Winona LaDuke: Standing Rock & the Seventh Generation: An Economics for Us All

NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and Asian/Pacific/American Institute invite you to join us for an Albert Gallatin Lecture with Anishinaabekwe activist, writer, and political leader Winona LaDuke on the 96th day of the Trump Era. LaDuke will address the interrelated issues of energy, food sovereignty, Native Rights, and an economics for the 99% to help us understand this moment in history and speak about ongoing efforts toward social, cultural, and environmental justice. And she’ll offer ideas about what we can do to come together, address climate justice, and move North America toward a sustainable, post-carbon economy.

The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that a society that consumes one third of the world’s resources is unsustainable. This level of consumption requires constant intervention into other people’s lands. That’s what’s going on. —Winona LaDuke

Winona LaDuke is a rural development economist and author working on issues of indigenous economics and food and energy policy. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota and is the executive director of Honor the Earth (HtE). She co-founded HtE with the Indigo Girls as a platform to raise awareness of and money for indigenous struggles for environmental justice. She works nationally and internationally on the issues of climate change, renewable energy, and environmental justice alongside 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. Globally and nationally, LaDuke is known as a leader in the issues of cultural-based sustainable development strategies, renewable energy, and sustainable food systems. She is one of the leaders in the work of protecting Indigenous plants and heritage foods from patenting and genetic engineering.

In 2007, in recognition of her leadership and community commitment, LaDuke was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. In 1994, she was nominated by Time magazine as one of America’s fifty most promising leaders under forty. She has been awarded the 1996 Thomas Merton Award; was named Ms. Woman of the Year in 1997 with the Indigo Girls; and was given 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, including the 2003 International Slow Food Award for Biodiversity in recognition of the organization’s work to protect wild rice from patenting and genetic engineering. LaDuke was a co-founder, and Board co-chair of the Indigenous Women’s Network for fifteen years, and maintains a significant role in international advocacy for indigenous people. This has included numerous presentations at United Nations forums.

A graduate of Harvard and Antioch, she has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues. She also attended one year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Community Fellows Program. She is the author of six books, including Recovering the Sacred, All Our Relations, as well as a novel, Last Standing Woman. Her newest work is The Winona LaDuke Chronicles. She is widely recognized for her work on environmental and human rights issues.

Presented by The Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University

Hosted by the NYU Native American and Indigenous Students’ Group, American Indian Community House, and American Indian Law Alliance

Co-sponsored by the NYU Native Studies Forum; NYU Department of Nutrition and Food Studies; NYU Center for Multicultural Education & Programs; NYU Center for the Humanities; Urban Democracy Lab; Institute for Public Knowledge; NYU Department of History; NYU Department of Social & Cultural Analysis; NYU Department of Environmental Studies; NYU Department of Art and Public Policy; Lenape Center; Eagle & Condor Community Center; Red Earth Studio Consulting/Productions; Na ‘Ōiwi NYC; Hālāwai; Climate Working Group; Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics; NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; NYU Department of Anthropology; NYU Sanctuary; Global South Center, Pratt Institute; Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School; and Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute.