Uploaded April 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
If you're going to change the world, you've got to change peoples' minds, but you've also got to change the material economy. So, I'm talking textiles. Let's just talk textiles for a minute. This is my hemp skirt. It's Chinese hemp because we don't make hemp in the United States. Most of us are wearing something that's made out of cotton. That would be 24% of the world's agricultural chemicals on 4% of the world's land and 5x as much water as hemp takes.
Then what's the rest of the stuff that we're wearing? Unless you're wearing flax, basically we're all wearing fossil fuels. We're wearing polyesters and nylons and at some point we've got to ween ourselves and move the to post-petroleum era. Because we're going there anyway. They didn't end the stone age because they ran out of rocks.
Change is inevitable. It's really just a question of who controls the change. So we want to be controlling that change. We want to be making decisions for our communities that are coherent. Because that's the way its going to work out for us. If you want somebody to fix this for you, whether its some technological genie or something else, it's not gonna happen. You've got to make sure: where's your people going to eat? Where's your water going to come from, where's your textiles going to come from, where's your energy going to come from? That's the thinking that we've got to do.
So, I've been 4 years now a hemp grower. I have a state of Minnesota permit to grow industrial hemp, and basically I started it on textiles because Minnesota used to have 11 hemp mills. Now, I don't know how many Wisconsin had, but they had probably about the same amount. Until the 1940s at the end of World War II, Minnesota basically made all its clothing and all its rope with local products, so i thought "I want the renaissance of hemp." That's me, I'm here for the renaissance. And this renaissance is not going to be financed by the pillaging of Central America and Africa.
This age of enlightenment that the renaissance implies is going to be financed by divestment from fossil fuels, a transformation of how we spend our money and what we do with our supply chains. All of that is how this transformation is made. Because it is not that there is not enough money in the economy, it is just very poorly spent. But part of the next economy is that it's not all about money, either. The next economy is not about competition, it's about cooperation. The reality is if we want to survive, we all have to work together.
--
At 18, Winona Laduke became the youngest person to speak to the United Nations about American Indian concerns. Graduated form Harvard in economics . She realized that the problems afflicting native nations were not endemic to the people but the result of centuries of governmental exploitation, abuse and poor policies. After graduation, LaDuke moved to the White Earth reservation. She started working as the high school’s principal while completing a long-distance MA in Community Economic Development.
When, in 1989, a treaty lawsuit to recover lands promised in 1867 was dismissed, LaDuke founded White Earth Land Recovery Project, which focuses on the recovery, preservation and restoration of both land and traditional practices, with the aim to strengthen spiritual and cultural heritage of the Anishinaabeg people.
In the late 1990s, LaDuke started farming on White Earth and other tribal land. In the last twenty years, part of her work has focused on campaigning against the introduction of genetically modified rice on native land, as well on the construction of several pipelines. She was an important coordinator at Standing Rock, where in 2017, the Sioux Tribe and supporters fought to protect the tribe’s drinking water and ancestral lands from the Dakota Access pipeline.
In early November 2017, she is raising funds to buy land on which she aims to create a hemp and heritage food farm in order to create local wealth and train young people in farming indigenous food.
She has started Winona's Hemp & Heritage Farm winonashemp.com
--
This PSA is made from a 28 minute show:
Winona LaDuke - A Biodiverse Greener Path
youtu.be/l5g3kfzsfWE
--
Tags: Environment, Planet, Economy, Sustainability, Healing, People, Indigenous, Textile, United States, Native American, Agriculture, Farming, Activism, Recovery, Preservation, Restoration,
--
YouTube
youtu.be/J-cMFQRbpP8
--
Also, this show is available for local public TV stations to broadcast.
Phone your local public TV station (LPTV) to request they broadcast this film to your local community. Your station can download the film in TV broadcast format, HD or SD, from www.PEGMedia.org . This film is available for broadcast from any LPTV station in the country - and world. Stations that use Telvue, DVDs or other media can contact us for instructions.
