All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life

Spoon-fed news by large media corps, few were aware that Winona LaDuke ran for the vice presidency under Ralph Nader in the 2000 elections. Even fewer know that she is also a Native American eco-philosopher with a critical perspective on the health and future prosperity of America. All Our Relations is particularly instructive, in that LaDuke surveys the entire American landscape (and by landscape, I am not merely referring to the political landscape), showing the deep connections that exist between local cultures, their environments, and the corporate-governmental giants that often compromise their health. Although LaDuke has specifically focused on Native American communities, the stories are engaging and instructive for Americans in general. Informative, powerful, and transformative, LaDuke here provides an antidote for our increasing alienation from the land and biota that sustain us. A must read for any conscious American.

I think in light of other reviews it makes some sense to underscore that this book is not about environmentalism in the traditional sense, but about the connection between the environment and people. LaDuke's great contribution to the environmental debate is her all-too-rare understanding that there is a connection between the earth and the people that live on it. Not in some hocus-pocus new age way, but a real, scientific connection between people (particulary Native people, because of their lifestyle) and polution. My lone criticism is the charicaturization of corporations in this book. GM does pollute, but consumers are also to blame. Nevertheless, LaDuke is undoubtedly correct in connecting the dots between industrialization, militarism and environmental pollution and she does so in a way that few authors have ever done. A fantastic book that stands in stark contrast to Earth in the Balance as a real manifesto for true environmentalists.

LaDuke quickly, compassionately, and thoroughly takes us by the hand and introduces us to a good number of various Native American landscapes, into many clever, tough portals of indigenous survival ingenuity...and clearly illustrates what is good for 'them' is good for anyone living currently on planet earth. Our common domicile's fragility is met with good, strong protectiveness and tenacious, wise intent from the active folks LaDuke interviews. It is especially humbling and informing - her style of writing reaches in and takes you calmly down a harrowing road from which you cannot forget the lessons you learned: quite a feat. Definitely a keeper for your bookshelf, and a good one to recommend and give to graduating kin, enviro-friends, and the unsuspecting uninitiated. Wow. Informative, insightful, just plain brilliant.

La Duke, the 1996 (and hopefully 2000)US Green Party nominee for the Vice-Presidency, has written one of the most enlightening and compleiing accounts of the consequences of environmental injustice in the United States. Combining historical context with descriptions of the landscape of contemporary struggles, La Duke shows how First Peoples in North America have been not only forcably evicted from their land, but how their current homes are serving as the dumping ground for the detritus of White Consumerism.Each chapter tells the stories of various tribes who have been burdened by nuclear waste, poor agricultural lands, and polluted water. In each case native peoples have developed strong organizations to fight for social justice. The insightful analysis presented here makes one excited by the prospect of a LaDuke Vice-presidency. She is much more aware of the importance of community action and limiting corporate power to protect the environment than the current US Vice President whose administration abandoned any pretext of environmentalism during the course of misguied policies that know-towed to the wishes of corporate polluters.