Native American Activist, Author Winona LaDuke to Deliver UMaine Schonberger Lecture Dec. 6
Contact: Ann Schonberger, 581-1229; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — Native American activist, environmentalist and author Winona LaDuke from the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota will be on the UMaine campus Dec. 6 to deliver two public presentations as the 2005 Howard Schonberger Peace and Social Justice Memorial Lecturer.
Both lectures are free, open to the public and handicap accessible.
LaDuke’s first talk, titled “Motherhood, Politics, and the Environment,” is scheduled from 12:15-1:30 p.m. in the Bangor Room of the Memorial Union. The Schonberger Memorial Lecture takes place at 7:30 p.m. in Room 100 of the Donald P. Corbett Business Building.
A graduate of Harvard and Antioch universities and two-time vice presidential candidate for the Green Party with Ralph Nader, in 1996 and 2000, LaDuke has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues. Her books include “Last Standing Woman,” fiction, “All Our Relations,” nonfiction, “In the Sugarbush,” children’s nonfiction, and “The Winona LaDuke Reader.” Her most recent publication, “Recovering the Sacred,” was released by South End Press this year. A reception and book-signing will follow the evening lecture at UMaine.
An enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe), LaDuke currently is program director of Honor the Earth, a Native American foundation working primarily on environmental and energy policy issues, and is the founding director of White Earth Land Recovery Project, the largest reservation-based non-profit organization in Minnesota. She has worked for two decades on the land issues of the White Earth Reservation, including litigation policy, and creation of a land trust.
The White Earth Land Recovery Project was partially funded by the Reebok Human Rights Award she received in 1989. LaDuke and the project recently received the International Slow Food Award from the Italian-based association that promotes food and wine culture and defends food and agricultural biodiversity worldwide for the project’s efforts to protect wild rice and local biodiversity. LaDuke also has received the Thomas Merton Award and was named one of “Time” magazine’s 50 most promising leaders under 40 in 1994, “Ms.” magazine’s Woman of the Year award in 1997 and the Global Green award among others.
LaDuke also is the parent of five children.
For more information about LaDuke’s lecture schedule or the Howard Schonberger Peace and Social Justice Memorial Lecturer, please call 581-1228.