Winona LaDuke + Naomi Klein

As climate change is beginning to alter the planet before our eyes, two internationally recognized activists come together at the Rubin to discuss the economics associated with climate change, the role of First Nations in the climate movement, and the connections between violence against women and violence against the land.

Naomi Klein, the award-winning journalist, author, and Rutgers Gloria Steinem Chair of Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies, joins in conversation with rural development economist and Indigenous land rights activist Winona LaDuke. Drawing from their experience on the frontlines of the struggle for a more just and sustainable world, they delve into a host of related questions:

• What is the best model of economic development?
• What can we learn from First Nations about how to measure wealth, poverty, and equity?
• What should the role of government be in confronting the causes of climate change?
• What are the implications of the global frameworks proposed for decarbonization and forest protection?
• What are the common themes and insights in the stories that women are voicing from the frontlines?

About the Speakers

Winona LaDuke is a rural development economist working on issues of economic, food, and energy sovereignty. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and leads several organizations including Honor the Earth, Anishinaabe Agriculture Institute, Akiing, and Winona’s Hemp. She is recognized as a leader in the areas of climate justice, renewable energy, environmental justice, and the work of protecting Indigenous plants and heritage foods from patenting and genetic engineering. She has authored six books including; Recovering the Sacred, All our Relations, Last Standing Woman, and her newest work The Winona LaDuke Chronicles.

 

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, and author of the international bestsellers No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need (2017),This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate (2014), The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007), and No Logo (2000).

No Is Not Enough was an instant New York Times bestseller, debuting at number 2 on the nonfiction list, and is being translated into over 15 languages. It was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction in the US. This Changes Everything won the 2014 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, was an Observer Book of the Year, and one of the New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of the Year.

Since This Changes Everything was published, Klein’s primary focus has been on putting its ideas into action. She is one of the organizers and authors of Canada’s Leap Manifesto, a blueprint for a rapid and justice-based transition off fossil fuels. The Leap has been endorsed by over 200 organizations, tens of thousands of individuals, and has inspired similar climate justice initiatives around the world.

Klein is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept. She is also a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow of The Nation Institute and contributor to The Nation magazine.

Her most recent book, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes On the Disaster Capitalists (2018), was reprinted from her feature article for The Intercept with all royalties donated to JunteGente, a gathering of Puerto Rican organizations resisting disaster capitalism and advancing a fair and healthy recovery for their island.

In 2016 she was awarded Australia’s prestigious Sydney Peace Prize, for, according to the prize jury, “exposing the structural causes and responsibility for the climate crisis, for inspiring us to stand up locally, nationally and internationally to demand a new agenda for sharing the planet that respects human rights and equality, and for reminding us of the power of authentic democracy to achieve transformative change and justice.”

In September 2018, she was named the inaugural Gloria Steinem Chair for Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ).