Winona LaDuke’s talk (at Under Western Skies 3) was, as always, powerful and empowering. Here are some quoteworthy lines from it.
“I’ve lived my entire life in the fossil fuel era. I’d like a graceful exit out of it.”
“I want to be able to walk out of my teepee into a Tesla.”
“Addicts are a total drag on the family. They deny things, they rationalize, lie to you, make stuff up.” (Now I’m paraphrasing.) As a society, that’s where we are. Extreme extraction — Tar Sands, mountaintop removal, fracking (or “death by lethal injection”) — are forms of total addiction.
“We [people like those in the audience] are all really smart and we shop. But we don’t know how to do anything.”
Here’s she’s citing John Trudell (I think?): “White people don’t feel oppressed, but they feel powerless. Indians feel oppressed, but don’t feel powerless.” LaDuke urges us to own our own power; don’t give it away.
Here’s a video Winona shared at the beginning of her talk, which contextualizes her work with her own community in Minnesota in current petro/pipeline politics:
And she highly recommends Fractivist.org, with its Extreme Hydrocarbon Survey.
More of her quotes can be found at #LoveWaterNotOil.