We're thrilled to welcome Winona LaDuke as this year's keynote speaker! LaDuke is a Anishinaabe from the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, or Akiing, the Land to Which the People Belong. She is an author, rural development economist, farmer, and long time environmental and Indigenous rights activist. She began work in the late 1970’s on the rights of Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations, worked extensively on energy policy issues from uranium and coal strip mining to pipelines and dam projects, with a strong background in community and environmental impacts and experience with the political repression associated with resistance. 

In her community, she’s worked on oral history and land rights issues, environmental advocacy and renewable energy projects, including a pending half a megawatt project for her own village of Pine Point on the White Earth reservation. She’s  been arrested and sent to the White House, and was a two-time Green Party nominee for the office of Vice President of the United States. She also holds the distinction of having received an electoral college vote for the office of US President. She’s thankful she is not President, and in her long and colorful career has authored seven books, including a novel, Last Standing Woman, works as a curator at the Giiwedinong Museum of Treaty Rights and Culture, and grows fiber hemp. She‘s a graduate of Harvard University and has a Masters Degree in Rural Development.