Customer Reviews

All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life

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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.

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.

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.

La Duke, the 1996 (and hopefully 2000)US Green Party nominee for the Vice-Presidency, has written one of the most enlightening and compleiing accounts of the consequences of environmental injustice in the United States. Combining historical context with descriptions of the landscape of contemporary struggles, La Duke shows how First Peoples in North America have been not only forcably evicted from their land, but how their current homes are serving as the dumping ground for the detritus of White Consumerism.

Each chapter tells the stories of various tribes who have been burdened by nuclear waste, poor agricultural lands, and polluted water. In each case native peoples have developed strong organizations to fight for social justice. The insightful analysis presented here makes one excited by the prospect of a LaDuke Vice-presidency. She is much more aware of the importance of community action and limiting corporate power to protect the environment than the current US Vice President whose administration abandoned any pretext of environmentalism during the course of misguied policies that know-towed to the wishes of corporate polluters.

To think this woman could be our Vice President today. Most people don't even know that Winona LaDuke ran for Vice President on Ralph Nader's ticket. An articulate and passionate writer, LaDuke presents an awareness of the plight of America unsurpassed by any other. She knows what's wrong. She knows what needs to be done. She knows who is doing the work, how and why. She presents her advocacy as human, heartfelt and real. I learned things about what is happening to this country that I would never have known otherwise. You certainly don't see it in the news, and you don't learn about it in school. We're in trouble, folks, and it's not too late to do something about it. With more power she could have made such a difference! But she continues to work on the issues, and it is so important that more people are aware of her work. Please, please, please read this book. It is the most important book you will read all year.

All Our Relations, Winona LaDukes book about native struggles for land and life, is very informative. It tells the stories of people whom she knows, showing how her friends the political activists connect to their communities, and following their stories back to where the history books I read as a youngster left off. In addition to the stories that everybody has heard at least a little about (the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Seminole), there are some to which the book introduced me for the first time.

Winona deals with many painful topics in some detail. The activists she writes about are grandchildren or great grandchildren of the people that fought the Indian wars. The lessons these people learned about the White Man's language are shared with the reader. For example, in one chapter she explains that when the newspapers wrote "Settle the Indian question", what that meant in practice on the ground was "killing all the buffalo as efficiently as possible." In this way the book exposes many "Orwellian language games" without pointing fingers in any offensive judgmental ways. The tone is one of ongoing struggle, where understanding is the key to progress.

There are several types of struggle that occur over and over. Toxic waste stories like the one told in the movie Erin Brockovich happen to mothers in the Mohawk and Nitassinanian tribes. White mans greed for energy causes problems for Northern Cheyenne (coal on their lands) and Northern Shoshone ("good site" for a Nuclear Waste dump). Racism and extreme double standards put natives in precarious situations where they have to deal with deep poverty (Hawaii, White Earth, and Buffalo Nations).

The underlying theme of the book is hopeful progress and continuing struggle. The White Earth Recovery Project is slowly rebuilding the forests of Minnesota. The Hopi are finding much value in solar power, a White Man technology that actually makes sense in their world. Walt Bresette's Seventh Generation Amendment (The right of the citizens of the U.S. to enjoy and use air, water, sunlight, and other renewable resources determined by the Congress to be common property shall not be impaired, nor shall such use impair their availability for use by the future generations.) has given many diverse groups "a great optimism for the potential to make positive change." Reading this book gave me a deeper understanding that Green Values are profoundly useful.

La Duke is an inspiration to young environmentalists all over the world irrespective of their lineage. This book clearly resonates her strong beliefs and convictions about environmental issues through numerous case examples. However, I was hoping that there would be more in terms of research inquiry about the causes of environmental injsutice. Why is it that tribal leadership, and often a large constituency within a tribe, often repudiate much of the environmental ethic which is presented here? It is easy to dismiss this question by saying that the government or corporations are to blame, but I personally think that there is more at play than just external manipulation. I would urge La Duke to respond to some of her critics within the Native American establishment in her next work -- which I am sure will be just as compelling and positively provocative. Also it may be useful to have a chapter responding to environmental historians such as Calvin Luther Martin. I think a good work responding to these revisionists is needed from a seasoned and erudite Native voice such as La Duke.

