Born 1959
Los Angeles, California
Environmentalist, Native American rights activist, and writer
Winona LaDuke is one of the nation’s foremost Native American environmental activists. She combines her mission of protecting the land with the promotion of economic and cultural viability of Indian communities. As LaDuke stated in a 1995 interview with The Progressive, the focus of her work is to change society “from the synthetic reality of consumption and expendability to the natural reality of conservation and harmony.”
Winona LaDuke was born in 1959 in an Indian neighborhood in East Los Angeles, California. Her parents were Vincent LaDuke, an Ojibwa Indian, and Betty Bernstein, a Jewish woman. Vincent was an Indian-rights activists and an actor who had small roles in numerous films. Betty was an artist from New York City.
Both of LaDuke’s parents were supporters of human rights—especially Native American rights. LaDuke on several occasions missed school to attend civil rights and antiwar marches with her parents.
LaDuke’s parents raised her to respect Native American cultural traditions. As a youth, LaDuke made several visits to her father’s childhood home—the White Earth Indian Reservation in rural northern Minnesota.
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