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. 

A case for Waawaatesi: That’s the Ojibwe name for firefly.

Waawaatesi: That’s the Ojibwe name for firefly.

Written By: Winona LaDuke | Jun 28th 2020 - 2pm.

It has to do with a flickering light. I live with the fireflies. They seem to be in abundance now, more than ever. Magical sparkles in the night, the edge of the prairie, the edge of the bush. That’s where they live.

A lot of people, I realize, don’t ever get to see a firefly. Scientifically, they are luminescent beetles which fly in the night, lighting up for an instant in a breathtaking spectacle of sparkles in only the darkest of nights.

There are all sorts of fireflies, and they are magical. It turns out, however, that they are threatened by something called light pollution. I never really thought about this. This is how it works: Outdoor lights prevent fireflies from seeing each other’s flashes. Thus, they have a hard time finding mates. The other stuff that is a problem for fireflies, is the usual: habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change.

So, maybe this is my case for fireflies forever.

Now, this may seem like an inconsequential insect, but they tell us something about our world and how it’s getting lighter all the time. And, what is not good for the firefly is probably not good for us either. That’s a strange thought, after all this rural electrification and street lighting. But maybe enough is enough, and we should revisit the benefit of the darkness.

Here’s the story.

Turns out that there is an organization and thousands of communities working on keeping things dark: the International Dark Sky Association. It’s been around since 1988, and seeks to encourage communities, parks and protected areas around the world to preserve and protect dark sites through responsible lighting policies and public education. The goal is to turn the lights out, or at least down.

What’s the big deal?

Think of it this way, your ancestors navigated by the stars, and today most people won’t walk outside without a GPS. That’s a crazy loss of direction or skill at some level for sure. And while Indigenous peoples and many rural peoples can still see the stars, most of the world’s population cannot. That’s particularly an urban thing, where there’s all this light. From my farm, through the open skies, at night I can see the glow of Detroit Lakes, and that’s 25 miles away

It turns out that being dark part of the time is a good idea for animals, and for ourselves. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

As the Dark Skies Program explains on their website, "Experiencing the night sky provides perspective, inspiration, and leads us to reflect on our humanity and place in the universe. The history of scientific discovery and even human curiosity itself is indebted to the natural night sky.” More than that, it’s healthy to be in darkness.

Nocturnal animals sleep during the day and are active at night. Light pollution radically alters their world by turning night into day. Christopher Kyba is researcher who studies nocturnal animals. He notes, “the introduction of artificial light probably represents the most drastic change human beings have made to their environment.”

“Predators use light to hunt, and prey species use darkness as cover,” Kyba explains “Near cities, cloudy skies are now hundreds, or even thousands of times brighter than they were 200 years ago. We are only beginning to learn what a drastic effect this has had on nocturnal ecology.”

It’s not just owls. It’s things like frogs, who make it their business to croak at night, particularly when mating. Artificial lights disrupt their mojo and that means less frogs and reduced populations. Sea turtle babies get confused, and migrating birds get confused when they fly with the stars.

Every year millions of birds die colliding with needlessly illuminated buildings and towers. Migratory birds depend on cues from properly timed seasonal schedules. Artificial lights can cause them to migrate too early or too late and miss ideal climate conditions for nesting, foraging and other behaviors. Now it’s getting complicated.

While we are busy getting brighter and brighter screens, staying up all night, and thinking we are invincible, it turns out that we are supposed to be asleep in the dark times, just like your grandmother used to tell you. It turns out that, humans evolved to the rhythms of the natural light-dark cycle of day and night called circadian rhythm. The spread of artificial lighting means most of us no longer experience truly dark nights. That, according to researchers, can negatively affect human health, increasing risks for obesity, depression, sleep disorders, diabetes, breast cancer and more. Humans are not nocturnal creatures by design, despite what your teenager will tell you.

Melatonin is the hormone created in response to the circadian rhythm. Melatonin helps keep us healthy. It has antioxidant properties, induces sleep, boosts the immune system, lowers cholesterol, and helps the functioning of the thyroid, pancreas, ovaries, testes and adrenal glands. Nighttime exposure to artificial light suppresses melatonin production. We usually go buy a pill for that, but it turns out that, just hit the light, and you can be healthier.

For me, I’m going to hit the sack. Way past my bedtime as it is, and I’m going to see how dark it gets. It is the longest day of the year, after all.

And, I am going to welcome the darkness.

