By Terje Langeland
Colorado Daily Staff Writer

If you thought all the candidates running for president and vice president of the United States were a bunch of middle-aged white guys, you obviously haven't looked beyond the two major parties.

Pat Buchanan's Reform Party running mate is a black woman, Ezola Foster. The Socialist Party's vice presidential candidate is Mary Cal Hollis of Boulder. And the Green Party's ticket is headed by an Arab American man and an American Indian woman -- Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke.

While LaDuke may not be a household name on par with Nader, she has decades of experience in activism at the local and national level, with a focus on environmental and indigenous issues. She has written several books and was named by Time magazine in 1994 as one of America's most promising young leaders. She was also Nader's running mate in 1996.

A Harvard-educated economist, LaDuke lives on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, where she is raising five children. On Wednesday, she spoke with the Colorado Daily via telephone from Stevens Point, Wis., where she was attending a function of the Honor the Earth Foundation, for which she serves as program director. What follows is a condensed version of the conversation:

Colorado Daily: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself, as far as what you do when not running for office?

Winona LaDuke: I work half-time for a national organization called Honor the Earth, which arranges mainly for grassroots native environmental projects and political awareness around those issues. (One) of our biggest issues is the Yellowstone Buffalo issue. They've been killing buffalo when you hit the Montana border of Yellowstone National Park; you can't leave the park alive if you're a buffalo. Which is not only an Indian question; it's kind of a public policy issue.

As well, I work on nuclear-waste issues. ... And then I work half-time on land and environmental and cultural issues on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota.

CD: You first ran with Nader four years ago. How did that come about?

LaDuke: He asked me. I mean, I've been involved in national and local environmental and native politics for about 20 years, mostly advocating, done a lot of writing, been a journalist. I have a couple of books out, a novel and a non-fiction book. And I have, you know, been to Congress and to the U.N., and I have worked on these issues and I have also worked with the Greens for the past couple of decades. I wasn't really inclined towards running initially, but then Ralph came and asked me.

CD: What about Nader's candidacy persuaded you to join?

LaDuke: I think that Ralph represents an incredibly principled difference; that's how I'd say it. You know, the guy for 40 years has been an advocate for the people. I call him kind of like the people's superhero. ... For 40 years that guy has introduced or worked on developing more legislation than any other individual in American society. And a lot of that legislation has really been an immense benefit to the American public.

And I think that Ralph and I, we are out there advocating on these rights, and increasingly our ability to try to advocate for the poor or for the environment, for poor people, for people who are disenfranchised politically, is curtailed by the immense influence of corporations. And it's not just reflected in terms of campaign-finance reform; it's reflected in terms of kind of a "revolving door" in and out of Washington, between corporations -- Monsanto and DuPont and the Clinton Administration, or Union Carbide and the EPA. You know, on and on and on.

We really believe that you have to actually kind of recover democracy, that's what I call it. Perhaps it is also kind of catching up with democracies around the world, because -- you probably know -- but the Green Party is active in 80 countries. ... Most democracies have an active and viable Green Party; the United States is the furthest behind.

CD: There was recently a vice presidential debate between Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney; you and other third-party candidates were excluded. How do you think the debate would have been different if you'd been invited? What issues would you have raised that weren't discussed?

LaDuke: I actually was there; I was in Danville. I went there in the morning and I was pretty much held a football field away ... I went down there hoping that they would let me in, but they didn't.

What I would have talked about is, for instance, a living wage. ... 70 to 80 percent of American workers' salaries have leveled out to the Nixon administration level, yet CEO salaries have increased 418 percent.

On the other side of it is capping corporate privilege. I'll be honest with you; when you talk about taxation, I think that one of the issues that we have is the federal tax base. In 1940, 33 percent of it came from corporations and about 43 percent came from people - individuals -- and the rest came from small businesses. Today, about 75 percent of it is paid by individuals and 13 percent is paid by corporations. And I think that that's indicative of the huge problem of corporate welfare.

I think that in terms of health care, some of the issues were discussed, but this country needs to have a single-payer health-care system. We're the only industrialized country that doesn't have universal health care. You know, Sweden and Norway are not strange countries. It's a totally absurd thing; this is the wealthiest country in the world and yet we don't have health care.

I think in terms of militarization, both of the (major-party) candidates support increased military budgets; I do not. I support a reappropriation of the military budget toward human needs. Our military budget is, I think it's 19 or 20 times larger than the combined military budget of every one of our known enemies.

Obviously, I would not eliminate the military, but I would be a large proponent of military restructuring. What I would do, I would pay the people in the military more, because I think it's wrong that soldiers are receiving WIC. I think that American soldiers should be paid a decent wage if they're in the military; they shouldn't be treated so poorly.

But the other side of it is a lot of our new weapons systems (and) even the fact that we have the military in so many countries. We spend more on the militaries that we have in European countries than we have spent entirely on infrastructure in cities in our country. ... One thing I would do is I would eliminate entirely or limit a lot of the military gifts and sales to many countries. You know, we have a foreign policy where we're the largest purveyor of small weapons in the world, and 90 percent of people killed in conflicts today are killed with small weapons, and 90 percent of those people who are killed are non-combatants.

Whether it's in Colombia -- Colombia is a perfect example -- the war on drugs has become kind of the new war on communism. They use that as a euphemism for militarizing communities, whether it's Mexico or Colombia, which are two examples of civil wars that we are funding under the guise of wars on drugs.

CD: You're a Harvard-educated economist. Most Ivy League economists these days seem to be telling us that we're doing great, things have never been better and we have this huge economic boom going on. Do you agree with that?

