Winona LaDuke > Quotes

“One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel powerless. Deconstruct that disempowerment. Part of the mythology that they’ve been teaching you is that you have no power. Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.”
― Winona LaDuke

“Another thing is, people lose perspective. It is a cultural trait in America to think in terms of very short time periods. My advice is: learn history. Take responsibility for history. Recognise that sometimes things take a long time to change. If you look at your history in this country, you find that for most rights, people had to struggle. People in this era forget that and quite often think they are entitled, and are weary of struggling over any period of time”
― Winona LaDuke

“I find that I have more allies on the left than on the right, and that is because the left is, by and large, filled with people who are challenging the present paradigm and power structure. I’m interested in totally transforming the structure that exists now, because it is not sustainable.”
― Winona LaDuke

“The question of socialism or communism or capitalism or between the left and right – I think the important question is between the industrial society and the earth-based society. And I say that because I believe that capitalism and communism are really much more about how the wealth is distributed, if it trickles down or is appropriated at the beginning to those who have worked for it. But, you know, someone has to question where the wealth came from. What right does society have to the wealth? What is the relationship between that society and the land from which it got its wealth? Those are the questions that should be asked.”
― Winona LaDuke

“I don’t understand all the nuances of the women’s movement. But I do understand that there are feminists who want to challenge the dominant paradigm, not only of patriarchy, but of where the original wealth came from and the relationship of that wealth to other peoples and the earth. That is the only way that that I think you can really get to the depth of the problem.”
― Winona LaDuke

“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

“.. both the making and the unmaking were essential parts of life & necessary to keep the balance.”
― Winona LaDuke, Last Standing Woman

“By snowshoe, canoe, or dog team, they moved through those woods, rivers, and lakes. It was not a life circumscribed by a clock, stamp, fence, or road.”
― Winona LaDuke, Last Standing Woman

“The Anishinaabeg world undulated between material and spiritual shadows, never clear which was more prominent at any time. It was as if the world rested in those periods rather than in the light of day. Dawn and dusk, biidaaban, mooka’ang. The gray of sky and earth was just the same, and the distinction between the worlds was barely discernible.”
― Winona LaDuke, Last Standing Woman

“I would argue yes. In fact, I would question the inverse. Can men of privilege...who do not feel the impact of policies on forests, children or their ability to breastfeed children...actually have the compassion to make policy that is reflection of the interests of others. At this point, I think not.”
― Winona LaDuke

“There are many histories of North America. The experiences of successive waves of immigrants are distinct, as are—to a large degree—the histories of the different classes compromising the immigrant waves. The histories of the various peoples native to the continent are also quite distinct within themselves. The story of each of these groups holds a rightful claim to its own integrity, to its own place and fullness of meaning within the whole. To deny this is to distort.”
― Winona LaDuke

“We should not believe that our lives are lived in a linear fashion; they don’t go that way, not for no reason; therefore, however, we should believe that our lives go in a circular manner. That is the Anishinaabe way of life.”
― Winona LaDuke, Last Standing Woman

“Look at the dream net on the window,’ Charlotte said to Kwe, pointing at the spiderweb-like frost formed on the pane. ‘There’s a lot of spirits here now. They’ve come inside to keep company with us and stay warm.”
― Winona LaDuke, Last Standing Woman

“I do not believe that time is linear. Instead, I have come to believe that time is in cycles, and that the future is part of our past and the past is a part of our future. Always, however, we are in new cycles. The cycles omit some pieces and collect other pieces of our stories and our lives.

That is why we keep the names, and that is why we keep the words. To understand our relationship to the whole and our role in the path of life.”
― Winona LaDuke, Last Standing Woman

“D-Day was a short, sturdy man who watched the world from behind thick glasses set in ancient horn rims. Her carried in front of him a belly that had settled like a gunny sack of potatoes. His white, crew cut hair glistened against his dark skin, his weathered hands whispered of years in the woods peeling pulp for logging companies, and his tongue spoke mostly Ojibwe. He preferred the nuance of his own language, and over time, age and amnesia had taken most of the English he knew and returned it to its source, a shelf of yellowing books in a boarding-school library somewhere far away.”
― Winona LaDuke, Last Standing Woman