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!

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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.

Welcome to the Deep North by Winona LaDuke

Water Protectors at the Enbridge Clearbrook Terminal 2019 on Indigenous People’s Day March.

Photo by Sarah LittleRedfeather

Welcome to the Deep North

Winona LaDuke

President Trump is coming to Bemidji Minnesota, a town between three large Anishinaabe reservations, Red Lake, White Earth and Leech Lake. A town which is the home to Bemidji State University, some stellar schools, and also some racism, big time. Beltrami County, is where Bemidji is located. It’s also where former Blackduck Mayor, Rudy Patch, resigned after an infamous Facebook post about the George Floyd riots. This is where there are more Natives in jail, or who die from police per capita than anywhere else in rural Minnesota. This is the Deep North.

This is also a battleground for America’s future, where Republicans hope to wrest more power from a Democratic Governor, Tim Walz and his Lieutenant Governor, Peggy Flanagan, the first Native woman in history to hold that position. There’s a hard push on the north country to turn Red, and there’s a grassroots movement which is pushing back. 

Take Beltrami County

Tim Sumner is an incumbent running for County Commissioner, a Red Lake Tribal member.  He along with fellow incumbent, Reed Olson, were the only two county commissioners who opposed Beltrami County’s January 2020 resolution.  In January, the county became the first in the state and second in the nation to vote against allowing the placement of refugees in its community.

"As a representative of my part of the county, and considering the current state of affairs in our county, I don't feel it's prudent to bring refugees to our county," said Beltrami County Commissioner  Jim Lucachick, "when we need to take care of all the issues we have now." County Commissioner Tim Sumner had a different position:  "I think most of the people here today are re-settlers. It just seems un-American to me to say that 'You're not welcome.’"

Roseau County, just to the north, passed a February resolution designating the county a “Second Amendment Dedicated County,” more commonly known as a Second Amendment “sanctuary county.”  That is sanctuary for firearms. Roseau county joined more than 400 such communities nationally to adopt this resolution, the first in Minnesota. The resolution notes, that the county “wishes to express opposition to any law in the future, beyond existing laws to date, that would unconstitutionally restrict the rights of the citizens of Roseau County to keep and bear arms.”

It’s the deep north, and the tensions are rising.  

Water Protectors were met by strong harassment (Pro Line 3 MN4L3 group members) at the Enbridge Clearbrook Terminal 2019 on Indigenous People’s Day March. Photo by Sarah LittleRedfeather

Then there’s the pipeline -- that’s Line 3, the largest tar sands pipeline from Canada, one of the few remaining pipeline projects proposed, in a tottering fossil fuel market. That’s from Enbridge, the third largest corporation in Canada. 

That pipeline has met steady opposition from the over 63,000 people who testified against the line in seven years of hearings, as compared to only 3,000+ in favor. This summer Enbridge ramped up its bogus Minnesotans for Line 3 marketing campaign as the state Department of Commerce (DOC)  and the Attorney General joined citizens to oppose the pipeline project in the state Court of Appeals along with several environmental groups. Enbridge failed to persuade the state that their pipeline was a good idea, so they moved to the Republican legislature to start punishing  political appointees. In a swipe at Governor Walz, Line 3 cost Steve Kelley his role as DOC Commissioner when the Republican-led Minnesota Senate canned him instead of confirming him for the job, after being joined by two longtime northern Minnesota Democrats, Tom Bakk and David Tomassoni.  

Militarizing the North

In the meantime, more military and police equipment are moving into the north country, much of it to be paid for by the Enbridge Company, further militarizing the Deep North. 

Menagha is a town of about 1,300 people. Poor by economic standards, rich in Finlanders. In December of 2019, Menahga Police Chief Gunderson reported to the City Council that, with regards to Line 3, they were “not sure what to expect but needed riot gear including helmets. Masks shields and less lethal munitions…. such as tasers and modern stuns (December 4, 2019 Menahga Messenger). 

Meanwhile, the town to the north of Menagha, Park Rapids (approximately 3,700 people), is also gearing up for a Line 3 battle. At the Hubbard County Commissioner’s meeting, the report came in: “Enbridge is going to start Line 3, hopefully, in 2020, and I know we’ve budgeted overtime,” Kay Rave, Hubbard County Auditor explained at a Commissioners Meeting.  

“The sheriff’s department has been training for that. Doing our best to prepare for the unknowns that come with the building of Line 3.” 

In July, a new armored personnel carrier arrived to stay in Park Rapids, another is rumored to be stationed in Menagha.  

And then there’s Duluth. The first big wave of riot gear came to Duluth in 2019, about $140,000 of it, with a lot of opposition from church groups and local citizens.

Now, honestly,  until George Floyd’s death, there hadn’t been a riot in Duluth since the 1920 lynching of three Black men, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie, by a white mob estimated to be between l,000 and l0,000 people (apparently, they were sort of bad at counting in those days). That was the last riot in Duluth.

This story doesn’t start here.

It has deep origins.   

A Hundred Years of Prison

The reality is that Native people have been treated poorly by the state of Minnesota, and remain prisoners of legal, political, economic, and social policies which are discriminatory. 

Native people have the highest rates of incarceration, seven times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Natives. Representing 7% of the prison population,  we represent one percent of the population. We spend a lot of time in prison.

