Activism On & Off the Reservation

Winona LaDuke recounts how she became an activist. She spoke at the UN when she was a teenager and she never looked back. She says, “The launch of my political career was a kind of baptism by fire. I was thrown right into it.” She began working on the Navajo reservation on uranium mining issues, then she moved to South Dakota and later to Minnesota. She juggled her activism with going to Harvard where her degree was in Native economic development and a master’s in rural development. She says, “I’m big on decolonization. That’s the way to go. It’s not only for Native people. That’s the challenge for American people.”

Interview by David Barsamian.

Recorded at KGNU.