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.The Nader-LaDuke ticket received 0.6 percent ofthe popular vote in the November 5 general election that year.Four years later,the same ticket was influential enough in some states to be accused by liberals ofdiverting just enough votes from Democrat Al Gore to put Republican George W.Bush in the White House.The Green Party was listed on the general election ballot in 22 states, underother names in some of them, such as the Liberty, Ecology, and Community Partyin Louisiana, and the Pacific Party in Oregon.The Green Party, which began or-ganizing in 1984, by late 1996 had 29 elected officials in 10 states.The party plat-form focuses on increased grassroots democracy and break-up of corporate power.The platform also puts an emphasis on environmentally correct economic policy,nonviolence, and social justice.152 | LaDuke, WinonaIn the 1996 election, the Green Party felt slighted after the Sierra Club endorsedBill Clinton and Al Gore as an environmentally friendly alternative to Republicancandidates Bob Dole and Bill Kemp.However, a sizable number of dissidentsargued that the Sierra Club should have endorsed Nader and LaDuke.The dissi-dents were led by former Sierra Club president David Brower. It is shameful that the Sierra Club would endorse someone of so many en-vironmental promises and so little environmental protection, said LaDuke(LaDuke, 1996, 38 45).She characterized President Clinton as an environmen-tal opportunist, who said in 1992 that he would not allow any weakening of theEndangered Species Act, but who in 1994 signed legislation that froze additionof species to that list.The Sierra Club s internal conflict was reflected in theNovember/December 1996 edition of its magazine, where Clinton was endorsedat the bottom of page 60, while LaDuke appeared on the cover riding a horse fora special issue on Native Americans and the Environment.She also wrote thecover story.LaDuke said her campaign brought American Indian issues into the nationalcampaign.LaDuke favors a constitutional amendment that would protect the airand water as common property, to be maintained free from contamination. Therights of the people to use and enjoy air, water, and sunlight are essential to life,liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, LaDuke wrote in Indian Country Today,October 14, 1996. A Remarkable FigureIn the waning days of the national campaign, John Nichols, an editorial writerfor the Madison, Wisconsin, Capital Times, summarized LaDuke s contribution,saying that she  is a remarkable figure whose history of American Indian, environ-mental, and economic justice activism makes her uniquely qualified to participatein a national debate that desperately needs her insights.Yet, in an age of sound-bite politics, LaDuke and Nader have been largely neglected. Nichols continued: As we move into the final stages of a campaign that has been as vapid as any inthis nation s history, Winona LaDuke stands out as a lonely voice of substance(Johansen, 1996, 4).Most of LaDuke s initiatives are more basic than national politics.She helped(with Margaret Smith, a former teacher) to build Mino-Miijim, to give wild riceand other traditional foods, including buffalo meat and hominy, to elderly peoplewith Type 2 diabetes on the reservation.LaDuke maintains that  The essence of the problem is about consumption, rec-ognizing that a society [the United States] that consumes one third of the world sresources is unsustainable.This level of consumption requires constant interven-tion into other people s lands.That s what s going on ( Americans, n.d.).On November 16, 2008, LaDuke s home on the White Earth Reservationburned to the ground because of an electrical fire.LaDuke, five children, and threegrandchildren escaped injury, but art, books, music, photographs, and other col-lectibles from LaDuke s travels around the world, as well as furniture and otherLaFlesche, Susan | 153possessions, were destroyed.Many friends banded together to replace some of thememorable pieces.Further Reading Americans Who Tell the Truth: Winona LaDuke. n.d.http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/Winona_LaDuke.html.Bowermaster, Jon. Earth of a Nation. Harper s Bazaar, April 1993, 99 101.Johansen, Bruce E. Running for Office: LaDuke and the Green Party. Native Americas18, no.4 (Winter 1996): 3 4.Kummer, Corby. Going with the Grain: True Wild Rice, for the Past Twenty Years NearlyImpossible to Find, Is Slowly Being Nurtured Back to Market. Atlantic Monthly,May 2004, 145 48.LaDuke, Winona. The Growing Strength of Native Environmentalism: Like Tributariesto a River. Sierra, November/December 1996, 38 45.LaDuke, Winona.All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life.Cambridge, MA:South End Press/Minneapolis, MN: Honor the Earth, 1999.LaDuke, Winona.Last Standing Woman (History and Heritage).Stillwater, MN: VoyageurPress, 1999.LaDuke, Winona.The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings.Still-water, MN: Voyageur Press, 2002.LaDuke, Winona.Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming.Cam-bridge, MA: South End Press, 2005.Melmer, David. Winona LaDuke Inducted into National Women s Hall of Fame.Indian Country Today, October 15, 2007.http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415916.LAFLESCHE, SUSAN1865 1910 U MA HA (OMAHA)PHYSICIANDaughter of Omaha principal Chief Joseph LaFlesche, Susan LaFlesche Picotteblazed a career of genius through a number of white schools, then became a doc-tor on the Omaha Reservation during a time when cholera, influenza, tuberculosis,and other diseases were reaching epidemic proportions.She nearly worked herselfto death serving the Omahas as a government physician.In 1884, after two and a half years at the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladiesin Elizabeth, New Jersey, LaFlesche enrolled at the Hampton Normal and Agri-cultural Institute in Hampton, Virginia.This vocational school had been started byGeneral Samuel C.Armstrong to educate freed slaves.A number of Indians alsoattended, and the school played a role in the designs of Lt.Richard Henry Pratt,who started Carlisle Indian School.LaFlesche graduated from Hampton May 20,1886, at the top of her class.Between 1886 and 1889, she attended the Women s154 | LaFlesche, SusanMedical College of Pennsylvania ona scholarship raised by her friends,many of whom were non-Indian, againgraduating at the top of her class.LaFlesche thus became one of ahandful of Native American physi-cians in the 19th century, a group thatincludes Charles Eastman and CarlosMontezuma.She was the only NativeAmerican woman to become a medi-cal doctor during that century.For fiveyears, LaFlesche fought pervasive dis-ease on the Omaha Reservation, mak-ing some progress.In December 1891, LaFleschewrote that influenza  raged with moreviolence than during the two preced-ing years.Some families were ren-dered helpless by it.Almost everyday I was out making visits.Sev-eral days the temperature was 15 to 20Susan La Flesche Picotte, first female Nativedegrees below zero, and I had to driveAmerican physician in the United States.[a horse-drawn buggy] myself  (Mathes,(Nebraska State Historical Society)1985, 73).During that winter, she treatedmore than 600 patients.By 1892, the intensity of her work was costing LaFlesche her own health.Shewas beset by a number of debilitating illnesses for the rest of her life, as she min-istered to the ever-present ills of the Omahas.At one point she wearily departedfor Washington, D.C., to testify for the Omahas because people had threatened toconvey her bodily, her mission was of such importance to them [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]