Announcement: Winona's Endorsement for President 2020

Winona's Endorsement for President 2020

Coming to you from my windy Hemp farm while harvesting my beautiful crops, I wanted to share my endorsement for President.

As former Vice President Candidate, twice, for the Green Party endorses Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris to be our next President and Vice President. Winona encourages you to not only vote for Joe Biden but to vote Democrat across the board.

Winona's reasoning is "Our future generations count on our vote. Our collective well being is at stake. It is time to power up for change.”

This is a time of incredible change and transformation. Statues of confederates and conquistadors are falling and we are in the midst of a global pandemic.  There is no return to normal, so let’s make this world beautiful. We can be part of the change by voting for courageous and decent people.   

Winona believes Joe Biden has a plan, a plan we can work and live with that will protect our future generations. Winona stresses there is more work is to be done, but this is a great start that we can see in our future 2020 into 2021. Vote!

---

Take Your Power Back - Make America Beautiful Again

by Winona LaDuke

Make America beautiful again. That’s what I say.  I remember those old advertisements of the Indian guy in the canoe, tear and all. And there was all this pollution, burning rivers and garbage. Ugly.  I want it to be beautiful again. But it’s not just environmental beauty, no more smokey skies or poisoned rivers, we want beautiful character and ethics in our society and in our government.  I want leaders who are not self serving, lying, or serving foreign companies and countries, we want them to take care of the little people, those who need champions. In other words, we want to be decent people.  We want to not have hatred, walls, and fear. I plan to be part of making  America beautiful again. 

Here’s my thinking. I’m not a Democrat or a Republican. After all, I ran two times for the office of Vice President of the United States as a Green Party candidate.  I am a Green.  That means I don’t really have a dog in this fight, neither of those parties likes a woman like me.  But this year, I am weighing in. And I am weighing in on the side of decency and for a return to a democratic process.  I’m voting for a world with less conflict, youth in detention camps, gutted environmental and civil rights protections, less hatred, no vote stealing, and fewer forest fires. 

First, I am going to ask people to vote. We know that voting makes a difference because this last mid term, Peggy Flanagan was elected to the position of  Minnesota Lieutenant Governor. We know voting makes a difference, because a young Puerto Rican woman named  Alexandria Ocasio Cortez  unseated a seven term New York City Politician Joseph Crowley to become a US Representative.  The other side had the money, but people mobilized to turn over power. 

And, her vision and ethics, combined with allies like Deb Haaland, from New Mexico, Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar  is changing this country. They  are leading the country and challenging business as usual in Washington DC.  Now is the time for solutions, and those are not going to come from the folks who got us into this mess. The solutions and a “ Moonshot”  for a better world, of a new economy are visionary. That’s what happens when people vote and organize.  Minnesota had the highest turnout in the midterm elections, and we need to do it again. 

About 700 young people became eligible to vote on the White Earth reservation for this election- and November 3 is about your future. It is about what jobs there will be, if we will have our wild rice, if we will be in ongoing crises of climate, police, riots and opioids. It is about ensuring justice, and about having enough for our communities- heat, food, and health. This is a vote during a pandemic, a vote when the world is changing, and we are the country with more cases of COVID than any in the world.  This vote is about the future of our country, our water and our people. 

Why vote Native Communities? Vote because there are Native people running for senate, house, city councils and county commissioner positions in Minnesota. And those people can bring a Native voice to the state. And, yet some of those native people, despite being tribal members do not always represent Native interests. That’s complicated, and maybe let’s vote on records and merits.  And, then let’s remember that change can happen. It’s inevitable. It’s a question of who controls the change. A surge in Native voting will change the political landscape of the North.  

Vote because it matters what kinds of leaders we have. This past week, Donald Trump’s tax returns became public, and we found out that he paid “$750 in federal income taxes for 2016 and 2017 and no personal income taxes in 10 of the 15 years previous years.”  And, he spent $70,000 on hair styling and deducted it from his taxes. 

