“Carry it On” documentary features singer/songwriter Buffy St Marie
By Winona LaDuke I was that little five-year-old girl who sat and listened to every song of Buffy Sainte Marie’s first album. It was an LP, full of songs like Little Wheel, Spin and Spin, Universal Soldier and Now that the Buffalo’s Gone. I would stare at the cover, look at her skin and my […]
Enbridge building to become museum/cultural center for Natives
By Winona LaDuke It’s just been the month when Native people are remembered. That’s nice. Now we want more, like we want to protect that Native heritage lifeway and tell our stories to all. We also want to create a new history, one which is healing, restorative, and makes a better society and better world. […]
Talon mine could lay waste to the Sandy Lake Watershed
By Winona LaDuke It’s almost time for manoominikewag, when we make wild rice. Many of us, like Veronica Skinaway of the Sandy Lake community, begin our harvest at Minnewawa and the Sandy Lake Flowage, two of the richest wild rice territories in northern Minnesota. The rice comes in early and is a constant and secure […]
Cohasset City Council stops Natives from testifying on mill
By Winona LaDuke This is a story of how democracy is supposed to work, and how it does not. This is a story about the future of Minnesota, and if a group of white men and a southern corporation, or a Canadian corporation, can control the future, or if the systems of government, between state, […]
U.N. Issues Letter Regarding Violations of Anishinaabe Human Rights
The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has taken the extraordinary measure to request a response from the United States regarding allegations of human rights violations against the Anishinaabe associated with the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline construction. On March 29, 2021, Honor the Earth and Giniw Collective submitted a Request for […]
Honoring Manoomin and fighting for its survival
By Winona LaDuke “You can feel the wind talk to the rice.” – Lew Murray, Rice Lake Village. It’s Rice Lake Village on the White Earth reservation – the mother lode of wild rice – Lower Rice Lake. Lew Murray stood in front of the gathering of about two hundred or so people, to greet […]
Indigo Girls and Line 3 activists host Protect the Water concert
By Jim Walsh / MINNPost Amy Ray spoke for many of the 100 or so Indigo Girls fans and human rights activists gathered on the shore of the Haha Wakpa (Mississippi) river in northern Minnesota on June 28th when she said, “This is the coolest thing we’ve ever done.” Flanked by her fellow Indigo Girl […]
The Water Protector Spring is coming
By Winona LaDuke Are you going to shoot us for a Canadian pipeline company? Or put another way, if this pipeline is such a good idea, why are there so many cops up north? The Minneapolis Star Tribune just revealed that Enbridge has laid out $750,000 to northern police forces, not counting an undisclosed number […]
Being a Water Protector at Line 3 is hard work
By Hannah Broadbent “Imagine that one day you wake up and find out that a pipeline company wants to run a thirty-inch pipe pumping 640,000 barrels of oil per day under high pressure through your burial grounds, sacred sites, medicinal plant harvesting areas, and no more than a mile from your biggest wild rice harvesting […]
Last Tango at the Red River: Enbridge and pipelines
By Winona LaDuke It’s an amazing competition to be the last Tar Sands Pipeline. Enbridge wants to win. It already did. The last tar sands pipeline was Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper, completed across Leech Lake, Red Lake and Fond du Lac in northern Minnesota in 2015. On January 21, newly elected President Biden cancelled the besieged […]
Redemption, reconciliation or restorative justice
By Winona LaDuke “The world is undergoing an initiation. The ancient knowledge of our ancestors and elders is needed now more than ever as we navigate through times of illness, painful division and social disruption. It’s time to call on the world’s spiritual midwives- those who can bridge us to the new paradigm.” – Angaangaq […]
Native Vote 2020: The Primaries and Tribal Elections
By Winona LaDuke I don’t actually have a dog in this fight, I am technically a member of the Green Party, not a Democrat or a Republican. I may not be fond of the candidates running for President – Joe Biden and Donald Trump – but what I do know is that I am going […]