Reznet

Batman, Spider-Man, LaDuke: Bad Guys Beware

By Carla R. Barreno

BUFFALO, N.Y.—In her childhood, Winona LaDuke had three heroes: Batman, Spider-Man and Ralph Nader. All three of them fought the "bad guys."

As co-chair of the Indigenous Women's Network and the Seventh Generation Fund, LaDuke tries to accomplish the same goal in advocating for environmental justice.

LaDuke said in a recent speech at Buffalo State College that she is motivated to accomplish her goals by her seven children and by the basic teachings she learned growing up.

She said she always tells her children not to steal, but wonders how she can enforce this in her children, given the well-known fate of Indian land at the hands of the U.S. government. "If you steal, you must return it," LaDuke said.

Another lesson she said she gives her kids is not to be greedy. She is fighting to get better wages for workers. LaDuke argues that workers should share in company profits. She wants workers to receive $10 an hour. That's enough, she said, for a family of four to be just above the poverty level. But minimum wage in most states, she said, is still only half of that.

LaDuke said she also instills in her kids that they must clean up their "old mess before making a new one."

In her work, she said, she believes corporations' emission of dioxins into eastern rivers for years, along with the depletion of the Superfund to clean up toxic wastes, has left regulators looking to dump the toxins on Indian reservations in the west.

"That is pretty much dump your mess on someone else," LaDuke said. "It's a public health problem.

"You are responsible for your own actions."

LaDuke, an Anishinabe, lives on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. She was Nader's running mate in the 2000 presidential election and was named one of America's 50 most powerful people by Time magazine. She said she first got involved with environmental activism when the levels of mercury were rising in her tribe's lakes. The tribe depends on fish. It successfully fought the government in getting the mercury levels lowered.

She called on the audience to go out and make some change.

"Do I think change is possible? Yeah," LaDuke said. "Change is inevitable. The question is, who controls the change. We need to ensure that all the struggles of our grandparents were not wasted."

She said she is working on the White Earth Land Recovery Project, an attempt to buy back lost tribal land. After raising individual donations, the group has acquired 50 acres of land on her reservation, she said.

"If you do not control your land, you do not control your future," LaDuke said. "My hope is some of you young people will run for Congress someday — and remember the Natives."

Carla R. Barreno (Oneida) is a 2001 graduate of The Freedom Forum's American Indian Journalism Institute. She attends Canesius College in Buffalo, N.Y.