violence inflicted on Indigenous women and girls. Or, as one young woman testifies, “Just as the land is being used, these women are being used.”
First Daughter and the Black Snake
Herself
The “Prophecy of the 7th Fire” says a “black snake” will bring destruction to the earth. For Winona LaDuke, the “black snake” is oil trains and pipelines. When she learns that Canadian-owned Enbridge plans to route a new pipeline through her tribe’s 1855 Treaty land, she and her community spring into action to save the sacred wild rice lakes and preserve their traditional indigenous way of life. Launching an annual spiritual horse ride along the proposed pipeline route, speaking at community meetings and regulatory hearings. Winona testifies that the pipeline route follows one of historical and present-day trauma. The tribe participates in the pipeline permitting process, asserting their treaty rights to protect their natural resources. LaDuke joins with her tribe and others to demand that the pipelines’ impact on tribal people’s resources be considered in the permitting process.
Seed: The Untold Story
Self
A film about the importance of heirloom seeds to the agriculture of the world, focusing on seed keepers and activists from around the world.
The Sacred Food
Thanks
A short documentary about the Ojibwe Native Americans of Northern Minnesota and the wild rice (Manoomin) they consider a sacred gift from the Creator. The film tells the Creation and Migration stories that are central to the tribe's oral history and belief system while showing the traditional process of hand-harvesting and parching the wild rice. Biotech companies are currently researching ways to genetically modify the rice and the community is fighting to keep it wild.
The Thunderbird Woman
Self
The Main Stream
Herself
Humorist Roy Blount Jr. takes viewers on a journey down the Mississippi River, showcasing everything from areas with spectacularly beautiful scenery to ugly and dangerously polluted stretches bordered by industrial development.
Anthem
Self
When twenty-six-year-olds Shainee Gabel and Kristin Hahn quit their Hollywood jobs, packed up a borrowed car and hit the road, it was with the deeply felt conviction that somewhere, shrouded in the din of talk shows and tabloid headlines, they'd discover the real America, alive and well in all of its regions and demographics.