Listen in as Winona LaDuke gives prepared remarks on “Seed Sovereignty: Who Owns the Seeds of the World, Bio-Piracy, Genetic Engineering and Food Security” for the Jane Addams Birthday Conversation on Peace and Justice. This annual event celebrates the Hull-House progressive tradition, but also offers an opportunity to look forward and to cross various boundaries to bring together people working on issues of peace broadly defined.

In 1994, LaDuke was nominated by Time magazine as one of America’s 50 most promising leaders under 40. She received the Thomas Merton Award in 1996, the BIHA Community Service Award in 1997, and the Ann Bancroft Award for Women’s Leadership Fellowship.

A graduate of Harvard and Antioch Universities, LaDuke has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues.  Her first novel Last Standing Woman was published in 1997 by Voyager Press. In 1999, South End Press published All Our Relations, a non-fiction book on Native environmental struggles.  She is a former board member of Greenpeace USA and serves as co-chair of the Indigenous Women’s Network, a North American and Pacific indigenous women’s organization. In 1998, Ms. Magazine named her Woman of the Year for her work with Honor the Earth.

LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg. She lives and works on the White Earth Reservations. As Program Director of the Honor the Earth Fund, she works on a national level to advocate, raise public support, and create funding for frontline native environmental groups. LaDuke has also organized substantially to increase Native American and progressive voter registration and activism.  With the proceeds of the Reebok Human Rights Award, she founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project.

Recorded Tuesday, September 09, 2008 at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.