If, as Robert Frost once mused, there is a path less taken, he might be surprised to learn that his journey was neither so isolated nor as poetic as he supposed. According Winona LaDuke, the featured speaker for the 2013 David Sheperd Family Lecture, the Anishinaabe have a similar proverb of how in the time of the seventh fire, there would be two roads to choose form. “They say that one road is well-worn but scorched, while the other road is not well-worn, but it is green. And this, I think, is the choice we are facing right now,” she said.

Ms. LaDuke’s life-long activism, bolstered by her studies at both Harvard and Antioch Universities where she obtained advance degrees in rural economic development, inform her approach to protecting the lands and life ways of Native communities and raising awareness of environmental issues and inequalities. For Ms. LaDuke, the path, while philosophical, is ultimately one of patience, perseverance and practice over poetics, and her talk entitled “Economics for the Seventh Generation” (a reference to the native tenet that important decisions should take into account long term - i.e. seven generations’  - impact) reflected this commitment to long-term solutions based in personal and local action.

Several hundred people from a broad cross section of the Trent and larger Peterborough and First Nations’ communities attended the lecture including native Elders such as Curve Lake chief Shirley Williams who welcomed Ms. LaDuke, to community leaders, students, faculty and community members from all ages and walks of life.

An internationally-acclaimed author, orator and activist, Ms. LaDuke was named one of America’s 50 most promising leaders under 40 by Time Magazine in 1994. In 1997 she was named Ms. Magazine’s Woman of the Year. She is also the founding director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, a reservation-based non-profit organization devoted to restoring the land-base and culture of the White Earth Anishinaabeg. Ms. LaDuke also served as Ralph Nader’s vice-presidential running mate on the Green Party ticket in the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections.

Recently returning from a more than 300 kilometre journey by horseback accompanied by other First Nations protestors following the proposed Enbridge Alberta Clipper Pipeline in northern Minnesota, Ms. LaDuke showed no signs of fatigue. Rather Ms. LaDuke joked with ease and kept the energy in the room positive, intimate, and focused. While admitting the activist lifestyle can be at times discouraging when faced with the seemingly unstoppable machinery of big business, government policy, and frankly, our own greed. Ms. LaDuke encouraged audience member to persevere and to make their voices heard.

Ms. LaDuke’s delivery was witty and colloquial and often had her audience laughing and nodding their heads in agreement. Economic analysis and practical ground-based projects-in-action anchored her talk in hope and left the audience with a drive to do more. As one final warning, Ms. LaDuke challenged the economic paradigms that govern our current global systems, in particular our notions of assets and liabilities as calculated in purely financial terms. “My suggestion,” concluded Ms. LaDuke, “is that we have to challenge these paradigms in academic institutions and across the board because from my vantage point that is not an asset, that is a liability.

“What we’re facing is not good, and it requires action,” she added. “It requires action to re-localize and to take control and it is incumbent upon us to fight the bad stuff. And at the same time you have to build – and I never call it the “alternative” because it is not the alternative, we are the righteous path. We are the path that will allow us to survive.”

This year’s David Sheperd Family Lecture featuring Ms. LaDuke was also the keynote address for the two-day Changing Our World Climate Change Symposium organized by the Kawartha World Issues Centre (KWIC). This community symposium aimed to explore active models and opportunities for a just and sustainable future.

About the David Sheperd Family Lecture

The David Sheperd Family Lecture provides Trent students, faculty and staff, as well as members of the Peterborough community, with exceptional access to leading scholars and people engaged in policy and practical work in the field of environmental science. The lectureship series is supported by the Trent University David Sheperd Family Lecture Series Endowment Fund and is named in honour of David Sheperd, an American by birth who came to Peterborough in 1985 as founding president of A-L Stainless Inc. He served in the community in many areas including chair of the local United Way board and through involvement at the provincial United Way level, Skills Development Programs in Peterborough and throughout Ontario, the Industrial Development Committee, and the Centre for Manufacturing Development. For more information, visit www.trentu.ca/sheperd

Posted on Thursday, November 14, 2013.