Winona LaDuke Quotes

Quotes about:

• Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.

  Winona LaDuke

  Inspirational, Power, People

  134 Copy quote

• Let us be the ancestors our descendants will thank.

  Winona LaDuke

  Ancestor, Descendants

  68 Copy quote

• If we build a society based on honoring the earth, we build a society which is sustainable, and has the capacity to support all life forms.

  Winona LaDuke

  Support, Earth, Form

  71 Copy quote

• Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesnt make a corporation a terrorist.

  Winona LaDuke

  Drinking, Native American, Water

  "Canadian Oil Companies Trample on Our Rights" by Winona LaDuke, progressive.org. June 18, 2013.

  144 Copy quote

• We are a part of everything that is beneath us, above us, and around us. Our past is our present, our present is our future, and our future is seven generations past and present.

  Winona LaDuke

  Past, Environmental, Generations

  Winona LaDuke (1999). “All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life”, p.12, South End Press

  84 Copy quote

• There is no social-change fairy. There is only change made by the hands of individuals.

  Winona LaDuke

  Hands, Fairy, Individual

  66 Copy quote

• Water is life. We are the people who live by the water. Pray by these waters. Travel by the waters. Eat and drink from these waters. We are related to those who live in the water. To poison the waters is to show disrespect for creation. To honor and protect the waters is our responsibility as people of the land.

  Winona LaDuke

  Responsibility, Land, People

  Winona LaDuke (2002). “The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings”, p.55, Voyageur Press (MN)

  69 Copy quote

• Across the continent, on the shores of small tributaries, in the shadows of sacred mountains, on the vast expanse of the prairies, or in the safety of the woods, prayers are being repeated, as they have for thousands of years, and common people with uncommon courage and the whispers of their ancestors in their ears continue their struggles to protect the land and water and trees on which their very existence is based. And like small tributaries joining together to form a mighty river, their force and power grows.

  Winona LaDuke

  Prayer, Struggle, Years

  Winona LaDuke (2002). “The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings”, p.64, Voyageur Press (MN)

  77 Copy quote

• The difference between a white man and an Indian is this- A white man wants to leave money to his children. An Indian wants to leave forests.

  Winona LaDuke

  Children, Men, White Man

  Winona LaDuke (2002). “The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings”, p.99, Voyageur Press (MN)

  60 Copy quote

• You've got to get people to believe that change is possible... You have to show that you can fight things successfully even if you don't win.

  Winona LaDuke

  Change, Believe, Fighting

  13 Copy quote

• One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel powerless. Deconstruct that disempowerment. Part of the mythology that they’ve been teaching you is that you have no power. Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.

  Winona LaDuke

  Teaching, White, Differences

  56 Copy quote

• Another thing is, people lose perspective. It is a cultural trait in America to think in terms of very short time periods. My advice is: learn history. Take responsibility for history. Recognise that sometimes things take a long time to change. If you look at your history in this country, you find that for most rights, people had to struggle. People in this era forget that and quite often think they are entitled, and are weary of struggling over any period of time

  Winona LaDuke

  Country, Struggle, Responsibility

  43 Copy quote

• What we all need to do is find the wellspring that keeps us going, that gives us the strength and patience to keep up this struggle for a long time.

  Winona LaDuke

  Struggle, Long, Giving

  "Celebrating Hellraisers: Winona LaDuke" by Jay Walljasper, www.motherjones.com. January/February 1996.

  29 Copy quote

• Ojibwe prophecy speaks of a time during the seventh fire when our people will have a choice between two paths. The first path is well worn and scorched. The second path is new and green. It is our choice as communities and as individuals how we will proceed.

  Winona LaDuke

  Two, Fire, People

  "Winona LaDuke Pledges Help for Native Tribes Facing BP Oil" by Georgianne Nienaber, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 9, 2010.

  30 Copy quote

• I would like to see as many people patriotic to a land as I have seen patriotic to a flag.

  Winona LaDuke

  Patriotic, Land, People

  "Living on Earth: Helping the Prez, Greening the Rez". Interview with Steve Curwood, www.organicconsumers.org. January 16, 2009.

  9 Copy quote

• In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures.

  Winona LaDuke

  Integrity, Native American, Government

  Winona LaDuke (2016). “Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming”, p.10, Haymarket Books

  42 Copy quote

• The only compensation for land is land.

  Winona LaDuke

  Land, Compensation

  Winona LaDuke (2002). “The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings”, p.145, Voyageur Press (MN)

  26 Copy quote

• It is essential to collectively struggle to recover our status as Daughters of the Earth. In that is our strength, and the security, not in the predator, but in the security of our Mother, for our future generations. In that we can insure our security as the Mothers of our Nations.

  Winona LaDuke

  Daughter, Mother, Women

  36 Copy quote

• What gives these corporations like CONOCO, SHELL, EXXON, DIASHAWA, ITT, RIO TINTO ZINC, and the WORLD BANK a right which supercedes or is superior to my human right to live on my land, or that of my family, my community, my nation, our nations, and to us as women?

  Winona LaDuke

  Zinc, Land, Giving

  35 Copy quote

• We must keep these waters for wild rice, these trees for maple syrup, our lakes for fish, and our land and aquifers for all of our relatives - whether they have fins, roots, wings, or paws.

  Winona LaDuke

  Lakes, Aquifers, Land

  11 Copy quote

• The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that a society that consumes one-third of the world's resources is unsustainable. This level of consumption requires constant intervention into other people's lands. That's what's going on.

  Winona LaDuke

  Land, Essence, People

  11 Copy quote

• I find that I have more allies on the left than on the right, and that is because the left is, by and large, filled with people who are challenging the present paradigm and power structure. I’m interested in totally transforming the structure that exists now, because it is not sustainable.

  Winona LaDuke

  People, Challenges, Allies

  36 Copy quote

• The reality is that the founding fathers were land speculators. The fact was that you couldn't vote in this country if you did not own land, and that was basically you had to be a white man who owned land. Now how did they get that land? They basically had to steal it from someone, and that would be probably the Indians. And so most of the initial founding fathers were, while they may have had some really nice ideas about democracy, they had a lot of issues with people of color. They had a lot of issues with people who held things that they coveted.

  Winona LaDuke

  Country, Father, Nice

  28 Copy quote

• It's time to transition beyond our fossil fuel addiction to a just economy based on green jobs, renewable energy, and local organic food.

  Winona LaDuke

  Jobs, Addiction, Energy

  21 Copy quote

• I don’t understand all the nuances of the women’s movement. But I do understand that there are feminists who want to challenge the dominant paradigm, not only of patriarchy, but of where the original wealth came from and the relationship of that wealth to other peoples and the earth. That is the only way that that I think you can really get to the depth of the problem.

  Winona LaDuke

  Thinking, Feminist, Challenges

  24 Copy quote

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