Minnesotan
Winona LaDuke is the vice-presidential
candidate for the Second time on the Green
Party ticket. What motivates her to run a
race she is almost certain to lose?
Why
Winona runs
by Cynthia
Scott
Reprinted by
permission from the Minnesota Women's
Press
Early on a Saturday
morning in July, six-month-old Gwekaanimid
Gasco sits on his mother's lap placidly
gumming a chunk of kiwi fruit. As the juice
dribbles down his chin and onto the front of
his T-shirt, his mother remarks with
gratitude that Gwekaanimid, whose name means
"when the wind shifts," is a very easygoing
child.
It's a good thing he
is; after all, it's not easy being the infant
child of a vice-presidential candidate.
Twenty-four hours earlier, LaDuke and her
family were rambling down the highway from
their home on the White Earth Reservation in
northwestern Minnesota to the Twin Cities.
"I'm the only nursing
candidate," Mom joked.
Dick Cheney and
Joseph Lieberman, meet Green Party
vice-presidential candidate Winona LaDuke,
running mate of Ralph Nader.
This is the second
vice-presidential campaign for LaDuke, a
Harvard-trained economist, author and
journalist who shifts seamlessly from
changing diapers to explaining the social and
economic pitfalls of uranium mining. In 1996
she and Nader garnered 1 percent of the vote;
this year, LaDuke believes they have a
realistic chance of getting 10
percent.
The Green Party has
gained considerable momentum since it first
fielded the Nader/LaDuke ticket. In 1996 the
Greens appeared on the ballot in 22 states;
this year they are already assured of being
on the ballot in 45 states, including
Minnesota.
"In 1996 the Green
Party had done lots of local organizing but
hadn't done a national campaign. Ralph tested
the waters in 1996. Organizing a national
campaign is a whole different thing than
local organizing. There is lots more
infrastructure in place now than in 1996,"
LaDuke noted.
In this age of
multi-million-dollar campaigns, more
infrastructure means more money. Though the
Greens have managed to raise more money,
LaDuke attributes the Party's growth not to
more money, but to more commitment from more
people.
LaDuke herself, who
entered electoral politics reluctantly,
embodies the kind of commitment that is
helping the Green Party grow. How reluctant
was she to enter electoral politics? Well,
prior to 1996 she claimed membership in what
she calls "the largest political party in
America: the 50 percent of people who don't
vote." In fact, the first election in which
she ever cast a vote was 1996. Though she had
been deeply involved in political work on
behalf of Native land rights and the
environment since age 18, she felt utterly
disenfranchised by the two-party system. Then
came the Greens and Nader, whose consumer
activism she had admired since she was a
child.
"[In 1996]
the Greens asked [me to run] and I
said no. I was influenced by all the imagery
of what it means to run a campaign - that it
was sullying.
"That's what they've
done to the idea of running for political
office - it makes you look like you're a
liar, that you're disingenuous."
But her "no" was less
than firm in her own mind, and she quietly
began to seek counsel from people in her
White Earth community, particularly spiritual
people and older women. "They told me, if
someone from our community has an opportunity
to do something, then they should. Then Ralph
himself called me, and I said
yes."
That was in 1996.
This year when Nader called, LaDuke again
initially said no, but for a different
reason: She was seven months' pregnant with
Gwekaanimid. But eventually Nader, and
LaDuke's commitment to Green values,
prevailed.
"I said yes because
Ralph is right when he says that sometimes a
private citizen must become a public citizen.
It is people like me who need to be engaged
in the political process, not people in the
Beltway."
For LaDuke, and for
all Greens, this campaign has everything to
do with restoring American democracy. "My
goal in the campaign is to change the content
of American democracy and to transform
American democracy so it's actually
functional. That will require building a
multiparty system that allows broader
participation and a wider range of ideas.
It's a two-party duopoly and those parties
have become increasingly exclusive. My
taxable income last year was about $4,800 and
I worked very hard. You should be able to be
engaged in politics if you're not a
millionaire," LaDuke said.
