Quotes by Winona LaDuke

“American public policy has come to reflect short-term interests, fiscal years, deficit reduction programs, and is increasingly absent of any intergenerational perspective. That long-term perspectiv...”

“Public policy is lagging behind our ability to destroy ourselves.”

“If private property has found safe haven in the Fifth Amendment, where is common property equally protected?”

“The rights of the people to use and enjoy air, water, and sunlight are essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These most basic human rights have been impaired by those who discha...”

“It's hard to imagine those who framed the U.S. Constitution could have imagined the U.S. at the millennium. It's harder yet to imagine what we'll pass on, if we don't think of the seventh generatio...”

“There is a peculiar kind of hatred in the northwoods, a hatred born of living with with three generations of complicity in the theft of lives and land. What is worse is that each day, those who hol...”

“Native American teachings describe the relations all around-animals, fish, trees, and rocks as our brothers, sisters, uncles, and grandpas. Our relations to each other, our prayers whispered across...”

“There is a direct relationship between the loss of cultural diversity and the loss of biodiversity. Wherever Indigenous peoples still remain, there is also a corresponding enclave of biodiversity.”

“While Native peoples have been massacred and fought, cheated, and robbed of their historical lands, today their lands are subject to some of the most invasive industrial interventions imaginable.”

“In the final analysis, the survival of Native America is fundamentally about the collective survival of all human beings. The question of who gets to determine the destiny of the land, and of the p...”

“The preamble to the U.S. Constitution declares its intent to be to secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves, and our posterity. In reality, U.S. laws have been transformed by corporate interes...”

“The challenge at the cusp of the millennium is to transform human laws to match natural laws, not vice versa. And to correspondingly transform wasteful production and voracious consumption. America...”

“There is, in many Indigenous teachings, a great optimism for the potential to make positive change. Change will come. As always, it is just a matter of who determines what that change will be.”

“I always greet people in my language because I believe that cultural diversity is as beautiful as biodiversity, and that is reflected in language.”

“I am fully aware of how little an American education teaches you about Native people.”

“While I was introduced as an activist, I consider myself more a concerned parent. To be a mother in this day and age, you have to be concerned with a wide array of issues.”

“I haven't seen anyone improve on the tepee-you can have a fire inside it, and you can love it.”

“A house is more than a shelter: It is home, it is something that reflects you.”