In the meantime, millions of people are facing evictions, loss of jobs, and incredible despair, struggling to pay bills.  There are over 210,000 people dead from COVID, and over 7.4 million contracted this serious virus as a result of bad leadership, the economy is in an ongoing crisis, there are riots in the streets, people getting shot and the west coast is on fire. 

Death toll from the coronavirus pandemic could triple by year’s end, with the United States to 410,000, according to a new forecast from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

In September, it was estimated 650,120 people filed new claims under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Act. 

Labor Department revealed that 837,000 Americans applied for jobless benefits in the latest week, in a release that did not include California, where the state has stopped accepting new claims as it investigates potential fraud.

And, then Trump has threatened that a transition may not happen.

My personal opinion: To have a Canadian corporation dictate and influence politics in the US is a problem. The guns they bring will also be a problem.  Hatred is ugly. While tribal governments wield significant economic power, politicians do not always pass bills for the benefit of tribes.  Our tribe has spoken and demands clean water and wild rice for the future. 

Some of us want peace, security and prosperity. That’s the vision of the Green New Deal. That’s the vision of renewable energy, healthcare for all, small farmers, funded education, organic agriculture, and justice. That’s the vision that needs to be here in northern Minnesota- solutions, not more problems. That’s a wave which is moving nationally, and can really change the course of our history. I say ride that wave. 

The forces at work in the north country are deep and every vote counts. President Trump did not come to Bemidji Minnesota to campaign just to see people with “good genes”.  He came because what is happening here matters. It matters to our future generations that we care for them being healthy and protecting the world for them. 

That’s a crisis.  In Northern Minnesota, the crisis grows as well. We have an opioid crisis, we have a rise in hateful behavior, we have polarized communities, and winter is coming. We are faced with the end of Wiindigo economics, the mines have run out of ore, except for a few pebbles, and the tar sands are collapsing.  Enbridge is hiring security forces and promising to bring in more militarization for a pipeline project which has been opposed by the Native people and 68,000 Minnesotans, as well as the Department of Commerce and the Attorney General of the State. This is a pipeline to nowhere. Sadly, many Democratic and tribal politicians lack courage, and are not against the pipeline, only David Suby running for House 2B, against Steve Green opposes Line 3.  

In comparison, Steve Green (House District 2B), a tribal member, is pro pipeline, and has opposed return of land to the White Earth tribe. 

Green tells us he “is addressing the nation’s energy issues by supporting the drilling of domestic oil, clean burning of coal and nuclear energy.” Senator Paul Utke has been in office since 2017, and has introduced 14 bills for the Native community, of which one passed. He is also pro Line 3, while our tribe has opposed the pipeline. 

That’s at a time when the oil industry is dying and renewable energy is surging.

This is a vision which is part of the Green New Deal, Just Transition, and needs to come to what we call the Deep North.  After all, Trump came to the Deep north because of the long history of Indian hating, and the desperation of the end of the road for late stage capitalism- that’s to say, that even the United Nations says that the kind of economics practiced by Enbridge, and RDO Offutt are not sustainable. 

This is a chance to vote for the Good life, to vote to be beautiful.
That’s what we can do today voting early and on November 3.

* A FAIR JUST ECONOMY
* RENEWABLE ENERGY
* PLAN FOR A CLEAN ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
* RIGHT TO CLEAN AIR AND CLEAN WATER #WATERISLIFE
* HEALTH CARE SYSTEM THAT WORKS. HEALTH CARE THAT IS INCLUSIVE AND EQUAL.
* PROTECT OUR VOTING RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY
* CLIMATE CHANGE
* RURAL AGRICULTURE SUSTAINABILITY
* STRENGTHENING AMERICA’S COMMITMENT TO JUSTICE
* JOE BIDEN’S COMMITMENT TO INDIAN COUNTRY

Follow Instagram @ojibwes4vote Facebook @ojibweforresponsiblegov “Ojibwes for Responsible Government,” a 501c4 Project for Indigenous Justice.

