2019 BP Calendar "Minnesota Heroes" (Winona LaDuke)

Environmentalist, economist, and writer Winona LaDuke graduated from Harvard with a BA in Economics in 1982 then moved back to her ancestral land on the the White Earth Indian Reservation in Northwestern Minnesota. Since then she has been actively advocating for rural development and issues surrounding land, food sovereignty, and sustainable farming.

In 1989 she founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project which has secured the return of over 1,400 acres of land stolen from Native people. In 1993, together with the music duo Indigo Girls, LaDuke founded Honor The Earth, which aims to raise awareness of native environmental issues through the arts and media. For her work in activism she has received the Anne Bancroft Award for Women’s Leadership Fellowship and the Reebok Human Rights Award. (Information taken from The Heroine Collective Blog by Claudia Marinaro)

Winona possesses a fierce courage and stoic wisdom that I admire tremendously. She is a reminder to someone like me that the earth is a beautiful gift and that the decisions we make with regards to it will either demonstrate our gratitude or haunt our future. The most precious thing in the world is water, clean water, and it is slipping through our hands at a most alarming rate. Money will come and go but when clean water is gone nothing else will matter.