--
If you're going to change the world, you've got to change peoples' minds, but you've also got to change the material economy. So, I'm talking textiles. Let's just talk textiles for a minute. This is my hemp skirt. It's Chinese hemp because we don't make hemp in the United States. Most of us are wearing something that's made out of cotton. That would be 24% of the world's agricultural chemicals on 4% of the world's land and 5x as much water as hemp takes.
Then what's the rest of the stuff that we're wearing? Unless you're wearing flax, basically we're all wearing fossil fuels. We're wearing polyesters and nylons and at some point we've got to ween ourselves and move the to post-petroleum era. Because we're going there anyway. They didn't end the stone age because they ran out of rocks.
Change is inevitable. It's really just a question of who controls the change. So we want to be controlling that change. We want to be making decisions for our communities that are coherent. Because that's the way its going to work out for us. If you want somebody to fix this for you, whether its some technological genie or something else, it's not gonna happen. You've got to make sure: where's your people going to eat? Where's your water going to come from, where's your textiles going to come from, where's your energy going to come from? That's the thinking that we've got to do.
So, I've been 4 years now a hemp grower. I have a state of Minnesota permit to grow industrial hemp, and basically I started it on textiles because Minnesota used to have 11 hemp mills. Now, I don't know how many Wisconsin had, but they had probably about the same amount. Until the 1940s at the end of World War II, Minnesota basically made all its clothing and all its rope with local products, so i thought "I want the renaissance of hemp." That's me, I'm here for the renaissance. And this renaissance is not going to be financed by the pillaging of Central America and Africa.
This age of enlightenment that the renaissance implies is going to be financed by divestment from fossil fuels, a transformation of how we spend our money and what we do with our supply chains. All of that is how this transformation is made. Because it is not that there is not enough money in the economy, it is just very poorly spent. But part of the next economy is that it's not all about money, either. The next economy is not about competition, it's about cooperation. The reality is if we want to survive, we all have to work together.
--
At 18, Winona Laduke became the youngest person to speak to the United Nations about American Indian concerns. Graduated form Harvard in economics . She realized that the problems afflicting native nations were not endemic to the people but the result of centuries of governmental exploitation, abuse and poor policies. After graduation, LaDuke moved to the White Earth reservation. She started working as the high school’s principal while completing a long-distance MA in Community Economic Development.
When, in 1989, a treaty lawsuit to recover lands promised in 1867 was dismissed, LaDuke founded White Earth Land Recovery Project, which focuses on the recovery, preservation and restoration of both land and traditional practices, with the aim to strengthen spiritual and cultural heritage of the Anishinaabeg people.
In the late 1990s, LaDuke started farming on White Earth and other tribal land. In the last twenty years, part of her work has focused on campaigning against the introduction of genetically modified rice on native land, as well on the construction of several pipelines. She was an important coordinator at Standing Rock, where in 2017, the Sioux Tribe and supporters fought to protect the tribe’s drinking water and ancestral lands from the Dakota Access pipeline.
In early November 2017, she is raising funds to buy land on which she aims to create a hemp and heritage food farm in order to create local wealth and train young people in farming indigenous food.
She has started Winona's Hemp & Heritage Farm winonashemp.com
--
This PSA is made from a 28 minute show:
Winona LaDuke - A Biodiverse Greener Path
youtu.be/l5g3kfzsfWE
--
Tags: Environment, Planet, Economy, Sustainability, Healing, People, Indigenous, Textile, United States, Native American, Agriculture, Farming, Activism, Recovery, Preservation, Restoration,
--
YouTube
youtu.be/J-cMFQRbpP8
--
Also, this show is available for local public TV stations to broadcast.
Phone your local public TV station (LPTV) to request they broadcast this film to your local community. Your station can download the film in TV broadcast format, HD or SD, from www.PEGMedia.org . This film is available for broadcast from any LPTV station in the country - and world. Stations that use Telvue, DVDs or other media can contact us for instructions.
--
