All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life [Paperback]

Winona LaDuke (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0896085996 | ISBN-13: 978-0896085992 | Publication Date: October 15, 1999

This eagerly awaited non-fiction debut by acclaimed Native environmental activist Winona LaDuke is a thoughtful and in-depth account of Native resistance to environmental and cultural degradation.

LaDuke's unique understanding of Native ideas and people is born from long years of experience, and her analysis is deepened with inspiring testimonies by local Native activists sharing the struggle for survival.

On each page of this volume, LaDuke speaks forcefully for self-determination and community. Hers is a beautiful and daring vision of political, spiritual, and ecological transformation.

All Our Relations features chapters on the Seminoles, the Anishinaabeg, the Innu, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Mohawks, among others.

"One of the pleasures of reading All Our Relations is discovering the unique voices of Native people, especially Native women, speaking in their own Native truths."-Women's Review of Books

"...as Winona LaDuke describes, in moving and often beautiful prose, [these] misdeeds are not distant history but are ongoing degradation of the cherished lands of Native Americans."-Public Citizen News

"...a rare perspective on Native history and culture."-Sister to Sister/S2S

"Hers is a beautiful and daring vision of political, spiritual, and ecological transformation. All Our Relations is essential reading for everyone who cares about the fate of the Earth and indigenous peoples."-Winds of Change

"No ragtag remnants of lost cultures here. Strong voices of old, old cultures bravely trying to make sense of an Earth in chaos."-Whole Earth

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A brilliant, gripping narrative of the corporate state's brutality to the land of its First Natives and the valiant ones who are resisting and rebuilding their culture and identity." -- Ralph Nader, consumer advocate

"This is the book I would have used had it existed 35 years ago. Eight portraits of Native-American peoples refusing to make distinctions among spirit, politics, land, and all life. A sense of faith and deep continuity on Turtle Island, our continent ravaged by invasion and time.... No ragtag remnants of lost cultures here. Strong voices of old, old cultures bravely trying to make sense of an Earth in chaos." -- Whole Earth, Winter 1999

About the Author

Winona LaDuke lives on the White Earth reservation in Minnesota and is an enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of Anishinaabeg. She is the Project Director of the Honor the Earth Fund and Campaign Director for the White Earth Land Recovery Project. In 1994, LaDuke was named by Time as one of America's 50 most promising leaders under 40 years of age. In the 1996 presidential campaign, she served as Ralph Nader's running mate in the Green Party. In 1997, with the Indigo Girls, she was named a Ms. Woman of the Year. LaDuke received the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1998.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: South End Press (October 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896085996
• ISBN-13: 978-0896085992
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,128 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Urban Planning & Development > Environmental Planning

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Becoming Native to America, September 11, 2003

By 

J.W.K (Nagano, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Paperback)

Spoon-fed news by large media corps, few were aware that Winona LaDuke ran for the vice presidency under Ralph Nader in the 2000 elections. Even fewer know that she is also a Native American eco-philosopher with a critical perspective on the health and future prosperity of America. All Our Relations is particularly instructive, in that LaDuke surveys the entire American landscape (and by landscape, I am not merely referring to the political landscape), showing the deep connections that exist between local cultures, their environments, and the corporate-governmental giants that often compromise their health. Although LaDuke has specifically focused on Native American communities, the stories are engaging and instructive for Americans in general. Informative, powerful, and transformative, LaDuke here provides an antidote for our increasing alienation from the land and biota that sustain us. A must read for any conscious American.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything You Ever Needed To Know About Lands' Survival, May 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Paperback)

LaDuke quickly, compassionately, and thoroughly takes us by the hand and introduces us to a good number of various Native American landscapes, into many clever, tough portals of indigenous survival ingenuity...and clearly illustrates what is good for 'them' is good for anyone living currently on planet earth. Our common domicile's fragility is met with good, strong protectiveness and tenacious, wise intent from the active folks LaDuke interviews. It is especially humbling and informing - her style of writing reaches in and takes you calmly down a harrowing road from which you cannot forget the lessons you learned: quite a feat. Definitely a keeper for your bookshelf, and a good one to recommend and give to graduating kin, enviro-friends, and the unsuspecting uninitiated. Wow. Informative, insightful, just plain brilliant.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Environmentalism is about People, too., December 7, 2000

By 

Tim Hundsdorfer (Boulder, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Paperback)

I think in light of other reviews it makes some sense to underscore that this book is not about environmentalism in the traditional sense, but about the connection between the environment and people. LaDuke's great contribution to the environmental debate is her all-too-rare understanding that there is a connection between the earth and the people that live on it. Not in some hocus-pocus new age way, but a real, scientific connection between people (particulary Native people, because of their lifestyle) and polution. My lone criticism is the charicaturization of corporations in this book. GM does pollute, but consumers are also to blame. Nevertheless, LaDuke is undoubtedly correct in connecting the dots between industrialization, militarism and environmental pollution and she does so in a way that few authors have ever done. A fantastic book that stands in stark contrast to Earth in the Balance as a real manifesto for true environmentalists.