In praise of potato by Winona LaDuke

I’m particularly fond of purple potatoes. I grow them. Mewizha, way back in the day, my ancestors also grew a purple potato.

“The Ojibwe have cultivated this early potato, according to their traditions since aboriginal times, and it surely looks primitive enough. It is round in circumference, about two or three inches long, has purplish flesh, and never cooks to a mealy consistency. It is much prized for soups and is always firm and crisp when cooked..,” Ethnobotanist Huron Smith would report to the Milwaukee museum 100 years ago.

The story of the potato is a pretty epic one, from the 1,300 or so varieties cultivated in the Andes Mountains to the industrial potato dead zone emerging in northern Minnesota. Potatoes have changed the history of the world. They will again in a time of climate change and food scarcity.

They come from the Andean mountains. Sir Frances Drake brought the plant to Europe in the early 1500s. After looting the gold of the Incas, the potatoes were discovered, perhaps of more value. The magic of a potato is that it has few foes, in part because it lives underground. Locusts and agricultural plagues often destroyed crops in Europe, but the potato would survive.

The Smithsonian Magazine would write, “…Many historians believe that the potatoes arrival in northern Europe marked the end of the famines. France, … had 40 nationwide famines between 1500 and 1800, more than one per decade. ..France was not exceptional; England had 17 national and big regional famines between 1523 and 1623. The continent simply could not reliably feed itself.

"The potato changed all that. Every year, many farmers left fallow as much as half of their grain land, to rest the soil and fight weeds (which were plowed under in summer). Now smallholders could grow potatoes on the fallow land, controlling weeds by hoeing. Because potatoes were so productive, the effective result, in terms of calories, was to double Europe’s food supply.”

The potato, grown as a monocrop, also spelled disaster. Ireland was vulnerable to blight due to its dependence on just one type, the Irish Lumper. They lacked diversity. We should learn from that. Biodiversity is the stuff of life. Today, potatoes are the fifth largest agricultural crop in the world.

The potatoes we know in northern Minnesota are those largely of RD Offutt, with about 55,000 acres under cultivation and a good deal of controversy. The potato giant was pushed back by citizens in 2018 in their proposal to move into a Pine Lands expansion.

Mike Tauber, a rural resident of Backus, Minn., asked in a petition to the Department of Natural Resources, “Do you want to be able to drink water without treating it, go outside without thinking about chemical exposure? Do you want to hunt, fish, and gather, swim in lake, pond or stream?” Over 100 people signed that petition.

“The burdens of doing business in Minnesota outweigh its benefits, particularly when the Company sees others obtain numerous appropriation permits to farm new land in the Pineland Sands Area, without being required to undergo environmental review,” the company wrote.

Today, the small village of Pine Point is surrounded by potato fields, and the small speck of tribal land I farm organically is amidst the big irrigators of Offutt and other farmers. Crop dusters fly over the tribal field, leaving a film of residue on all life.

The Pine Point Elementary School is across the road from an RDO Field. With Offutt’s opposition near Hackensack, the company has returned to the Ponsford Prairie. What remaining trees on the prairie are being clear cut for industrial agriculture expansions, and more aerial spraying is apparent. That gets on the village and on the kids. That’s in addition to the 250 or so deep water wells serving the company, pumping 10.7 billion gallons of water a year from aquifers. When the water returns, it’s full of those chemicals. That’s a problem. That’s one kind of potato grower.

Then there’s the Indigenous potato growers. In a world with climate changing faster than most crops can adapt, the world is looking again to potatoes. The Potato Park in Cusco, Peru, is the epicenter of potato diversity today. The Peruvian museums host over 5,000 varieties of potatoes, and the park itself has about 1,300 varieties growing in the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Potatoes which saved Europe from famine 300 years ago are now being looked to for food security in the future. Alejandro Argumedo, is the founder of Asociación Andes, an NGO which supports the park.

“By sowing potatoes at different altitudes and in different combinations, these potatoes create new genetic expressions which will be very important to respond to the challenges of climate change,” he wrote. The Irish potato famine might have taught us that and today again Indigenous people and our potatoes may provide hope for future food security.

For me, I am doing my best with the purple potatoes. Higher in anti oxidants than the Russets, they, like all potatoes, are high in potassium, but more than that they are purple. And, I like the idea of growing something from back in the old days.

