37th Annual Schumacher Lectures: Winona LaDuke & Nwamaka Agbo

$40 tickets include the keynote address and panel discussion

$150 tickets include the afternoon’s event plus an evening reception at Crissey Farm in Great Barrington with a dinner menu featuring indigenous ingredients.

For more information, visit centerforneweconomics.org/events

In the folklore of the Anishinaabe peoples of North America, the Prophecy of the Seventh Fire predicts that there will come a time when we must choose between two paths. One path will be green and lush. The other will be well worn but scorched, and walking it will cut our feet.

Winona LaDuke—activist, community economist, author, and member of the Ojibwe Nation of the Anishinaabe peoples—says that now is that time. During last year’s Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, LaDuke called for us to make the right choice. In a message to the Water Protectors she said, “We are not just fighting against something, but clearly and decidedly walking with open eyes and hearts down the path that is green.”

For more than twenty-five years Winona LaDuke has been a leading advocate and organizer for Native American groups working to recover their ancestral lands, natural resources, and cultures.

As a young Harvard graduate she moved to her family’s home on the White Earth Reservation in upper Minnesota, where she created a community land trust organization to re-gather traditional lands lost to private ownership. She stands as one of the most important spokespersons for a fair land reform that includes equity in buildings (not in land value) for those using the land. She described this work in her 1993 Schumacher Lecture “Voices From White Earth: Gaa-waabaabiganikaag.”

On Saturday, November 4th, LaDuke will deliver the keynote address at the 37th Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, which will take place at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Her talk will be followed by a panel discussion led by Nwamaka Agbo, a member of Schumacher Center’s board of directors and the Innovation Fellow at the Movement Strategy Center in Oakland, California.

Nwamaka Agbo will moderate a discussion between Karissa Lewis, Gopal Dayaneni, and Sachem Hawk Storm - young people from diverse backgrounds who are doing work to reclaim ownership of community resources in order to build stronger local economies and ecologies—those who have chosen the Green Path. In facilitating the conversation she will bring to bear more than ten years of experience in social and economic justice organizing and economic development.