How do you change the world?
One step at a time, Winona LaDuke told Fort Lewis College student leaders Friday in a luncheon featuring local foods. She gave a talk Thursday night about effective social activism and at the luncheon offered specific advice to young people working on environmental concerns.
“This is a moment in time.” she said. “A lot of dangerous stuff is happening around us. When we start running out of stuff, people start acting crazy. Colorado is ‘fracking central,’ the Southern Utes have water issues and the Navajos have the power plants.”
LaDuke, who’s visiting the school as a featured speaker during Native American Heritage Month, is a noted activist who works on sustainable development, particularly on tribal lands.
“There is no social-change fairy,” she said. “I started a lot when I was your age. It’s when you’re in school you have the chance to look at the big things. When you live on the reservation, you’re caught in the fishbowl of tribal politics and family dynamics. In college, you have space to breathe, a chance to polish your spirit, figure out how to make a positive difference.”
Being a young person trying to persuade tribal elders to enact change was the principal challenge mentioned by the students.
Both Brandon Francis and Brandon Jesus, members of the Navajo Nation, are concerned about their tribe’s future with coal mining and the three power plants in northwestern New Mexico.
“The elders are saying young people trying to change things are just troublemakers,” Jesus said, “despite having facts, being respectful, being nonviolent. The sense of the whole Navajo community is that they should stay with coal because that’s all that they’ve known.”
The solution may not be to work with the Navajo Tribal Council, LaDuke said.
“Chapter Houses have a bigger chance to be accountable,” she said. “When I first put up a wind turbine on my reservation (White Earth Reservation in Minnesota), I just did it. My tribe now has four because they saw how it works.”
LaDuke wasn’t the only activist in the room sharing wisdom.
Clyde Benally, the elder-in-residence at the FLC Native American Center, learned some things when he was a young activist.
“You’re talking about dealing with a generation that speaks primarily Navajo,” he said. “You need to learn the language. People will say, ‘He’s educated, but he makes sense. He is a person who has knowledge and is willing to share.’”
