Winona LaDuke, Native American environmental activist, to speak in Houghton, Baraga Oct. 25

Poster announcing Winona LaDuke's Oct. 25 visit to Michigan Tech and a showing of her film this Wednesday, Oct. 18. (Poster courtesy Michigan Tech Center for Diversity and Inclusion)

HOUGHTON -- Winona LaDuke, Native American environmental activist, will be featured at three coming events in Houghton and Baraga. She will be a guest speaker on Wednesday, Oct. 25, as part of the Social Justice Lecture Series, sponsored by Michigan Tech's Center for Diversity and Inclusion. The local Indigenous People's Day Campaign, a community group interested in indigenous peoples' rights, is co-sponsoring her visit and a feast to follow. Preceding her talk at Michigan Tech, she will be a guest speaker Oct. 25 at the Lunch and Learn Series Food Sovereignty Series at the Niiwin Akeaa Center, Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College, in Baraga.

 

(Poster courtesy Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College)

This week, in order to acquaint the public with LaDuke's work, her documentary, First Daughter and the Black Snake, will be shown at  7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 18, in Fisher 135 on the Michigan Tech campus. The film showing is free and open to all. It can also be seen on YouTube for rent or purchase.*

Winona LaDuke, who comes from Ojibwa ancestry in Minnesota, is an American environmentalist, economist and writer, known for her work on tribal land claims and preservation as well as sustainable development. In 1996 and 2000, she ran for Vice President as the nominee of the Green Party of the United States, becoming the first Native American woman to receive an electoral vote for Vice President of the United States.

LaDuke is also the co-founder, with Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, of Honor the Earth, a Native-led organization which addresses the two primary needs of the Native environmental movement: the need to break the geographic and political isolation of Native communities and the need to increase financial resources for organizing and change. Winona continues to function as the group's Executive Director of Honor.

Honor the Earth's Mission Statement, according to their Web site, is as follows: "Our mission is to create awareness and support for Native environmental issues and to develop needed financial and political resources for the survival of sustainable Native communities. Honor the Earth develops these resources by using music, the arts, the media, and Indigenous wisdom to ask people to recognize our joint dependency on the Earth and be a voice for those not heard."**

Honor the Earth is also a co-sponsor of LaDuke's talk at Michigan Tech, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 25, in the MUB Ballroom.

LaDuke's Lunch and Learn talk in Baraga will focus on Food Sovereignty and the work of the Honor the Earth organization. It will be held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Niiwin Akeaa Center, Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College. Those wishing to have lunch at this event should RSVP  to one of the following: Kit Laux (906) 524-8203 or klaux@kbocc.edu; DeAnna Hadden (906) 524-5757 ext. 22 or (906) 201-0361 or dhadden@kbic-nsn.gov; Valoree Gagnon (906) 201-0393 or vsgagnon@mtu.edu.

* Click here to learn how you can rent or buy the film First Daughter and the Black Snake on YouTube.

** Visit the Honor the Earth Web site to learn more about their work.

Honor the Earth: Copper and Iron or Wild Rice and Water?

Posted Nov. 3, 2011, on New Warriors for the Earth*

BARAGA -- New Warriors for the Earth has shared this summary of recent mining projects, posted on Winona LaDuke's Web site, Honor the Earth**:

New mining projects threaten the water, land, wild rice and people of the Great Lakes. Over the past three hundred years, people have spoken out to protect this land and water…

Now is your chance.

Gogebic Mine -- Penokee Mountains, Wisconsin:

Representing up to 20 percent of known iron deposits in the US, around 1-2 billion tons of ore, coal mining giant the Cline Group from Florida has options on 22,5000 acres of mineral rights from Anderson, Mich., to just west of Mellen, Wis. The deposit is buried 350 feet from the surface, and is 20 percent iron, in the form of magnetite, to be extracted with high-powered magnets. The mine would stretch in segments over 21 miles, descend 600 to 900 feet and be 1200 feet wide. Copper and nickel are also likely to exist, and with them the risks of sulfide mining....

Click here to read the rest of this article about this mine and others in the Great Lakes Region.

*New Warriors for the Earth is an Anishinaabe-based non-profit organization dedicated to educating and empowering our communities to take positive action to protect Aki, Mother Earth. Click here to visit their Web site.

** Honor the Earth is a Native-led organization established by Winona LaDuke and Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers in 1993 to address the two primary needs of the Native environmental movement: the need to break the geographic and political isolation of Native communities and the need to increase financial resources for organizing and change. Click here to visit their Web site.

Native American statements on U.S. military's use of "Geronimo" code name

Statement by Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs, on Behalf of the Haudenosaunee:*

"We've lD'd Geronimo" -- 102 years after his death Geronimo is still being killed by U.S. Forces.