LaDuke: I think it's a boom for some. I live in a rural area, which is kind of like southern Colorado, probably, a real poor area. And you know, people in those communities are hoping for a Wal-Mart to move in so they can make 8 bucks an hour, 7 bucks an hour, if they're lucky, as an associate. ... The average wage right now coming out of the new jobs that have been created is $18,000 a year. Go try and support your family on that. You know, I have five kids in my house. They're not all mine -- I have three -- but two of the kids live with me, which I'm privileged to raise. And you know, I make $42,000 a year, and I have a heck of a time.

I will tell you that one of the things that makes me eminently more qualified than either George Bush or Al Gore is I've actually lived on a small budget and I've actually worked. As you probably know, George Bush Jr.'s only job prior to running for governor was being the managing director of the Texas Rangers. Al Gore is a little bit more experienced than George Bush Jr., but you know, he was a stringer for a newspaper for six months and then he went and ran for Congress. I myself have worked most of my life in poor communities and I've learned how to budget. I'm really good at buying used, recycling, and bargain shopping. That's what the federal government should be in the process of doing; we should be buying from small businesses, not big corporations -- you know, capitalizing a lot of these communities that need it, not financing Martin Marietta.

CD: You've chosen an unusual path for someone with a degree from Harvard.

LaDuke: I took seriously what people used to tell me when I was a kid, which was, "Go out and do something, do the right thing, and come back and help your people." You know, I come from a rural community, actually in Oregon, but I'm an Ojibway Indian. But I really took seriously that, you know, my constituency was and really is a rural American constituency, a lot of which is politically disenfranchised. And I'm happy with my lifestyle choice. I think I have a good life. I live in the woods, I live on a lake in northern Minnesota, and I have clean air and clean water and I don't have a traffic jam every day, and I don't have the pressures of upward mobility.

CD: Some people have criticized Ralph Nader for not being sufficiently outspoken on women's issues and minority issues. Where do you think that criticism comes from, and is any of it justified?

LaDuke: I think that people hold Ralph and I up and want us to address every issue that neither of the other major candidates will address. I mean, nobody asks Al Gore, "How come he's not more outspoken?" They'll say a few things here and there, but Ralph and I are viewed as the people's champions, and so there's this assumption that we'll take up all issues. And we try to do the best we can. Ralph is obviously a person of color. A lot of people don't recognize that. When it was not popular to be a person of color, Ralph was still a person of color -- 40 years ago, when they used to call him "the Greasy Arab."

I mean, I talk a lot about women's issues ... Ralph does defer some of those things to me.

CD: At the Green Party convention in Denver, there were a lot of white people there, and the party seems to have some trouble getting minorities excited and involved in this campaign.

LaDuke: I think the Green Party emerged largely from the environmental movement, which is white. I mean, the mainstream movement is white, although obviously, I've worked for 20 years on native environmental issues and I consider myself an environmentalist, and a lot of Indians are environmental-justice people.

I think, second, that a lot of our communities have been reluctant to engage in any kind of political activities. The largest party in America is actually the nonvoters; 50 percent of the electorate don't even vote. ... Our communities have higher records of not voting than other communities, and so we have higher levels of absence of political participation. I think it's a challenge for the Green Party to reach out to those communities.

CD: How would women benefit from the policies that you and Nader stand for?

LaDuke: By and large, women are not even on the national agenda. Every four years, the politicians stand up and they talk about the right to life or being pro-choice. They talk about, essentially, women's bodies. Which you know, obviously, I think that's an issue. (But in terms of) the day-to-day issues of women ... you've got 47 million Americans without health care and a lot of those are women and children. There's a differential in income between men and women, although we have made strides, but it's like 78 cents on the dollar that women make compared with men, as opposed to 58 cents 10 years ago. That has improved, but it's largely improved because average male workers' salaries have gone down, which is not the way we want to go. What we want is a living wage.

CD: The Daily has closely followed the situation on Black Mesa in Arizona, where traditional Dineh are facing forced relocation. How would a Nader-LaDuke administration differ from the status quo on treatment of native nations?

LaDuke: We would do a number of things differently. I oppose relocation; I've always opposed relocation. I think that we need to return a bunch of public land, BLM-held land -- not only there, but on other Indian reservations -- to Indians, so that there's enough grazing land for Hopi cattle as well as for Navajo sheep.

I'm also a supporter of returning Indian lands that have been taken from Indians within their reservations. For instance, in Montana, the National Bison Range is 15,000 acres carved entirely out of the Flathead Reservation; Black Hills in South Dakota (was) taken from the Lakota Nation, 80 percent of which is federal land holdings.

There is case after case after case of land taken from Indian people. Our populations are increasing dramatically; they're tripling, and we do not actually have a land base to support our communities. So I'm a supporter of returning public land holdings adjacent to Indian reservations to Indian communities.

I am also a supporter of economic enterprise zones in those communities to support more job development. But obviously I'm a supporter of ecologically sensitive job development, not corporate welfare.

CD: The biggest reason many cite for not supporting you and Nader is that it's a "wasted vote," or that it'll help elect George Bush.

LaDuke: The first thing I'd say is that if you're a Republican, you should definitely vote for us -- if you believe that theory. So I'm encouraging Republicans for Nader!

I believe that you have to transform the system so that it actually reflects the people in our country, and the only way you're gonna do that is if you actually vote your conscience. We can't have a country run on fear. This is supposed to be the greatest democracy in the world, and people are going to polls and voting out of fear. And you know, what we really need to do is to vote our conscience.

CD: At this point, things don't look too great in terms of your chances of winning. Why, then, should people vote for you and Nader?

LaDuke: Besides the fact that Ralph and I deserve their vote? In the least, we've got to get over 5 percent in order to ensure that we get matching funds in the next election, which would give the Greens the ability to actually level the playing field substantially and increase our access dramatically, which I will assure your readership will definitely enhance their ability to have their voice heard.