Acceptance speech- Winona LaDuke

Introduction

                    Winona LaDuke started her activism an in the year 1985, she aided the formation of the Indigenous Women’s Network and was later to work with the Women of All Red Nations, in which they were enfranchising the people about the forced sterilization which had become rampant to the Native American women. She was involved largely in the recovery of lands. Her involvements were further instrumental in the formation of the White Earth Land Recovery Project which strived to acquire back the land that had been bought by the non natives. The cream of her many activities was when she was nominated to the vice president’s position on a Green Party ticket, with Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate.

Acceptance speech

                    In her acceptance speech, Winona indicated that she and the party was ready to be the catalyst in the quest of creating a model that was to be new in the political structure, one based on democracy and that she was not going to be drawn to electoral politics. Top of her interests were the distribution of wealth and power, environmental issues, the abuse of rights and powers and she indicated her aim of working towards the changing of the United States of America’s constitution to create sustainability and correct its neglect nature of the major parties. Her observation was that those citizens living in typical areas had no voice as relates to the policies made in Washington and yet such policies were affecting them. She was for the fact that all the people regardless of their status and locality were to be subjected to fair and equal hearing as concerns their destiny. She stated that she was to champion for the rights and involvement of all the citizens in the decision making process thus public policy formation.
                    Poverty was her concern in the acceptance speech. Winona reiterated that most American Indian lived in extreme poverty, a fact that she be cried. She further stated that a lot of families headed by women continue to languish in dire poverty, with nearly 90 percent of them living under impoverished states. According to Winona, unemployment was a sting on the nation at that time as it was rated at 49 percent. This was greatly caused by lack of education and was an issue she was going to handle. (LaDuke36)
                    Winona promised to lead the way in the formulation of the welfare reform legislation, criticizing the Indian Policy which bore a lot of promises which were never actualized. Her interest was to address the situation of over 9 million children living in poverty in the country in order to eliminate the safety nets encompassing the children. The poverty attributed to most Native Americans was going to be addressed according to Winona. She spoke also about the environmental policy, in which she was to champion for the protection and strengthening of the act dealing with endangered species, which was never done by Bill Clinton and yet was his promise. Winona promised to strive to reduce unnecessary an uncontrolled logging alongside the prevention and defending of other indigenous forests.

Conclusion

                    In conclusion, Winona’s acceptance speech was dominated by the plight of the poor Native Americans and she promised on ensuring there are equality and an address to the quality of life by both the foreign and domestic policy for the Americans. The full achievement of human rights and equal treatment of people were her main talking points. She insisted that there was need to balance the social, economic and the environmental policies at the benefit of the poor citizens, and in consideration to the generations to come, up to the seventh generation.

Work cited

Winona LaDuke. The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings. NY: Voyageur Press. 2002. Print