This is a sad commentary on the attitude of leaders of the U.S. military forces that continue to personify the original peoples of North America as enemies and savages. The use of the name Geronimo as a code name for Osama Bin Laden is reprehensible. Think of the outcry if they had used any other ethnic group's hero. Geronimo bravely and heroically defended his homeland and his people, eventually surrendering and living out the rest of his days peacefully, if in captivity, passing away at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in 1909. To compare him to Osama bin Laden is illogical and insulting. The name Geronimo is arguably the most recognized Native American name in the world, and this comparison only serves to perpetuate negative stereotypes about our peoples. The U.S. military leadership should have known better.

It all brings to mind the August 13, 2010, statement by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg advising then Governor Paterson to "get yourself a cowboy hat and a shotgun" to deal with Indian affairs. This kind of thinking indicates little progress in a mature social development of United States leadership.

The military record of American Indians is exemplary. We have more men and women per capita volunteering in U.S. military services than any other ethnic group. lt was American Indian code talkers that used their native languages to carry and transmit messages that Japanese and German intelligence could not decode, saving thousands of American lives in World War II. Ironically these brave men and women were using languages that American and Canadian boarding schools were doing their best to stamp out. When can we expect respect for our human dignity and human rights?

From Winona LaDuke, Native American activist:

The reality is that the military is full of native nomenclature. That’s what we would call it. You’ve got Black Hawk helicopters, Apache Longbow helicopters. You’ve got Tomahawk missiles. The term used when you leave a military base in a foreign country is to go "off the reservation, into Indian Country." So what is that messaging that is passed on? You know, it is basically the continuation of the wars against indigenous people. ... It is indeed an egregious slander for indigenous peoples everywhere -- and to all Americans, I believe -- to equate Osama bin Laden with Geronimo.

Editor's Notes:

*The Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois (Six Nations Confederacy), founded over 1,000 years ago, includes the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora Nations.

The Bell UH-1 Iroquois is a military helicopter.

** Winona LaDuke is the author of The Militarization of Indian Country. Click here for her recent comments on the military use of Geronimo on Democracy Now.

Thanks to Jessica Koski of New Warriors for the Earth for sharing the above information.

New Warriors for Earth launch new Web site

By Michele Bourdieu

BARAGA -- New Warriors for the Earth (Oshikinawe-Ogichidaag Akiing) recently launched their new Web site. New Warriors for the Earth, is an Anishinaabe-based non-profit organization dedicated to educating and empowering communities to take positive action to protect Aki, Mother Earth. Co-founders of the group are Jessica Koski and Cory Fountaine. Both are Anishinaabe and members of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC).

During the 2010 Protect the Earth Gathering last July, at Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College in Baraga, Jessica Koski and Cory Fountaine, co-founders of New Warriors for the Earth, present keynote speaker Winona LaDuke -- Native American activist, environmentalist and writer -- with the gift of a blue shawl. The Women's Movement for the Water is encouraging Native women to make and wear blue shawls to symbolize protecting the world's water for future generations. Fountaine, an art student, also designed the logo for the Protect the Earth banner. (Keweenaw Now 2010 file photo)

Fountaine, an artist and the proud father of two sons, is currently attending Ojibwa Community College in Baraga and Northern Michigan University in Marquette. This month Koski completed a master’s degree in environmental management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She also holds an associate's degree from Ojibwa Community College and a bachelor's degree from Michigan Technological University. Koski recently accepted a full-time position as the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community’s Mining Technical Assistant.

"We are grounded and guided by our Anishinaabe heritage and culture," Koski says. "Our mission is to raise awareness about mining and environmental injustices facing the Western Great Lakes region and Aki. Our initial purpose is to protect our abundant freshwater resources and traditional homelands located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan from intrusive multinational mining corporations and hazardous sulfide and uranium mining."

The new Web site offers a Community Education page that gives facts about sulfide mining and its impacts on the environment. It also offers a list of links to important documents of interest to anyone concerned with Native American treaties and environmental justice. The Culture page includes songs in the Ojibwa language and a video documentary on restoring the language.

In addition to news and events updates, New Warriors for the Earth has an attractive photo page of local interest. The video page offers inspiring video clips -- from Drew Nelson's illustrated song "Eagle Rock" to Winona LaDuke speaking on climate change and food sovereignty.

The About page gives profiles of Fountaine, Koski and other leaders of the group:

• Charlotte Loonsfoot, KBIC member, who started the camp at Eagle Rock in April and May 2010 -- a mother of five children -- is committed to protecting the water for future generations. She has an associate's degree from Ojibwa Community College and plans to attend Michigan Tech for further study.
  

• Kalvin Hartwig, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, a Michigan Tech graduate who has been studying at Yale University, was a fire-keeper and camper at Eagle Rock. This summer he will be interning at the United Nations Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

• Casey Snyder, who grew up in rural central Michigan alongside many Anishinaabe people and has Metis ancestry, also participated in the 2010 occupation of Eagle Rock and played an important role in the start-up of New Warriors for the Earth.

Click here or go to http://newwarriorsforearth.wordpress.com/ for the New Warriors for the Earth home page.

Editor's Note: See Jessica Koski's recent letter to the editor, "Gov. Snyder, halt Eagle Mine, consider long-term impacts," published in Keweenaw Now Apr. 14, 2011.