Posted by [EMAIL PROTECTED] : "hansenhouse" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> replies: - "ACTIVIST/AUTHOR LOOKS TO THE FUTURE" - > Copyright © 1998 The Seattle Times Company > Posted at 05:39 a.m. PDT; Thursday, April 23, 1998 by Mary Elizabeth Cronin Seattle Times staff reporter A woman asked Winona LaDuke how she keeps from being overwhelmed by the enormity of battling the environmental, political and economic threats to her northern Minnesota White Earth Reservation tribal lands - and lending a hand to efforts around the country. LaDuke stood for a moment with her gaze fixed on the woman. As she closed her eyes and opened them, they filled with a peaceful determination. The Harvard-educated environmental and native-land activist was fielding questions from the 40 people who attended the Elliott Bay Book Company reading yesterday afternoon for her first novel, "Last Standing Woman" (Voyageur Press, $22.95). The book has drawn praise from two acclaimed authors who are also Native Americans: Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexie. LaDuke said she thinks about how hard her Anishinaabe (the native name of the Ojibwe/Chippewa tribe) ancestors struggled seemingly futilely as the federal government took away the rightful tribal lands and sent their children away to government boarding schools. "Things take a long time to fix," LaDuke said. "If it takes 100 years to take back the land, then that is the way it is. Just don't let them have the power that they make you feel useless, disgusted, powerless. I just turn my back and do my own thing." For "doing her own thing:" -- Ms. magazine selected her as one of its 1997 women of the year. She shared the award with the Indigo Girls for their Honor the Earth music/speaking tours to raise money for the Seventh Generation Fund, supporting Native American social-justice and environmental groups. -- Ralph Nader chose her as his 1996 vice-presidential candidate for the Green Party. -- Time magazine placed LaDuke in its 1994 roster of 50 of America's most promising leaders age 40 and under. -- The Reebok company gave her a $20,000 human-rights award in 1988, which she used to buy back nearly 1,000 acres of lost tribal lands. She founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project to reclaim the 837,000 acres granted the Anishinaabe tribe in a 1967 treaty. LaDuke, 39 this year, has done a lot of living - and that doesn't count the lessons she's learned from the stories of elders she has interviewed for the numerous articles she's written about native economic, environmental and and-use issues. She held on to the stories until she had so many she had to tell them. They became the basis for a portion of her novel, a historical fiction account of seven generations of Anishinaabe Indians. She brings many of the ancestral stories full circle, including linking the father-daughter incest rape of one character to the sexual violence the grandfather met as a boy at the hands of a boarding-school priest. Like many of the novel's characters, LaDuke had to reclaim parts of her culture. She was born in East Los Angeles to a Jewish mother and an Anishinaabe father. Her mother raised LaDuke in Ashland, Ore., after her parents split in 1964. In 1982, after graduating with a Harvard economic-development degree, LaDuke took a job on the White Earth Reservation as high-school principal. She learned her native language and stayed after the job ended. One of the characters in her novel was modeled after her late father Vincent LaDuke. Known as Sun Bear, he was an actor and activist who did work as an extra in Hollywood Westerns. He lived in Spokane from the 1970s to the early 1990s. A portion of the novel portrays an optimistically harmonious future. This was purposeful. "A lot of Indian writing is history," LaDuke said. "I think Indian people need to be in the future too. I can't relate to that doom future, `Brave New World.' It's not my future." LaDuke, who lives in a cabin on a lake on the White Earth reservation with her son and daughter, 7 and 9, and her horses, works on the Native Harvest project when she's not speaking or assisting other native groups. The project creates an economic base by producing maple syrup, wild rice, jam and traditional corn that LaDuke hopes will support the return of tribal members. About 7,000 live on the reservation now. At Elliott Bay, a man asked LaDuke how she feels about white people who want to participate in native-land, environmental or social-justice causes. He said he was heartened by the range of personalities among the white characters in her novel. LaDuke praised his question. "Do it because it's the right thing," LaDuke said simply. "Don't do it because of guilt. Do it because it encourages your own humanity." > Copyright © 1998 The Seattle Times Company Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. <><<<<<>>>>><><<<<> Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ <><<<<<>>>>><><<<<>