Native American people make up 1.4% percent of the general Minnesota population; Minnesota prisons have a range of 7% to 22% percent Native American offenders serving felonies. 44% of prisoners reoffend and return within the first year to prison for minor charges.

We also end up at the hands of excessive force.  Minnesota State Attorney General Keith Ellison held some mid-December 2019 meetings in Bemidji on ways to reduce deadly force encounters between law enforcement and local residents.  Ellison told the hearing that a large number of the deadly force encounters occur in greater Minnesota. More than one has occurred in Beltrami County, where in 2018 a Bemidji Police officer and a Beltrami County Sheriff's deputy shot and killed 34-year-old Vernon May of Red Lake during a traffic stop. 

A crowd marches along Minnesota Avenue in downtown Bemidji on Friday night, protesting the shooting death of Vernon May, 34, by local law enforcement. (Jordan Shearer | Bemidji Pioneer)

At the hearing, White Earth tribal member Nicole Buckanaga talked about the Beltrami County Jail, which is facing two wrongful-death lawsuits, both Native men.  In the death of Vernon May, Beltrami County Attorney David Hanson declined to charge the officer, Bidal Duran, and the deputy, Brandon Newhouse. 

“There's no trust to be regained; there's none to be restored. There wasn't in the beginning," Renee Gurneau, a Red Lake tribal mother said. “Just because things happened 200 years ago does not mean they didn’t affect us two minutes ago,” Buckanaga added.

“We’re here to discuss the brutal encounters that we have with police. But we cannot ignore the brutal encounters that we have with the system itself because those police get us to those judges. Well, those judges are throwing the book at us; they’re keeping us in jail. They’re putting barrier upon barrier in front of us.” 

The President’s Revealing Attachment to Political and Historical Hot Spots

It seems the President is going for some kind of record with his Bemidji visit September 18.

The Question? 

How many political hot spots you can hit and insult people?   Particularly people of color that is. The president held a campaign rally in Tulsa the day after Juneteenth celebrations. Tulsa was the home of the former Black Wall Street, until the May 1921 riots. Trump’s campaign was, not surprisingly, met with opposition from Black leaders. Then there was the Fourth of July rally, unmasked at Mt. Rushmore, a place vilified in the history of this country for the theft of the Black Hills. 

To the music of the Seventh Cavalry, Trump held a campaign rally. 

NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.

That was pretty much directly targeted at the Lakota community, many of whom descended from survivors of the Seventh Cavalry massacre at Wounded Knee and elsewhere. Trump’s actions resulted in the arrest of 20 Lakota Land defenders. Nick Tilsen, NDNz Collective Director is facing l5 years in felony charges, while other land defenders were charged with misdemeanor offenses.  

“Every generation since the land was taken has fought to get it back, and many of us, including myself, grew up around this movement to get our land back,” Tilsen explained.

In an effort to keep his state safe, Governor Walz discouraged Trump from coming to the George Floyd Memorial in Minneapolis, calling it a bad idea.  Many viewed it as Trump’s attempt to campaign using the Floyd Memorial as a backdrop.

Bemidji is, perhaps, Trump’s response. 

Voting Counts

Native youth will lead . . . New registered voters in Becker County, Minnesota. Photo by Sarah LittleRedfeather

Voting isn’t the easiest in the north, and the Trump administration is pushing to restrict those rights to vote.  Most tribal members use a postal service to vote absentee, and most polling stations on the reservations are located in non-Indian township halls, where tribal members have to literally drive through a set of Keep America Great bumper stickers to vote. On and adjacent to the reservation, the color line is also a political line.

The lines are getting sharper.

As November closes in, many people feel intimidated by aggressive pro-Trump supporters. More than a few are skeptical of the political system. That combination has allowed a set of far-right Republicans to retain seats in the north, from Paul Gazelka and Paul Utke to Steve Green. All of those incumbents have supported Line 3, more militarization of the north, and opposed treaty rights and water protection promoted by the tribes.

Native people are running for office at higher levels than ever before, and despite voting challenges, there is a big push to Get out the Vote.  Bemidji City Council candidate Audrey Thayer, an enrolled member of the White Earth reservation won 51% of the vote in the democratic primary in Bemidji, and Alan Roy, running against Paul Utke received a warm Democratic support in August.

More will come. 

In turn, over the past decades, the tribes have been pushing back, harder and harder, with both US Supreme Court wins on the treaty rights ( the l999 Mille Lacs decision that recognized Ojibwe treaty rights within the l837 treaty boundary), agreements on the l854 and more recognition of treaty rights in the l855 and  l863 territories ,tribes exercising jurisdiction over citizens, water quality, and most recently the rights of Wild Rice, or Manoomin.

This past summer, new military equipment arrived in the Deep North, and with it, new tensions. To be clear, this is not a Native/non-Native conflict. But in the times of a pandemic, of economic crises, of political crises, and a collapsing of the fossil fuel industry, the desperation is growing.  This is in many ways about the future of the North Country, and there are many forces at work. 

We will see how it goes with Donald Trump and the characters in the Deep North. One thing for sure, a storm is brewing and change is here.  In the time of the pandemic and societal change, there’s a way to hold on to old hatred and there’s a path towards reconciliation.  

There are a lot of people who have hope and many of them hope to vote.