On Thursday, Oct. 25, Elizabethtown College welcomed the first of three speakers for this year’s Lecture Series. Environmentalist, economist, writer, and two-time U.S. Vice President candidate for the Green Party, Winona Laduke, offered her opinions of the state of the country and possible solutions during her time at Etown.
LaDuke is a Native American activist from the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. She opened her lecture by talking about prophecies. She explained what the prophets had told them.
“They talked about the times that would come to us and they talked about those in terms of fires. They said some people will come and they will be good and some will be bad,” LaDuke said.
Those people included the Founding Fathers, who had taken notes on the Iroquois Confederacy to decide how democracy in the U.S. should function. This opened the door for LaDuke to discuss the pressing topics in today’s world.
LaDuke focused on the importance of the environment and biodiversity. Back home she grows seven kinds of potatoes, many varieties of corn, wild rice (also known as manoomin) and hemp.
Hemp farming used to be popular throughout the country until hemp was criminalized in 1938. LaDuke pointed out the many uses for hemp that includes clothing, bags and even building materials for homes. However, even the industry that produces hemp bags and clothes needs a change according to LaDuke. The product must travel all over the world before it lands in the consumer’s hands which she thinks “is really cool, but really absurd.”
She goes on to talk about how beneficial hemp farming could become for helping the environment.
“Hemp sequesters carbon at the highest rate of any field crop,” LaDuke said. “We call it the new Green revolution. Because you could transform the materials economy, the textile economy and the building economy with hemp. So a lot of my work is in hemp farming.”
LaDuke added that her goal for her 60s is to “work on the restoration of the hemp economy.” She also shared her final thoughts about change with the audience. She mentioned the return of the monarch butterflies to Mexico at the end of her lecture and the imago cells that are responsible for the metamorphosis that the butterflies go through. Imago is the root word for imagination which LaDuke believes “that is part of this moment in time, is having the courage to imagine.” She mentioned imagining “what it looks like I want to say when America is great again. What it looks like when we do the right thing. What it looks like when we step up, you know, in our time of prophecies and do our very best for all of them.”
Many students and community members were in attendance. One Etown sophomore, Brooklyn Torquado, reflected on what LaDuke had left the audience with and said her favorite part was “how passionate she was about everything and how she empowered us to take steps to be sustainable.”
The lecture concluded with a Q&A between LaDuke and the moderator for the evening, Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students Nichole Gonzalez. Those attending were able to submit questions for LaDuke via text message.
This was not the only chance students had the opportunity to ask questions. A separate Q&A session was also held for Etown students prior to the lecture in the Hoover Center for Business.
The lecture also included announcing the winner of this year’s Alumni Service to the College Award. The award recipient, Kyoko Utsumi Akanoma, graduated in the class of ‘67. Akanoma was fundamental in establishing Etown’s exchange program with Nihon University in Japan. She also created the Kyoko Utsumi Akanoma ‘67 International Study Fund with help from Etown.
There are two more lectures left for the 2024-2025 school year. Both lectures will take place during the spring semester. For more information about the Leffler Lectures and to register for future lectures, visit https://www.etown.edu/offices/president/lecture-series.aspx.
