Winona LaDuke to Speak at Mount Holyoke College

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. – Renowned author, Native American rights activist, and environmental scholar Winona LaDuke will present a talk titled “Environmental Justice from a Native Perspective: Building a Multicultural Democracy,” on Thursday, December 8 at 7:30 pm in Gamble Auditorium at Mount Holyoke College. The talk is sponsored by the Center for the Environment and is part of Mount Holyoke College’s recognition of Native American Heritage month.

Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of Anishinaabeg, the Program Director of Honor the Earth, and the Founding Director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project. An internationally recognized scholar and activist, LaDuke has received many awards including the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Ms. Woman of the Year Award, the Global Green Award, and most recently, the prestigious international Slow Food Award for her work protecting North American varieties of wild rice and local biodiversity. She is widely known as the vice presidential candidate on Ralph Nader’s Green Party ticket in both the 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns.

A graduate of Harvard and Antioch Universities, LaDuke has written extensively on Native American communities’ struggles, women’s rights, and environmental justice issues. Her new book, Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming, was recently released (South End Press, August 2005) and focuses on rethinking religious/sacred practices, environmental stewardship, and social justice. LaDuke’s other widely read publications include Last Standing Woman, All Our Relations, In the Sugarbush, and The Winona LaDuke Reader. Her incisive analyses and inspiring stories of diverse struggles for environmental justice and human rights encourage audiences to broaden the environmental agenda and to envision new meanings of democracy grounded in cultural diversity and ecological wisdom.

The lecture is free and open to the public. There will be a book signing sponsored by the Odyssey Bookshop immediately following the presentation.

This event is made possible by generous funding from the Mount Holyoke College Center for the Environment, Earth and Environment Department, the Office of the President, the Office of the Dean of the College, and the Office of the Dean of Faculty.

LaDuke will be available for media interviews the morning of December 9. Please call the Center for the Environment for time and location.

For more information, please contact: The Center for the Environment, 413/538-3091, www.mtholyoke.edu/go/ce.

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