Winona LaDuke - Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming

Praise forRecovering the Sacred

2005 Gustavus Myers Book Award Honorable Mention

Written in an accessible style, Recovering the Sacred documents the remarkable stories of indigenous communities whose tenacity and resilience has enabled them to reclaim their lands, resources, and life ways after enduring centuries of incalculable loss.

Wilma Mankiller, author, Every Day is a Good Day

Thoughtful, tough, impressively informed, Recovering the Sacred tells a profound story. To survive, we need to listen.

Louise Erdrich, author, Love Medicine

A fascinating read that puts Native American communities struggles for justice into historical and environmental context. Winonas fierce dedication to the indigenous environmental and womens movements infuses her analysis with a first-person understandingdeep and powerful on many levels.

Bonnie Raitt, musician/activist

Recovering the Sacred is a brilliant study of cases dealing with rights to land, resources, culture, religion, and genetic information. LaDuke offers a much-needed challenge to the existing ethical constructs that govern these rights claims. This book will be a valuable resource for attorneys, scholars, and community members alike.

Rebecca Tsosie, author, American Indian Law: Native Nations and the Federal System

With precision and eloquence, LaDuke makes clear not only that the theft of all things indigenous continues to this day but that resistance to this theft is becoming ever stronger. She makes equally clear that if we are to survive we must stop stealing from and begin listening to those whose land we have stolen, whose land we live on.

Derrick Jensen, author, A Language Older than Words

A river of tears fell down my cheeks as I read Recovering the Sacred. This is a must read for anyone who wants to know the truth about Federal Indian Policy, past and present.

Charon Asetoyer, editor, Indigenous Womens Health Book: Within the Sacred Circle

Fierce in her convictions, forceful in her analysis, and engaging in her writing, LaDuke connects the dots between indigenous struggles, the toxic and sacrilegious practices of multinational corporations, and the wellness of all of us who must share our fragile planet.

Robert Warrior, author, The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction

In this powerful book, LaDuke explores issues that go way beyond the desecration of the environment and into the heart of insidious crimes against the very DNA of Native peoples.

Amy Ray, musician/activist

LaDuke skillfully demonstrates why the protection of Native spiritual practices is critical to social justice struggles and to the survival of the planet. She weaves together a broad range of issues that all point to the impact of European cultural and spiritual genocide on indigenous peoples. LaDuke demonstrates again why she is one of the leading Native thinkers and activists today.

Andrea Smith, author, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide

Through the voices of ordinary Native Americans, writer and full-time activist Winona LaDuke is able to transform highly complex issues into stories that touch the heart.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author, Outlaw Woman

Winona LaDukes activist scholarship captures the essence of politicized spirituality that [combines] ecological integrity with our cultural identity for spiritual health. It is books such as this one that will insure the passing of history and knowledge from one generation to the next.

M.A. Jaimes Guerrero, editor, The State of Native America

2005 Winona LaDuke

First published in 2005 by South End Press, Cambridge, MA.

This edition published in 2015 by

Haymarket Books

PO Box 180165

Chicago, IL 60618

773-583-7884

www.haymarketbooks.org

ISBN: 978-160-846-662-7

Trade distribution:

In the US, through Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, www.cbsd.com

In the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, www.turnaround-uk.com

All other countries, Publishers Group Worldwide, www.pgw.com

Special discounts are available for bulk purchases by organizations and institutions. Please contact Haymarket Books for more information at 773-583-7884 or .

This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and the Wallace Action Fund.

Library of Congress CIP data is available

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

It is a great privilege for me to write, to try and tell these stories, retelling dreams of this recovering. In the writing of this book, I have been supported, loved, and nurtured by many. First and foremost, my familyWaseyabin, Ashleigh, Jon, Ajuawak, Gwekaanimad, Faye and Sasha Brown, Leslie Walking Elk, John Livingstone, Bob Shimek, Audrey Thayer, Lori Pourier, Sheyhela, Chris Eyre, Jason Westigard, Justin Dimmel, and my loving parents, Betty LaDuke and Peter Westigard, who along with my grandmother, Helen Bernstein, have loved me and supported me through trying times, heated discussions, and endless cups of coffee.

I have immense gratitude and respect for my colleagues at White Earth Land Recovery Project and Honor the Earth Ron and Diane Chilton, who make all things possible; Margaret Smith, whose leadership and example I can only hope to follow in a gitimaagis way; Joe LaGarde, Paul Schultz, Sarah Alexander, Donna Cahill, Becky Niemi, Pat Wichern, Janice Chilton, and all our staff who hold our life, organizations, and the work of a community and all its pieces together. I also would like to express my immense gratitude to Natalie Marker, Becky Bodonyi, Marissa Woltman, Flora Brown, Okaadaak (Carolyn Fuqua), and Margaret Olmos, who searched through the depths of footnote hell for the footnote spirits. These women make our work at Honor real (along with an amazing board and Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, who have been the greatest of friends and allies in my life).

Also this would not be possible without Loie Hayes who waited patiently through a Vice-Presidential run, changing diapers, wild rice processing, injured horses, wind turbines, Honor the Earth concert tours, litigation, and lobbying to get text and notes. Finally, above all, chi-miigwech to all those who allowed me to write their stories and dreams in this book.

Mii sa

Gi-mishoomisinaabaniig

gaye

Ayaanike bimaadizijig

This America

has been a burden

of steel and mad

death,

but, look now,

there are flowers

and new grass

and a spring wind

rising

from Sand Creek.

Simon Ortiz, from Sand Creek

How does a community heal itself from the ravages of the past? That is the question I asked in writing this book. I found an answer in the multifaceted process of recovering that which is sacred. This complex and intergenerational process is essential to our vitality as Indigenous peoples and ultimately as individuals. This book documents some of our communitys work to recover the sacred and to heal.

What qualifies something as sacred? That is a question asked in courtrooms and city council meetings across the country. Under consideration is the preservation or destruction of places like the Valley of the Chiefs in what is now eastern Montana and Medicine Lake in northern California, as well as the fate of skeletons and other artifacts mummified by collectors and held in museums against the will of their rightful inheritors. Debates on how the past is understood and what the future might bring have bearing on genetic research, reclamation of mining sites, reparations for broken treaties, and reconciliation between descendants of murderers and their victims. At stake is nothing less than the ecological integrity of the land base and the physical and social health of Native Americans throughout the continent. In the end there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures.