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By What Right?
lmost all atomic weapons which have been detonated in the world have been detonated on the lands of indigenous people. I was in China when France chose to detonate its atomic weapons in Muroroa in September of this year. What gives France a right to a French Polynesia? Why do they have a right to detonate an atomic weapon in the Pacific? The irony of the situation is that under international law, because France detonated an atomic weapon in land which they said was theirs, or in waters which they said were theirs, there is no legal recourse for the people who live in the Pacific. I have to ask what right they have to a French Polynesia.
The international situation is mirrored in North America. The single largest hydroelectric project in North America? Cree lands. James Bay 1. We have the dubious honor of having a hundred separate proposals to dump toxic waste in our communities, sixteen different proposals to dump nuclear waste. That has much to do with environmental racism and environmental justice issues. Poor Indian communities have no environmental regulations. It is ironic, I think, that Indian tribes are viewed as sovereign if they want a casino, or a nuclear or toxic waste dump, but not if they want to protect their groundwater or their air quality. That is the irony of the relationship that we have with the federal government.
Northern Saskatchewan, Meadow Lake: I cannot understand how a village of four hundred people who speak Dine—a lot like Navajo--should be a place to host an international nuclear waste dump. I do not believe there is informed consent when the Canadian government suggests that Meadow Lake should have an international nuclear waste dump. There is no word for "radiation" in Dine.
So to deny that holocaust existed historically or presently is to deny the reality of the situation. It is incumbent upon people to understand the graveness of the international environmental and economic crisis, to recognize the situation in which indigenous peoples find them/ourselves, and to recognize collectively the situation in which we all find ourselves
We are communities that have fought for generations to retain that which is ours, that which is different. We have resisted assimilation and said, We will not be the same. We will not be part of this. We will be different, because that is who we are. There are some things to be learned from the tenacity of struggle. I think that we should be given some credit, and I urge you to support us in our struggles for indigenous self-determination. I say that because in supporting us you support cultural diversity, and cultural diversity is as essential to the web of life as biological diversity. It is about our humanity, individually and collectively. I think it is important that I can pray in my language and have a ceremony in my language. That is the beauty of life, and to lose that beauty is to lose something which is very great in this society, very great in this world. Part of supporting indigenous people is supporting our rights to self-determination. Our rights to a land base.
Fair Representation
et’s look at national and internal law. Why is it that we do not have a voice at the U.N.? I ask you to consider who makes decisions in the world and what rights they should have. Why is AT&T's right superior to mine? What right does Weyerhaeuser have that supersedes my right to my land, to my trees? That is the fundamental question which should be asked, not only by indigenous people, but by anyone who lives in a community impacted by a corporation from somewhere else. What gives them a right which is superior to my rights, whether it is the right to dump chlorine and dioxin in my water, to dump PCBs, or to clearcut a forest? I ask you to consider broader constructs of where we need to be going.
I think it is time to get past the discussion of if it's the left or the right. I think that we need to talk about a totally different view. I think that we have that right and we need to look at that right. It is like being offered a pie of a certain flavor. What indigenous people are saying, what people of color are saying is: "We don't want the pie. We want a totally different pie." We need to think larger. Instead of asking questions like, "Do we need economic expansion here?" or "Do we need gender equity here?" I think we need to ask fundamental questions.
I have major concerns about the re-industrialization of regions. I think we should talk about deindustrialization of regions. I think instead of talking about agricultural expansion which requires fertilizers and chemicals and high levels of machinery, we should talk about simpler agriculture, which is organic, where you know and can pronounce the names on the label. What a concept.
Instead of always talking about centralizing energy production, let's talk about decentralizing energy production. I have spent my entire life dealing with the predator. The predator is the energy industry. I fought a nuclear waste dump on my reservation. Then I went to my kids' homeland and fought a dam. I go down there and visit my friends at Navajo, and they've got a uranium plant. The predator moves from place to place. We need to confront the level of consumption which exists if we're going to deal with our human rights.
