Activist, environmentalist and author Winona LaDuke spoke about the environment in years to come and what should be done to save it on April 9 at Penn State.

LaDuke is a graduate of Harvard University and Antioch University and has authored five books on Native American and environmental issues. She is presently an advisory board member for the Trust for Public Lands Native Lands Program as well as a board member of the Christensen Fund.

In 1996 and 2000 LaDuke ran for vice president of the Green Party with Ralph Nader and won 2.7% of the popular vote.

LaDuke is currently the program director of Honor the Earth, where she works locally and worldwide on the issues of climate change, renewable energy and environmental justice within indigenous communities.

In her own community, a reservation in northern Minnesota, she is the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project — one of the largest reservation-based nonprofit organizations in the country that is the leader in culturally based sustainable development strategies, renewable energy and food systems.

In the work she does for White Earth Land Recovery Project, she continues work worldwide to protect indigenous plants and heritage food from patenting and genetic engineering.

In 2007, LaDuke was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, which recognized her community involvement and commitment to protecting the environment. In 1994, she was nominated by TIME magazine as one of America’s 50 most promising leaders under 40 years old.

LaDuke spoke to what she considered the toxicity of the current political climate which ends up affecting the state of the environment as well.

“We’ve entered an era that some can refer to as a catastrophe of biblical proportions,” LaDuke said. “To the South, you have storms of great velocity that destroy territories through hurricanes. To the West, everything was on fire. To the North, I will never forgive anyone for making polar bears become cannibals because they don’t have anything to eat. To the East, we have an orange man who is screaming all the time on a world stage.”

She spoke on how the government needs to start address climate change as an actual problem with policy solutions. LaDuke clarified that is not just a campaign slogan.

“There are companies fighting by 2020 to have 20% of world GDP on climate change related disasters, I think it should happen,” LaDuke said. “Since it’s not taken seriously, pretty much nobody has a budget for the impact of climate change upon our villages, and our communities.”

LaDuke highlighted what she thinks is our largest problem as a community — our addiction to fossil fuels and unwillingness to stand up for causes that are hard to fight.

“We are heavily addicted fossil fuels, and the consequence of that is that we make a lot of our decisions based on heavy extractions,” LaDuke said. “Drilling 20 feet under the ocean is an example of heavy extraction. People think it’ll work out until we get something like the deep-water horizon, an almost unstoppable oil spill. That’s how we know our extreme behavior isn’t working out for us.”

According to LaDuke, the future economy is going to be solely dependent on local agriculture and local farming.

“My idea of the next economy and making America great again is tremendous biodiversity and agriculture, and it needs to be local,” LaDuke said. “This is what a sustainable economy will look like.”

LaDuke spoke on what she hopes the future economy and society will look like and how she hopes she made an impact on the earth’s survival.

“If you had a shot right now on making some decisions that would make life good for some people, would you try to do it?” LaDuke said. “It's on us to do that. If you’re waiting for someone somewhere else to do it, you’re gonna be disappointed.”

Many students who attended LaDuke’s speech very much resonated with her message and realized the importance of making a change to better the environment.

“It's scary to think that no one’s taking climate change seriously,” TJ Wells (junior-business and journalism) said. “That’s why the green new deal is exciting for me, at least some change is bound to happen soon.”

Some students left the speech feeling positive that some change will be afoot knowing that there are many activists willing to fight for the environment.

“Its almost over. This presidency that is anti-environment is almost over,” Bailey Falkner (junior-biochemistry) said. “Because this recent election riled so many people up, change in our environmental policies are bound to happen soon, and our future children and society will be thankful when we make that change.”

RELATED