Voices from White Earth: Gaa-waabaabiganikaag

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.

Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) member of the White Earth Nation, is a strong and clear voice for the return to traditional land-holding patterns of her people. She explains how, in order to sustain the life of the Anishinaabe, her people need different kinds of land: the lakes for harvesting wild rice, the forests for hunting, and the meadows for gathering herbs. The earlier artificial allocation of square plots of the White Earth Reservation to individual tribal members and the loss of the Anishinaabes' land through sale to outsiders has resulted in a mosaic of land use that separates the community from its traditions. Her own work is devoted to restoring the integrity of the White Earth Reservation by repurchasing sold land and holding it in a community land trust arrangement so that it may be productively used without fear of loss. The story she tells is a moving one and provides a practical approach to healing a wounded people and wounded land.