Questioning "Gender Equity"
e need to question the paradigm of gender equity as women. I oppose gender equity. I oppose the concept of gender equality. Why do I oppose it? Because in my experience "gender equity" largely means that white women replace white men in the seats of power. That is my experience. It does not deal with fundamental questions of race, sexual orientation, class, geography, or privilege. What good will it do the women of Zimbabwe if white women are the heads of corporations in the U.S.? Instead of gender equity, I support the rights to self-determination of all peoples, and women are peoples. So my right to live on my land is as equal to someone who lives here's right to live in their area. My right should be as equal. We are equal regardless of our level of privilege, level of education, or whether we have blue, silk, or no collars. Those are the questions. I support the rights of self-determination of all women, whatever country, whatever sexual orientation, in whatever location we find ourselves.
Addressing the Roots
inally, most fundamentally, I ask you to consider that the long-term issues of indigenous people's rights to self-determination and women's rights to self-determination—our collective ability to survive—has very much to do with addressing fundamental systematic issues in this society.
It is perhaps best said by a friend of mine. His name is Father Roy Bourgeois. The first time I met him was at an Exxon stockholders meeting in Chicago. It was in the early 1980s. It was in the Chicago Opera House. It was all dark and fancy. There were all these women with feather boas and fur coats and these men with grey suits and fur coats. They were the stockholders of Exxon. Down on the stage there was this Exxon banner hanging from the sky and these five little white guys who I assume were the board of directors. For those of you who have never been to a stockholders meeting, it's an interesting exercise. I went there because we had a stockholders resolution. We were trying to change Exxon, a difficult corporation to change. Some people had gone in there, some anti-nuclear activists, to get Exxon to divest of their nuclear holdings. They were kind of hippies. They stood up there and all the stockholders kind of looked as them and didn't know really what to make of them. Then they sat down. Then these nuns stood up. Nuns are very good with stockholders resolutions. These nuns wanted Exxon to get out of South Africa. This was in the middle of the anti-Apartheid movement, when divestiture was one of the main strategies we used to support the people of South Africa's right to self-determination.
So the nuns got up and talked about Exxon's investments in South Africa and how that was really bad and they should really divest and they have all these little votes there. So you could see them all kind of looking down while the nuns were talking. Then they looked up. Then I got up and talked about Exxon's 400,000-acre lease at Navajo reservation. Illegal under federal law, but they got an exemption from the Secretary of the Interior for a lease. I don't know if you know how big that is. It's half the size of my reservation. It's a really big lease for as much uranium exploration as they want to do. So we're trying to get Exxon to get out of that uranium lease as being unethical. So I got up and testified.
Then I sat down and this priest stood up. He went up to the microphone, which was in the aisle. He stood up and said, I don't got a resolution. I got a question. I've been living in Latin America for the past ten years, and the people there asked me a question to ask you. They want to know if there's a direct relationship between their poverty and your wealth.
That's all he said. But that, my friends, is the essence of the discussion. We need to curb our level of consumption in this society. A society which consumes a third of the world's resources is living way beyond natural law. A society which consumes that much is a society which causes extinction of peoples and species. I do not believe that a society which causes this level of extinction of peoples and species is sustainable. I think our challenge collectively is to address those fundamental issue of consumption in the society if we are going to figure out now to bring our society back in order with natural law.
Our challenge is to figure out how to make a more cyclical economic system. That is natural law. We need a system in which we do not consistently output waste, where we feed back in, whether through recycling, re-use, or co-generation. That is the essence of sustainability. A cyclical system. Not our present linear system where you input one thing and you output waste.
In my cultural practice we believe that is possible. In my language, there is no concept of Armageddon, something which exists, I believe, in this society. We don't believe that there's an end. We believe instead "mino bimaatisiiwin": cyclical system, continuous rebirth. That's what that means. There is a cycle. There is a change. And there is rebirth. That, I believe is the challenge that we collectively face. 
This article was adapted from a speech given by Winona LaDuke at North Carolina State University on November 13, 1995. It was recorded by Alternative Radio.
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