{"id":116333,"date":"2014-11-24T21:50:47","date_gmt":"2014-11-25T04:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/activist-laduke-shares-wisdom-at-flc\/"},"modified":"2014-11-24T21:50:47","modified_gmt":"2014-11-25T04:50:47","slug":"activist-laduke-shares-wisdom-at-flc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/activist-laduke-shares-wisdom-at-flc\/","title":{"rendered":"Activist LaDuke shares wisdom at FLC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Activist
Activist Winona LaDuke, left, meets with Fort Lewis College President Dene Kay Thomas during a luncheon on campus Friday. LaDuke spoke with students about how to be effective in creating social change.<\/span>SHAUN STANLEY\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

How do you change the world?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a moment in time.\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of dangerous stuff is happening around us. When we start running out of stuff, people start acting crazy. Colorado is \u2018fracking central,\u2019 the Southern Utes have water issues and the Navajos have the power plants.\u201d<\/p>\n

LaDuke, who\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no social-change fairy,\u201d she said. \u201cI started a lot when I was your age. It\u2019s when you\u2019re in school you have the chance to look at the big things. When you live on the reservation, you\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being a young person trying to persuade tribal elders to enact change was the principal challenge mentioned by the students.<\/p>\n

Both Brandon Francis and Brandon Jesus, members of the Navajo Nation, are concerned about their tribe\u2019s future with coal mining and the three power plants in northwestern New Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe elders are saying young people trying to change things are just troublemakers,\u201d Jesus said, \u201cdespite having facts, being respectful, being nonviolent. The sense of the whole Navajo community is that they should stay with coal because that\u2019s all that they\u2019ve known.\u201d<\/p>\n

The solution may not be to work with the Navajo Tribal Council, LaDuke said.<\/p>\n

\u201cChapter Houses have a bigger chance to be accountable,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

LaDuke wasn\u2019t the only activist in the room sharing wisdom.<\/p>\n

Clyde Benally, the elder-in-residence at the FLC Native American Center, learned some things when he was a young activist.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re talking about dealing with a generation that speaks primarily Navajo,\u201d he said. \u201cYou need to learn the language. People will say, \u2018He\u2019s educated, but he makes sense. He is a person who has knowledge and is willing to share.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

abutler@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

highlight of Native American Heritage Month<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":116334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[132,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-116333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116333"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=116333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}