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 Post office closures in the Dakotas and Minnesota will impact many communities‚ but the White Earth reservation villages‚ and other tribal towns of Squaw Lake‚ Ponemah‚ Brookston in Minnesota‚ and Manderson‚ Wounded Knee and Wakpala (South Dakota) as well as Mandaree in North Dakota will mean hardships for a largely Native community. Winona LaDuke white lakes mean Brothers and Sisters: Our ancient homeland is spotted today with an array of chemical dumps. Along the Niagara River, dioxin, a particularly deadly substance, threatens the remaining life there and in the waters which flow from there. Forestry departments spray the surviving forests with powerful insecticides to encourage tourism by people seeking a few days or weeks away from the cities where the air hangs heavy with sulphur and carbon oxides. Winona LaDuke powerful brother air Food for us comes from our relatives, whether they have wings or fins or roots. That is how we consider food. Food has a culture. It has a history. It has a story. It has relationships. Winona LaDuke roots food culture history We filed a constitutional rights lawsuit on my reservation, and I had to go out and interview all these old people. And I found that many of the old people on my reservation didn't know who was president. That kind of pointed out to me the irrelevance at times of who is in Washington. Winona LaDuke go know me people I'm interested in what kind of food we're going to eat as the climate changes. I'm interested in what kind of economy we're going to have in another 1,000 years. Winona LaDuke eat changes economy food When I first came to Harvard, I thought to myself, 'What kind of an Indian am I?' because I did not grow up on a reservation. But being an Indian is a combination of things. It's your blood. It's your spirituality. And it's fighting for the Indian people. Winona LaDuke grow myself fighting people If we moved from industrialized agriculture to re-localized organic agriculture, we could sequester about one quarter of the carbon moving into the air and destroying our glaciers, oceans, forests and lands. Winona LaDuke about agriculture air moving If you're going to spend most of your time in your democracy figuring out how to get oil by intervening into other people's countries and insuring that you follow it with military might, we think there's an alternative. Which would be renewable energy. Winona LaDuke you democracy time people I look at my own reservation, the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota - on my reservation, one quarter of our money is spent on energy. All of that money basically goes to off-reservation vendors whether it is for electricity, or whether it is for fuel. Winona LaDuke look my-own money white The thing about being an Indian person is that you feel most at home with your own people. Winona LaDuke feel you home people On my reservation, we had one of the most abundant fisheries in the world and hundreds of thousands of acres of wild rice beds. We've lost a lot of it, but there's still natural wealth that could support our communities. Winona LaDuke wild wealth support world The reality is, is that the military is full of native nomenclature. That's what we would call it. You've got Black Hawk helicopters, Apache Longbow helicopters. You've got Tomahawk missiles. The term used when you leave a military base in a foreign country is to go 'off the reservation, into Indian Country.' Winona LaDuke you black country reality Oil is drowning our oceans and drowning our boreal forests. Winona LaDuke oceans our oil forests Actually, I consider myself to be pretty politically conservative. Winona LaDuke consider pretty myself conservative I wanted to get out of Ashland, and I thought it would be pretty cool to go to school in the East. So I asked my guidance counselor what Ivy League schools were. And I applied to Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth - that was it. My guidance counselor told me I wouldn't get into an Ivy League school. So as my act of resistance, that's all I applied to. Winona LaDuke thought cool me school Food sovereignty is an affirmation of who we are as indigenous peoples and a way, one of the most surefooted ways, to restore our relationship with the world around us. Winona LaDuke food relationship way world In most of America, it seems you don't matter if you're not between 25 and 50. Winona LaDuke most you matter america Spirituality is the foundation of all my political work. Winona LaDuke foundation political work The United States, you know, people - one of the reasons that it is said that native people received citizenship in 1924 was so that they could be drafted. And they have been extensively drafted. Winona LaDuke know you said people The United States - you know, native people are large landowners, but the military has a huge chunk of our territories. And in those, there are a number of places that are our sacred sites. Winona LaDuke know you military people