Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesnt make a corporation a terrorist. Winona LaDuke More Quotes by Winona LaDuke More Quotes From Winona LaDuke Uranium mining in northern Canada has left over 120 million tons of radioactive waste. This amount represents enough material to cover the Trans-Canada Highway two meters deep across the country. Present production of uranium waste from Saskatchewan alone occurs at the rate of over 1 million tons annually. Since 1975, hospitalization for cancer, birth defects and circulatory illnesses in that area have increased dramatically - between 123 and 600 percent in that region. Winona LaDuke birth-defects cancer country I see a lot of damage to Mother Earth. I see water being taken from creeks where water belongs to animals, not to oil companies. Winona LaDuke taken mother animal To native peoples, there is no such thing as the first, second, and third worlds; there is only an exploiting world ... whether its technological system is capitalist or communist ... and a host world. Native peoples, who occupy more land, make up the host world. Winona LaDuke land world firsts You've got to get people to believe that change is possible... You have to show that you can fight things successfully even if you don't win. Winona LaDuke fighting change believe Our forests are not for toilet paper. They are worth more standing than cut. That deserves to be defended, not only by native peoples but also by environmentalists. Winona LaDuke toilets cutting paper 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 land essence people In the time of the sacred sites and the crashing of ecosystems and worlds, it may be worth not making a commodity out of all that is revered. Winona LaDuke ecosystems may world The aboriginal peoples of Australia illustrate the conflict between technology and the natural world succinctly, by asking, 'What will you do when the clever men destroy your water?' That, in truth, is what the world is coming to. Winona LaDuke technology clever men I would like to see as many people patriotic to a land as I have seen patriotic to a flag. Winona LaDuke patriotic land people I’m not a patriot to a flag, I’m a patriot to a land. Winona LaDuke flags patriot land What our Seventh Generation will have is a consequence of our actions today. Winona LaDuke our-actions generations today It's time to respect the treaties our ancestors signed and care for our land, water, and cultures so that they remain healthy for our future generations. Winona LaDuke healthy land water The idea is the least labor and capital and resources you put together and the more you accumulate the better capitalist you are. So the suggestion I will make to you is that the idea of constant accumulation, which is what America is about, what consumerism, NAFTA are about, means that you always take more than you need and you don't leave the rest. So I suggest that it is possible from an indigenous world view that capitalism is inherently out of order with natural law. Winona LaDuke law order mean We must keep these waters for wild rice, these trees for maple syrup, our lakes for fish, and our land and aquifers for all of our relatives - whether they have fins, roots, wings, or paws. Winona LaDuke aquifers land lakes The Lockean assumption that if we put our labor to it then it becomes our own is totally fallacious. We have to figure out how to leave things alone, and build an economic system that's not built on a linear model, but instead on a cyclical model, because that's the natural world - it's cyclical and not linear. That is going to take a lot of transformation. Winona LaDuke environmental transformation world Mother Earth needs us to keep our covenant. We will do this in courts, we will do this on our radio station, and we will commit to our descendants to work hard to protect this land and water for them. Whether you have feet, wings, fins, or roots, we are all in it together. Winona LaDuke hard-work mother feet The insecticides kill the black flies, but also destroy much of the food chain for the bird, fish, and animal life which also inhabit those regions. The fish of the Great Lakes are laced with mercury from industrial plants, and fluoride from aluminum plants poisons the land and the people. Sewage from the population centers is mixed with PCBs and PBS in the watershed of the great lakes and the Finger Lakes, and the water is virtually nowhere safe for any living creatures. Winona LaDuke land lakes animal Native communities are focal points for the excrement of industrial society. Winona LaDuke pollution environmental community The military is the largest polluter in the country, and so you have a lot of military waste contaminating reservations - as, for example, on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, where 5,000 sheep died in some kind of experimental military nerve gas test 10 years ago. Many of our communities are dealing with that kind of waste, and an absence of political will to clean them up. Winona LaDuke skulls military country Native people - about two-thirds of the uranium in the United States is on indigenous lands. On a worldwide scale, about 70 percent of the uranium is either in Aboriginal lands in Australia or up in the Subarctic of Canada, where native people are still fighting uranium mining. Winona LaDuke australia fighting land