Indigenous fire management is the answer to raging wildfires by Winona LaDuke

Indigenous fire management is the answer to raging wildfires

Column is by Winona LaDuke.

Jan 28th 2020

As we watch Australia burn, it’s clear that indigenous fire management could have changed this story dramatically. Countless news stories have noted that land and homes are often saved in areas managed by aboriginal people using indigenous fire techniques.

Instead of listening, settlers come to indigenous lands and kill the inhabitants. They then proceed with a superior mind of land and natural resource management that punishes native people, denies us access to land, arrests us for harvesting, destroys our basket-making materials, and they bring in Smokey the Bear. Then, it all burns up.

The Australian fires are heartbreaking. Indeed, Australia is heartbreaking. Killing aboriginal people as sport, mass incarceration into boarding schools (see the movie "Rabbit Proof Fence") and an abomination of present human rights violations in such a “civilized country” is obscene. It’s an obscene history, as is this total denial of knowledge which could have saved much of that country.

Over the past decade, scientific journals have discussed indigenous fire management. Indeed, fire is a powerful tool when harnessed. North American indigenous people often burned the prairies to make grass and keep back trees. New grass is good for buffalo, and many plants are actually fire-germinated.

Traditional management of blueberry patches in the north woods often involved controlled burns. In California, native tribes there have been challenging and working with state agencies to control burn, not only to cut back extra debris, but to create a place for many medicines and basket materials.

The story in Australia is the same. A Ngurrumpaa camp, an isolated 160-acre bush property, stood in the way of the Gospers Mountain Fire. The fire quickly burned through the entire area, but controlled burns had been practiced for years. Two new managed burns in 2015 and 2016 diminished the debris, and the hut and outbuildings were saved.

Unlike hazard reduction burning, cultural burns are cooler and slower moving, usually no taller than knee height, leaving tree canopies untouched and allowing animals to take refuge from the flames. Small fires are lit with matches, instead of drip torches, and burn in a circular pattern.

Northern Australia fires burned 57% fewer acres than in previous years, where aboriginal people managed land for fire. Dean Yibarbuk, chairman of Warddeken Land Management, has 150 aboriginal rangers working there.

“We are very lucky in the north to be able to keep our traditional practices,” Yibarbuk said. “There’s a pride in going back to the country, managing it and making a difference.”

Ecologists fear that nearly 500 million mammals, reptiles and birds — including 8,000 koalas — are estimated to have been killed, although the current death toll is impossible to calculate. Some 87% of the animals in Australia are endemic, meaning they only live there.

Australia has some baffling logic in the face of climate change and the hottest year on record in 2019. That is, the country is still trying to unload coal reserves into Asian markets, as coal generation is diminishing worldwide.

Australia’s Morrison government committed to the Paris agreement goals, including limiting global heating to as close to 1.5C as possible. The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year estimated that reaching the goal would require a 59% to 78% cut in coal use by 2030 compared with 2010 levels, followed by deeper reductions by mid-century. It’s like Australia is just saying “burn baby burn.”

Indigenous knowledge is part of how we are going to save ourselves, so let’s work together. George Nicholas writes in the Smithsonian Magazine, “… On the one hand, these types of knowledge are valued when they support or supplement archaeological, or other scientific evidence. But when the situation is reversed — when traditional knowledge is seen to challenge scientific 'truths' — then its utility is questioned or dismissed as myth. Science is promoted as objective, quantifiable, and the foundation for 'real' knowledge creation or evaluation while traditional knowledge may be seen as anecdotal, imprecise and unfamiliar in form.”

In other words, our knowledge is sought and valued sometimes. But when our knowledge runs contrary to political, economic or scientific interests, we are dismissed. Line 3 is a perfect example of that. I don’t want to say “we told you so” about the raging fires from Australia to California, but that’s pretty much the story.