There’s been a lot of talk about Joe Lieberman, Al Gore’s pick for the Democratic Vice Presidential nomination, and how his religious beliefs may deter the voters. If so, how would they do with a Native American Jewish woman running a campaign from her kitchen?

MODE Weekly recently talked with Winona LaDuke, Green Party candidate for Vice President, from her home, with two of her three children audibly present in the background. MODE began by asking LaDuke about her trip to Pennsylvania in 1997, when she came to the region as one of the organizers of the Honor the Earth National Tour, showcasing The Indigo Girls.

Winona LaDuke: Yes, when the Honor the Earth Tour went there, I went to the [Three Mile Island] plant. I was also known as "No-Nukes LaDuke," in a previous incarnation. I spent a lot of my life working on uranium mining issues and obviously a lot of that ends up at nuclear power plants. And I’ve worked in a lot of communities that have had a lot of radiation exposure in the "clean industry" and I’ve pretty much seen the opposite end of what the PR firms will tell us.

MODE: Let’s talk for a minute about what you’re involved with right now — this third party effort. How did you get involved with Ralph Nader in this bid for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency?

LaDuke: We ran in ’96, when the Green Party had asked me to join them, and ’96 was kind of a "testing the waters campaign" — that’s how I would refer to it, although I’m not sure how Ralph refers to it — in that we spent about $5,000 and got about a million votes and were on the ballot in 22 states. Right now we’re on the ballot in 40 and planning on being on the ballot in 45. We’ve raised in the millions [of dollars]. We just bought a big TV ad — a small TV ad by everyone else’s standards.

MODE: It’s been an uphill climb, I take it, without the soft money of the major parties?

LaDuke: Yeah, it is, but the other side of it is, that it’s a different kind of campaign. Obviously it would be great if we could have all that additional money, but yesterday I found myself walking through one of the villages on my reservation, and putting up signs myself, and talking to a lot of people. The largest party in America right now is the non-voters. About 50% of the American electorate does not actually vote.

MODE: Why is that, in your opinion?

LaDuke: There was a film crew with me, and they asked a lot of the people afterwards, when I wasn’t there, if they know who the candidates were, and they didn’t know who the candidates were, indicating an absence of interest in national electoral politics. Ralph refers to [the current system] as a "two-party duopoly," they become increasingly monolithic and less interesting. It’s not just personal style or charisma — it’s built into their language. If you look at the quotes from Dick Cheney or the Republican Convention, everything has turned into sound bites, or sound barks, without any of the substance that talks to what these communities’ experiences are. I think also, national politics has become a smaller and smaller club in which you pretty much have to be a white male who’s a millionaire. Since most of us aren’t that, then it’s difficult for these communities to figure out how to relate to the club. There’s disenchantment and no resonance with what those guys are saying or what, it appears, is going on.

MODE: The Green Party of PA was able to procure more than 40,000 to get you and Mr. Nader on the ballot. Were you surprised at all by magnitude of the grassroots efforts in the past months?

LaDuke: This has been a major challenge. In so many of the states, the systems are bizarre and archaic. Everything seems so strange to a lot of people. It’s totally exclusive, and I think they raised the bar for getting into the debates after Perot because the two major parties saw how much he shot up in the polls as a result of his participation. It’s almost impossible [to qualify for the debates]. You have to be at 5% in the polls to qualify for federal [campaign] matching funds, but you have to be at 15% to qualify to perhaps be in the debates. I’m sure they’ll raise it again after that. If Ralph and I got in the debates — I would love to debate Dick Cheney — but if we get in the debates, a lot of people will vote for Ralph, because he’s a really smart guy, who puts his money where his mouth is, and doesn’t just do this every election year, doesn’t just trot out issues for the election, but has worked tirelessly for 40 years.

MODE: If you did have an opportunity to debate Dick Cheney, on what topics would you differ?

LaDuke: Well, the whole question of a military budget that’s creeping from one-third to one-half of our federal budget. Why, when we have no known enemies? We dwarf anyone else who could possibly have any interest in us, or issues with us. The military budget is approximately ten times as much as what we spend on our schools. What is our most precious resource? Our children. I’d like to be able to rest easy when my kids are in leadership. I’d like to retire up here on the lake, sewing quilts or something. I don’t want to have to worry about if I’m going to be fed, if my environment is going to be polluted, or whether some other country is going to pull any guns. So we need for our children to be educated. Another issue is the impact of our military on a lot of other countries. It’s not only ICBM’s and Star Wars and F-16 or 22 fighters or some new fleet proposed that’s the state of the art; it’s also the fact that the United States is the largest arms merchant in the world, and most of what we sell today is not large missiles, but guns, like M-16’s, and we sell to countries who have human rights violations. If Colombine taught us anything, it’s that you shouldn’t sell guns to some people. Not inferring that people in Third World Countries are children, but it makes quite a good analogy. Ninety percent of the people killed in World War I were combatants. Ninety percent of the people killed in world conflicts today are killed by small arms, the weapon of choice, and are noncombatants, meaning women and children. So as a mother of three, and as a woman, I’m concerned not only about my own household but all those other households and villages which are mowed down by guns that I’ve paid for.

