Winona LaDuke, 37 years old, resides on the White Earth reservation in Minnesota with her two children. She is separated from Randy Kapashesit, a leader of the Cree Tribe in Ontario.

LaDuke began working on Indian issues at a young age, and spoke in front of the United Nations when she was 18 years old. While attending Harvard, she met Jimmy Durham, a well-known Cherokee activist. During this time she began research into the health impacts of uranium mining on the Navajo reservation. LaDuke spent time in South Dakota, New Mexico and Arizona on additional projects with grassroots Native organizations.

After graduation from Harvard, LaDuke accepted the job of reservation principal of the local school and became involved in a lawsuit to recover lands that had been taken by the federal government and the logging industry >from the White Earth Reservation. After losing the suit, LaDuke founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project and began the work of recovering the 800,000 acres that had been taken from the reservation. (So far, the Land Recovery Project has purchased 1,000 acres and expects to acquire an additional 30,000 in the next couple of years.)

In the 1980's, LaDuke was a leader of the successful opposition to the James Bay hydroelectric projects and was named "the most prominent Native American environmental activist" by several publications.

She next founded the Indigenous Womens' Network which she led to last year's World Conference on Women in Beijing. The IWN works on a variety of projects, including the investigation of small sustainable industries, such as rice production and solar and wind energy sources for use on the reservation.

In October of 1994, LaDuke was arrested while protesting the clearcutting of both old growth and new growth that was used to facilitate the printing of the phone books.

In Spring of 1995, LaDuke organized and hosted a national tour of the Indigo Girls. The tour was known as the "Honor the Earth" tour, and was organized to raise money for local grassroots organizations. $250,000 was raised by the tour for these groups, and over 40,000 individuals attended the concerts. In March of 1995 LaDuke was nominated by Time magazine as one of "50 Leaders for the Future."

Currently, LaDuke is writing a book on Native Environmentalism (South End Press) and a novel for Voyageur Press; she works on issues ranging from land restoration to organic agriculture.

Winona LaDuke is an activist for the Chippewa people of Northern Minnesota; she serves on the board of directors of GreenPeace USA and is board co-chair of the Indigenous Women's Network. She also publishes the journal Indigenous Women and serves as a program officer for a Naive American controlled foundation. She was recently in Chiapas, working with indigenous peoples' of the region and attending an international conference.

LaDuke has published numerous articles, has testified to governmental bodies in the U.S. and Europe, and has spoken to university audiences from coast to coast.