LaDuke's political
vision is shaped by the context of her own
identity and life. "There's a divide between
politicians and common people. You've got to
eliminate that mystique. Look at me: a woman
who is a mother and a person of color who
lives in a rural area. Those are four things
that aren't supposed to be in politics, and I
disagree with that."
She says she and
Nader are what America needs in leadership.
"Ralph Nader is someone who has absolute
integrity; we don't trot out issues in an
election year."
Indeed, her work in
the Native community attests to her
long-standing commitment to the issues on the
Green Platform. Six years ago she founded the
White Earth Land Recovery Project, which
works to regain Native American land that
encompasses the 837,000 acres of the White
Earth reservation. She is also program
director of Honor the Earth Fund, a national
foundation and advocacy organization that
supports Native environmental
work.
LaDuke, a registered
member of the Mississippi band of the
Anishinaabeg, is also a co-founder of the
Indigenous Women's Network, a nationwide
support and advocacy group for Indian women
now based in Minneapolis.
LaDuke has no
illusions about finding herself in White
House come next January. (However, she has
decided that the first thing she would do in
the White House is redecorate: "I know it's a
national treasure but we need a little
diversity! We'll have the inaugural pow-wow
and remove the pictures of aging white men
and put up pictures of women and people of
color," she says.) But she is dead serious
about building a movement. She fairly erupts
at the suggestion that voting for the Green
Party is tantamount to taking votes away from
the Democratic ticket.
"Because people make
decisions based on fear, Al Gore takes votes
away from us. You shouldn't run a country on
fear. Look around the world. The U.S. is
lagging behind in its democracy. Almost every
other so-called developed country has a
multiparty system. Most other countries that
have had monarchies have struggled to
enfranchise their people. People in this
country died for the right to vote, and you
should honor that." In a recent interview
with Salon.com magazine, LaDuke was asked if
she is willing to tolerate four years of
George W. Bush in order to move the debate
forward on some issues. She responded, "It's
really going to be lousy if [Bush]
gets in. But I can't stand to continue this
election process where the whole thing gets
degraded and goes into a downward spiral. I
mean, look at the choices, and they're
getting worse."
LaDuke knows that
building a multiparty system takes time, and
she may be the perfect candidate to instill
in voters a predisposition for the long view.
She is the architect and chief proponent of
the Seventh Generation Amendment, a principle
based on the Iroquois Confederation's
adherence to making decisions based on how
they would impact not just the present, but
seven generations hence. She also promotes
the Precautionary Principle, which maintains
that the common good takes precedence over
the private good.
"I went to the
Beijing Conference [in 1995]. You saw
the women there from all over the world, and
they said 'get control of your country.' The
U.S. is a rogue nation. This country has
immense potential that's totally squandered.
Incredible wealth, rich ecosystems, and we
squander the potential in our own country and
internationally. We are going to be the old
ladies one day and I want to be proud of what
we've done," LaDuke said.
Now that she's got
one campaign under her belt and another under
way, does LaDuke feel "sullied" by the
electoral process, as she feared she
would?
"No. I feel entrusted
with trying to do the right thing. A lot of
people really want to try to change this
system and I'm honored to be the person to
help them. I'm also painfully aware that
people will be angry with some of what I
say," she said, in reference to supporting
the right of one tribe to hunt whales. "There
are fundamentalist Greens who don't like some
of what I say. But this is not a single issue
party, it's a movement that has to include
all of us."
© 2000 Minnesota
Women's Press, Inc.
771 Raymond Ave. St.
Paul, MN 55114 USA Phone: 651-646-3968 FAX:
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Minnesota Women's
Press, Inc., is an independent, woman-owned
and operated business.
40,000 write-in votes
for the Green Presidential Slate on November
7th leaves the Georgia Green Party on the
ballot for the 2002 state-wide
elections.
Hugh Esco *
hesco@greens.org * 706/ 896-7464 (home) 877/
GREEN-09 (i.e. 473-3609) or 770/ 635-3496 (vm
and fax) clerk, The Georgia Green
Party
A Party of
Compassion, the Politics of Hope! POB 5332;
Atlanta GA 31107 *
http://www.greens.org/georgia/ Chair, Voter
Choice Coalition http://www.voterchoice.org/
