In this time, so harshly marked by the violence of war and social unrest, many people wonder what the world in which their grandchildren will grow up will be like. I urge you, dear #GrandparentsAndElderlyPeople, to join me in praying earnestly that peace may soon come to the whole world. https://t.co/D4RUdpXWB1
In 1982, Winona LaDuke made a choice that defied the logic of upward mobility. At 23, armed with a degree in economics from Harvard, she bypassed the high-rise career path to move to the White Earth Reservation in rural Minnesota—a place she had never lived, where her arrival was met with suspicion. Her father was Ojibwe from White Earth; her mother was Jewish from the Bronx. LaDuke had grown up in Oregon, spoke no Ojibwe, and carried the "Ivy League" label—a credential that, on the reservation, often signaled an outsider who came to talk rather than listen.
She took a job as a high school principal at Pine Point, where she listened more than she spoke. What she heard was the mechanical hum of a century-old theft. In 1867, a treaty had established White Earth as a permanent home for the Anishinaabe—over 837,000 acres of tallgrass prairie and sacred wild rice beds. It was supposed to be protected in perpetuity. By the time LaDuke arrived, a staggering 90% of that land had been stripped away through "paper-wars": fraudulent land deals, tax forfeitures on a people with no cash economy, and contracts written in English for people who spoke only Ojibwe.
In 1985, LaDuke joined a massive consolidated lawsuit to recover the stolen territory. When the courts eventually dismissed the claims, ruling that too much time had passed, most people would have moved on. She stayed. In 1989, using $20,000 from a human rights award, she founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) with a mission that was deceptively simple: buy back the land, acre by grueling acre. No dramatic protests or media campaigns—just quiet, persistent reclamation.
It was impossibly slow work, measured in single-digit parcels while hundreds of thousands of acres remained beyond reach. But something else was growing alongside the land. LaDuke launched Ojibwe language programs so children could speak the words their grandparents had been punished for using. She reintroduced buffalo herds that hadn't roamed the region in a century and established wind energy projects when renewable energy was still considered fringe. She revived the cultivation of manoomin (wild rice)—the sacred grain that had sustained her people for generations but had nearly disappeared.
By 2000, the project had recovered 1,200 acres. It was a fraction of what was lost, but it meant ceremonies could resume and memory could take root. Then came the pipelines. When Enbridge proposed the Line 3 tar sands pipeline—a project cutting through treaty-protected waters—LaDuke’s quiet work became loud resistance. She organized legal challenges, led direct actions that blocked construction equipment, and stood with "Water Protectors" in freezing conditions. She was arrested multiple times and spent days in jail, facing criminal charges that took years to resolve.
More than 600 people were arrested during the Line 3 protests. They chained themselves to equipment and demanded the world pay attention. Though the pipeline was completed in 2021, the fight shifted the foundation of future battles. Treaty rights entered mainstream legal debate, and when a Minnesota judge eventually dismissed charges against LaDuke and other protectors, it established a precedent for the right to protect treaty lands that continues to influence cases today.
LaDuke also took this message to the national stage, running for Vice President on the Green Party ticket in 1996 and 2000. She knew she wouldn't win; she ran to force Indigenous issues into presidential debates and make erasure impossible. In 2016, she became the first Green Party member and first Native American woman to receive an Electoral College vote—a symbolic moment reflecting four decades of making herself impossible to ignore.
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As CBS retreats from radio - which 233 million Americans use - NPR remains on and the audience is up.
The main CBS product was a short hourly newscast.
NPR’s hourly news is on your local station - and also available on demand! Hit Play on the NPR app
https://t.co/BuZ5QaBTWM
Watch the official trailer for #AmericanFiction, starring Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, and Sterling K. Brown. From Writer/Director Cord Jefferson. Only in theaters this December.
Anonymous
I run a small bakery. Woman came in every Friday morning. Same order. Two blueberry muffins. One coffee. Always sat at the corner table. Read her book. Stayed an hour. Did this for three years. Then she stopped coming. After two months I got worried.
Found her number in our loyalty program. Called. She answered. Voice weak. “Oh. Hi. I’ve been meaning to cancel that.” “Are you okay? You haven’t been in.” Long pause. “I have cancer. Stage four. I’m in hospice now.
Those Friday mornings were my favorite part of the week. But I can’t make it anymore.”
My heart broke. “What if I brought Friday to you?” Silence. Then crying. “You’d do that?” “Every Friday. Same time. Same order.”
Showed up that Friday. She was in a hospital bed in her living room. So thin. But she smiled when she saw those muffins. We sat. She told me about her week. Her family. Her life. I listened. Just like at the bakery. Did this for six weeks. Every Friday.
Last Friday she could barely stay awake. But she held that muffin. Took one bite. “Best thing I’ve tasted all week.”
She passed on Monday. Her daughter called. “Mom’s last words were about you. She said ‘tell the baker thank you. Fridays kept me human until the end.’”
Went to her funeral. Her daughter hugged me. “You gave her normal when everything else was hospitals and pain. You gave her Fridays.”
Now I deliver to three hospice patients. Every Friday.
Because sometimes a muffin isn’t just a muffin. It’s dignity. It’s routine. It’s proof that someone still sees you as you. Not as sick. Just as you.
Tonight, Congress will vote to lower the age to prosecute minors as adults from 16 down to 14 in DC.
Let me get this straight:
Congress wants to prosecute 14 yr. olds as adults, but they don’t want to prosecute adults who sexually abuse 14 year olds?
Release the Epstein files.