Winona LaDuke is a Native American activist, former political candidate, and author. She founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project and serves as Executive Director of Honor the Earth. She was Ralph Nader’s vice presidential candidate in the Green Party during the 1996 and 2000 elections and has endorsed Democratic presidential candidates in later elections. She has worked with various Native American rights organizations and continues to speak on Indigenous rights and environmental issues.
Winona LaDuke is a Native American activist and former political candidate. She is a member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg, of the Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) tribe. She is best known to the general public as Ralph Nader’s vice presidential candidate in the Green Party during the 1996 and 2000 elections. In both 2004 and 2008, however, she endorsed the Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and Barack Obama.
Winona LaDuke was born to a Native American father and a Jewish mother in Los Angeles in 1959. She grew up in Ashland, Oregon and attended Harvard University, earning a degree in rural economic development. She then traveled to the White Land Reservation in Minnesota. The White Land Indian Reservation, also known as Gaa-waabaabiganikaag, is the largest reservation in the state. Although sometimes identified as a Chippewa or Ojibwe reservation, most residents prefer to identify themselves as Anishinaabe.
Originally, the White Land was approximately 1,300 square miles (3,400 square km) in size, but during the late 19th century much of that land was seized and sold to private buyers or the US government, largely part under Acts Dawes and Nelson. Winona LaDuke founded, in 1999, the White Earth Land Recovery Project, which seeks through political action to reclaim land that has been seized from her people, a cause that has been relatively successful to date.
Winona LaDuke was formative or an integral part of a number of Native American rights organizations. This work includes Women of All Red Nations, which brings public attention to the extreme levels of forced sterilization against Native American women, and the Indigenous Women’s Network. She also serves as Executive Director of Honor the Earth, which seeks to gain broad support and awareness for key environmental issues for Native Americans and to work to support Native American communities.
LaDuke is also a critically acclaimed author, with books such as Last Standing Woman in 1997 and Recovering the Sacred: the Power of Naming and Claiming in 2005. She has also made appearances in documentary films, such as 2002’s The Main Stream and 1997 Anthem. She continues to make public appearances, speaking on a wide range of issues relevant to both Indigenous rights and broader environmental issues.
In 1996, Winona LaDuke was chosen as the vice presidential candidate for the US Green Party in most states, with Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate. Their ticket took 685,297 votes, or about 0.7% of the total vote, compared to fellow third-party candidate Ross Perot, who received more than 8 million votes, at 8.4% of the total vote. In 2000 Winona LaDuke was again chosen as the Green Party’s vice presidential candidate, this time out of all 44 states in which the Green Party has appeared. The ticket got 2,882,955 votes nationwide, for 2.7% of the total vote. In 2004, Winona LaDuke supported Democrat Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic primary, and after the primary she supported Democrat John Kerry.
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