Winona LaDuke (1959 - ) is a Native American activist, environmentalist, economist, and writer. In 1996 and 2000, she ran for election to the office of Vice President of the United States as the nominee of the United States Green Party, on the ticket headed by Ralph Nader.

Biography

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LaDuke was born in Los Angeles, California to Vincent and Betty LaDuke. Her father was an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or "Chippewa") from an Indian reservation of Minnesota. He was reportedly an actor with supporting roles in Western movies, an activist and a writer. Her mother was a Jewish artist, employed as an art professor at the Southern Oregon University. Winona was raised on the West Coast of the United States, but after graduating from Harvard in 1982 with a degree in native economic development, she accepted a job as principal of the high school of the White Earth Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota. She soon became an activist, involved in the struggle to recover lands promised to the Ojibwe by a 1867 treaty. She helped the Ojibwe buy back thousands of acres of ancestral land.

LaDuke was named Woman of the Year by Ms. Magazine in 1997 and won the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1998. She is the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project in Minnesota, the Indigenous Women's Network, and the Honor the Earth Fund.

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NPR Topics: Politics & Society

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