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HISTORY

POTATL IS THE ORIGINAL WORD FROM WHICH OUR PRESENT-DAY POTATO COMES. THE WORD POTATL

was borrowed, as were the original words for tomato, avocado, and chocolate, from the Nahuatl language, a Native language still spoken in northern Mexico. Potatoes have been cultivated for at least 4,000 years, beginning with the Inca, Ayamara, Quechua, and other Indigenous peoples of the Andean region of South America. By the time the Spaniards rode into that region, more than 3,000 varieties of potatoes had been carefully nurtured to grow in diverse weather conditions, soil types, and growing seasons with a range of ripening schedules.

What we can learn from bats by Winona LaDuke

There are many old stories in Ojibwe culture. Those stories often tell of lessons brought to us by animals. There’s an old story about how the bat helped us win a lacrosse game and now that’s why the birds migrate. This time might be known as the time that the bat, or the bapakwaanaajiinh, taught us a lesson.

Written By: Winona LaDuke | Mar 16th 2020

It’s said that the coronavirus (COVID-19) originates from bats in China. Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology found the genome in the virus found in patients was 96% identical to that of an existing bat coronavirus, according to a study published in the journal Nature. It’s not clear the intermediaries between bats and humans, but what is known is that the virus has traveled, and it's not done yet.

What does the bat teach us?

Well, first of all, it might teach us to slow down. That’s OK. Google and Amazon sent home their people. God only knows that their teams must have enough technology that they can work at home. And, what if that works out well, because people don’t have to commute, and can be happier and around their families.

Maybe there’s a lesson in this for some industries.

We learn about global trade. It turns out that we make a lot of stuff in China. We‘ve globalized our markets in such a way that if China closes down, a lot of stuff spins. Take the example of shrimp. Most restaurant shrimp are today farm raised in Scotland, shipped to China to be deveined and processed, then shipped to the U.S. to be served at the salad buffet. That seems like a lot of travel for a shrimp, if you ask me.

We learned that money is also fragile. There’s rich people crying over their investments. Investors continued to blame the spread and economic impact of the coronavirus for steep losses. They might want to invest in local, not global, economies.

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte announced that all the country’s stores except pharmacies and groceries will be closed in a move deemed both necessary to safeguard human health and a threat to the country’s output.

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LaDuke: I retain my faith in beauty and in love

LaDuke: I'm a patriot to this land

Wall Street worries that such measures could tip the global economy into recession, especially if Washington decides the disease is rampant enough in the U.S. to warrant similar measures. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. We learned that it might be good to have local food security, and make sure there’s toilet paper, because everyone is stocking up, and there might be a crisis.

We learned that we are not prepared for outbreaks of viruses of this scale. When the first coronavirus case showed up in Seattle, Dr. Helen Chu, an infectious disease expert, needed some questions answered. According to a New York Times story, she asked for help from state and federal officials and was denied. She tried for a month to get approvals, then pushed ahead, finding that the virus had already established itself. The lack of coordination by federal officials, gutted research programs and what I refer to as “white tape” slowed our response. While South Korea can test l0,000 people a day for the virus, the U.S. did not have that capacity. We are still scrambling, and time matters.

Here’s another challenge: we don’t have a national health plan, so 44 million people don’t have health insurance and are probably not going to go in and get checked.

We learned that we don’t need as much oil as we thought. According to Bloomberg News, China is turning back oil from Saudi Arabia. “Chinese refiners have reduced the amount of crude they’re turning into fuels by about 15%, and may deepen those cuts in coming weeks. State-owned and private processors have pared back refining by at least 2 million barrels a day…” The price of oil has plummeted, and the largest tar sands mining project in the world was cancelled. We just don’t need it; we never did. We learned that we are not in control of everything we think we are.

For me? I’m going to head to the sugarbush and slow down. That’s the place in the north country where sugar comes from a tree, with the medicines of spring. Getting outside, getting fresh air, smelling sap as it boils is pretty healthy.

Then there’s the pleasure of continuing a tradition from time immemorial. The Ojibwe maple sugar bush doesn’t need anything from China or from the rest of the world. That seems like a good idea to me.

I’m going to take lessons from the bats and do my best to be healthy.

I come from people who have survived small pox glaucoma, tuberculosis and gas chambers.

I’ll try and survive this.

A single bat can eat up to 1,200 mosquitoes in an hour and pollinate all sorts of life.

In Minnesota we have a bat called the Long Eared Bat, it’s special to the Northwoods.

I am going to be grateful for that bat, and the lessons I’ve learned.

