energy security

How best to describe Winona?  LaDuke in a Native American leader and, as such, it it hard not to collect the title “activist” as well but rather than refine a rant and hit the speaking circuit, she seems to have instead put her passion into doing a great deal to help her tribe and quite a few other along the way.  I had the chance to hear her describe some of what she has done through Native Harvest last night.

Convinced that the huge issues facing us all in the coming years will be food security and energy security she had committed the last several decades of her life to creating capacity for both on her reservation in Minnesota.  There is the heritage maple syrup operation with 5000 taps, a wild rice mill, a farm, restaurant, and organic coffee roaster.

She is pushing for wood stoves to be returned to homes of families that have had to fight to keep their power on through the winter.  She has begun to buy up used wind turbines and install them on farms on the reservation.  With a wry grin she notes: “Have you noticed that Indian land has some of the highest winds around?  I consider this an opportunity.”

In her spare time she has also started a school, day care, reintroduced sturgeon to a local lake, and received FCC approval for a radio station.

She observes that short term thinking seems to have produced as many problems as progress and that the Native cyclical worldview could be a huge gift in helping us reclaim a good life not defined by over-consumption.  The call, she says, is to make decisions with seven generations in mind rather than just the profits for the next quarter.  Think of it, she suggests as “positive window shopping for your future” and uses a very broad definition of ‘your’ future to include your children and your children’s children and your children’s children’s children out to the seventh generation.

Two of the top growth industries in our country right now are waste management and prison system.  Both suggest we are currently living in a throw away culture where both things and people are tossed aside when broken.  It is so common now to hear the phrase: “Just throw it away.”  LaDuke asks the question: “Where is ‘away’?”

Thanks Winona for challenging me to think.  I grew up on a reservation too, and was only too happy to leave.  I may need to go back and learn a few things.