If I could, I would thank Winonah LaDuke in person for writing such an important, informative and engaging book on the travesty that is the North American government's view of native land and those who inhabit it. The numerous tribes who make the land their home are forced to co-exist with the insensitive, selfish and literally toxic decisions made by government and corporations who dump tons upon tons of toxic pesticides in their water and on "abandoned" land. These lands are also subject to divebombings from military jets. These are illegal decibel levels that drive those within hearing range to points of mental instability, as well as potential hearing loss.

One of the most important quotes from this book that I remember (since I read this book a couple of years ago in a Native/African-American Women's Studies course) was from a Seminole leader who said, "Selling your land for a price is like selling a piece of your mother." [I paraphrase this.] I couldn't agree more. When I remember that quote, I think about all of the animals, vegetation and tribes (consisting of families and friends) who have lived off of the land of the United States, as well as Canada. How can one possibly put a price on something that can't truly be owned by anyone and is its own autonomous entity. Even if people have the illusion that they can occupy land as territory (because of treaties, as an example) does not mean that it is ever their to keep. LaDuke makes several strong examples of this in the book. We can't continue to pollute, abuse and neglect land without paying a price environmentally or in terms of human quality of life and mortaiity. I believe everyone should read this book, regardless of occupation, national origin or territorial location. We need to face the damage done before more of it goes unacknowledged. Thank you, Winonah.

I ordered this book for my college students to read before we visited the Navajo Nation. The book was informative and gave the students good background into the current struggles of the Native American people. Students found the book easy to read and to comprehend key issues and concerns.

ALL OUR RELATIONS by Indigenous Activist Winona LaDuke is a must read for everyone who cares about our earth. LaDuke presents the state of the environment focusing on several land, treaty rights and toxic exposure struggles on reservations across North America and in Hawaii. Since I met Winona when she was an economics student at Harvard, she has been at the heart of struggles and gains made by indigenous communities, always bringing a keen intellect, diligent research, unswerving commitment, and a broad vision of the whole circle to community and tribal issues.
Because I've known many of the people involved in the essential work LaDuke describes in ALL OUR RELATIONS, it was a personal pleasure to read this book and catch up with what Susannah Santos and her cousins are doing on the Columbia River, be updated on Luana Busby and Melani Trask and the Hawaiian indigenous movement and to get the inside details of the complex political fight Winona's son's father and his people are up aqainst at St. James Bay. But this book will fascinate anyone who cares about our earth, families and communities. It is one to read from end to end, then keep around to re-read again and again.
LaDuke calls the work these tribal communities do to protect their people and landbase from pollution and corporate greed, "soul-retrieval." It is work that we all need to do whatever our ethnic background, since as LaDuke's reportage on the presence of PCBs in mother's breastmilk in the Northeast attests, everyone is affected by what we are doing to the earth. Winona is a mother who has no illusions about how the choices we make as consumers affect the earth and our communities' health. What is most inpiring about LaDuke's writing and life is that she offers solutions. Each chapter not only outlines the problem, but it talks about solutions that are being implemented and suggests others that should be employed. Winona walks her talk. LaDuke has been a strong proponent of wind energy and has worked to engage major corporations like Ben & Jerry in developing wind energy projects on Indian Reservations in South Dakota. Native Harvest and White Earth Land Recovery Project have reclaimed White Earth land and developed sustainable reservation businesses that employ and train White Earth tribal members. Winona LaDuke would be a great President because she is the only public figure who has a sensible plan for economic self-sufficiency, the clarity to explain it to the American people, and the discipline and steadfastness to enact it.