Amid Blackout, a California Tribal Village Kept Lights On With Solar Energy by Winona LaDuke

BY Winona LaDuke, Truthout

PUBLISHED November 16, 2019

October’s 383,000-gallon spill of the Keystone Pipeline in Edinburgh, North Dakota reveals the pipeline for what it is: a deal with the devil. For those of us who live in the land of lakes, just imagine what 383,000 gallons of oil will do to the Hay Creek, Fishhook Lake watershed, and what “clean up” will look like. There’s no way to clean up or protect that aquatic ecosystem. There are no fish, wild rice or life after an oil spill.

That’s what a deal with the devil looks like. While Enbridge talks about the need for a new safe pipeline, the fact is that the Keystone pipeline is not even 10 years old. It is a new pipeline, and it still leaked. In fact, the October catastrophe was its second major leak; the 2017 pipeline rupture sent 407,000 gallons spewing into South Dakota groundwater.

North Dakota has sold its water and soul to the oil companies. Three years ago, a study by Duke University found:

Accidental wastewater spills from unconventional oil production in North Dakota … caused widespread water and soil contamination…. Researchers found high levels of contaminants and salt in surface waters polluted by the brine-laden wastewater, which primarily comes from fracked wells. Soil at spill sites was contaminated with radium. At one site, high levels of contaminants were detected in residual waters four years after the spill occurred.

In the meantime, the Lakota are making deals with the Creator for a better future. The first solar farm in North Dakota went up this year — the Cannon Ball Community Solar Farm on the Standing Rock Reservation. Born from the ashes of the Standing Rock battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Cannon Ball solar project shows us all what the future looks like.

This past summer, many veterans of the siege at Standing Rock returned, this time to celebrate a victory: the establishment of the solar farm. Movie stars Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers) and Shailene Woodley (Big Little Lies) and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) all came to Standing Rock. The Cannon Ball Community Solar Farm provides the Standing Rock Reservation with 300 kilowatts and will save the community an estimated $7,000 to $10,000 annually in energy costs.

The solar farm is just the beginning of energy sovereignty at Standing Rock. Cody Two Bears, executive director of Indigenized Energy and former Standing Rock tribal council member, says more projects are on their way. In the midst of Standing Rock’s battle with the Dakota Access Pipeline, the seeds of solar were planted.

“It’s one thing to protest about it, to talk about it, but now we got to be about it,” Two Bears said in an interview with Truthout. The solar farm was connected to the grid in February, and went live in August, powering the Cannon Ball Youth Center and the Veterans Memorial Building, where thousands of veterans who came out to support the pipeline opponents stayed in 2016.

In comparison, the state of North Dakota as a whole lags behind, with no utility scale solar, and with immense, unrealized wind potential.

Energy leadership is coming from Native people.

A Deal With Future Generations

Building renewable energy projects is about more than just post-fossil fuel economics. It’s about the future of electrification in this country. Think of it this way: This past month, Pacific Gas and Electric, northern California’s largest northern utility, blacked out 500,000 homes because of forest fires; last year’s Paradise Fire was actually caused by PG&E Lines. As fires raged, fanned by climate change and poor infrastructure, there were still lights on at the Blue Lake Rancheria, a Wiyot, Yurok and Hupa village near Eureka, California – with a megawatt of solar and a battery backup system.

Adopting a climate action plan in 2008, the tribe mobilized every resource at its disposal to advance a leading-edge strategy for eliminating its carbon footprint while bolstering climate resiliency. To date, the Tribe has reduced energy consumption by 35%and reduced greenhouse gas emissions 40%, utilizing biodiesel to power public buses and aggressive energy efficiency measures. Back in the Obama administration, Blue Lake was recognized as one of 16 communities designated as White House Climate Action Champions.

The grid went down, and the tribe still had solar. That’s a covenant, a deal with future generations. Change comes, it’s a question of who controls the change.

Looking down the barrel of a bad pipeline, I know that we don’t need to make a deal with the devil. North Dakota and Enbridge: Go grow your food with oil — I’m going to grow my gardens with water; I’m going to commit to solar and renewables. Let’s see who will eat.

Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission

The last tar sands pipeline by Winona LaDuke

The Circle News: The last tar sands pipeline

by Winona LaDuke

In early June, I traveled to Enbridge’s Shareholder meeting in Calgary, in Alberta Canada. Outside, laid off oil workers screamed, “Build that Pipe” over a bullhorn, and asked people to honk if they supported Canadian oil. Those tar sands workers will likely never have jobs in the industry again – economists, and even the oil fairy government of Alberta, are sobering up to the Boom Bust economy of energy projects. It’s the bust and there is no boom in sight. That’s the problem. It’s really a race to the bottom and to the end ­– that is to be the last tar sands pipeline. For the past four years Canada has been trying to run tar sands pipelines through the US, to the Coast, to anywhere, and it has not gone well. And it’s not going to, and here are the reasons why:

• Tar sands oil is too expensive. Say you had the most expensive oil in the world and it was landlocked in northern Alberta. Put it this way, Middle eastern conventional oil comes in at $26 a barrel, and there’s about 800 billion barrels out there, that’s according to Rystad Energy, international oil analysts. Tar sands oil comes in at about $83 a barrel, and there’s not much of it. That’s the reality.

• Big oil doesn’t really care about Alberta’s financial problems. “Alberta governments have suffered from a type of budgetary delusion over the past decade, a phenomenon that drives up spending and sent debt levels soaring,” Newly elected Alberta Premier Jason Kenney wrote in the Calgary Herald. “For decades the choice for Alberta governments seemed simple: the province overspent budgets and trusted that energy revenues would fill the gap.”

• “Alberta is in a very deep fiscal hole.” Kenney continued, “this… cannot continue. My belief is that we won’t see another boom .This is it, this is the new reality.”

• Tar sands oil is the dirtiest oil in the world. This stuff is basically asphalt, mixed with a bunch of toxic stuff. The oil needs lots of water and chemicals to bring it out. Nasty stuff really. That reality is leading to divestment – fossil fuels divestment is now at $7 trillion. In the time of climate crisis, even the big insurers are ready to move on.

• No one wants a tar sands pipeline. Two years ago there were five tar sands pipeline projects proposed – Enbridge had two, Trans Canada had two and Kinder Morgan had one. TransCanada’s failed Energy East Pipeline – the longest proposed pipeline from Alberta to New Brunswick was not approved by Canada’s National Energy Board. Neither was Enbridge’s Northern Gateway, which they planned to run through pristine watersheds into a set of fjords in northern British Columbia. Both those projects failed in 2017. None of the remaining pipeline projects are doing well. Ill fated Kinder Morgan pipeline – Trans Mountain, is enmeshed in litigation, despite it’s being nationalized by the Trudeau Administration in August, 2018. That was just the day before the Canadian Federal Appeals Court declared all permits null and void.

That leaves two pipelines fighting to be the last tar sands pipeline: Line 3 and Keystone XL (or KXL Pipeline) which is buried in legal challenges. Keystone faces the federal courts in Montana, and Line 3 faces the courts in Minnesota, as well as a delay. Costly stuff. With the new cost overruns announced by Enbridge, analysts believe it will be the most expensive pipeline never built. The last tar sands pipeline was built already. That’s the skinny – it was called the Alberta Clipper.

Enbridge Line3 Tar Sands Pipeline Storage Yard in Red Lake Nation Territory - Plummer, MN

Canada now has more people employed in renewables than in all fossil fuels. The math does not add up for the tar sands. How broke do we want to be? And, how many people do we want to arrest and injure in Minnesota to address Canada’s lack of a diversified economic plan?

Navajo Technical University confers first honorary doctoral degree to John Pinto

Navajo Technical University confers first honorary doctoral degree to John Pinto

CROWNPOINT — When recapping his six year journey to earn a bachelor's degree at Navajo Technical University, Darrick Lee called the experience a "privilege."

Graduates heard an inspiring speech by Winona LaDuke, an internationally renowned activist for the environment and for social justice. 

LaDuke is Anishinaabe and executive director of Honor the Earth, an organization she co-founded with Amy Ray and Emily Salier of the music group, Indigo Girls.

In her remarks, she reflected on the energy transition the Navajo Nation faces and how the graduates will take the lead in developing that change, including investment in solar and wind projects.

"No time like the present to rebuild your energy economy," she said.

She said now is the time to end the injustice done by energy developers to Native peoples, including using the land to produce energy for urban populations while nearby households remain without electricity.

"Your nation will be a leader in this. I see this and know this. We are all counting on you to do the right thing," LaDuke said.

Noel Lyn Smith covers the Navajo Nation for The Daily Times. She can be reached at 505-564-4636 or by email at nsmith@daily-times.com.