MODE: I was a pretty excited participant in the Million Mom March in D.C. Would you comment on the issue of guns on our streets?

LaDuke: We’ve armed everybody, and now we’re all locked up. The people who are killed, who are at risk, are our children. Our children are being devastated by this level of violence.

MODE: Let’s take a step back for minute. Some are arguing that it’s time to put money back into the military for the soldiers themselves, instead of futuristic anti-missile warfare.

LaDuke: Yes, if anything, but I also think we need to take care of the soldiers we’ve already poisoned, whether it’s with Agent Orange or the Gulf War Syndrome. I’ve had a lot of e-mails and letters from people in this area — I live in a rural area of Minnesota — and the Indian guys on the reservation are disproportionately affected — Indians have one of the highest enlistment rates per capita. There are a lot Indian people who suffer from Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome, but there are also a lot of rural people, whole communities where the army was pitched as an opportunity, and then when they come back they’re poisoned and their families are poisoned. In my gut, I feel so badly about these things — that these people go off and fight our country’s wars, to ensure America’s interests in oil rich areas, for example, and come back poisoned by their own government. Saddam Hussein didn’t poison those people. We did, our government did. And now Iraq has 5,000 children dying every month because of the embargo. We’re not hurting Saddam Hussein. He may be a really rotten guy, but he’s their rotten guy. If we just keep destabilizing the situation, we’re not teaching any lessons.

MODE: Could you talk about where Pennsylvania stands in terms of Green Party issues? I know we are one of the largest importers in the nation of hazardous waste.

LaDuke: Yup! We shouldn’t be producing it! As smart as we all are, it’s time to stop producing stuff we don’t know how to get rid of. Another issue I would consider a Pennsylvania issue is the disparity in income. Fewer and fewer Americans are making a living wage. Millions of Americans are making between $5.00 and $7.00 per hour. We need to raise the minimum wage to $10/hour, at least. That’s a living wage.

MODE: As a woman, how do you feel about all the hype in the two major parties about how they’re trying to reach out to women voters?

LaDuke: I think they’re liars. Only three of our elected governors are women, only nine of our senators, 56 of 435 members of the House of Representatives. It’s been stagnating for a pretty long time. And in the new millennium, too bad George W. Bush couldn’t have chosen Elizabeth Dole [as a running mate]; I’m ashamed of him. I’m not a Republican, but as Republicans go, she’s pretty qualified!

MODE: You’re only the second woman ever to run for Vice President. Do people react to you differently?

LaDuke: There’s a great John F. Kennedy quote that says that in order to make it into a position like the one I’m in now, you have to be combination of Joan of Arc, Helen Keller, Madame Curie … we’re held to some pretty high standards. So, for instance, if I do too much campaigning, I’m accused of not paying enough attention to my family. You know, we don’t say that to men. It’s a total Catch 22. Or, if I show too much time with my family, then I’m not ambitious enough. But Ralph has no family and no children, because he is so committed to this life. But behind Ralph, there are three really strong women, his sisters and his mother. You know how people say behind every great man there’s an even more remarkable woman? Well, in Ralph’s case, three.

MODE: Do you have anyone in particular who has been there, inspiring and supporting you?

LaDuke: My family and my significant other, Kevin Gasco. He’s a coffee roaster. He makes me a lot of coffee for the campaign trail. He answers the phone, deals with my e-mail … Oh my God! I just stepped on my baby … no, he’s okay!

MODE: Did Harvard prepare you for all of this?

LaDuke: I’ve always tried to pull my own weight. People always say things like, I’ve reached a certain place because I’m a woman, or because of my skin color. Do they ever think, you know, I just worked my ass off?

MODE: The Green Party has been quite strong in Germany. Where else have the Greens played such a large role? Will the Greens ever become this strong in the United States?

LaDuke: Denmark, for example. Two new members of the European Parliament are Green. As for the United States? That will take time. The United States thinks it’s advanced, but it’s really behind. Yes, we’re democratic, but a parliamentary system would allow representatives to vote for their parties. We have this archaic two-party system; judging by just the looks of them, they don’t reflect most Americans.

MODE: Why do you think the two-party system has been operating so long without any major challenges?

LaDuke: There is so much corporate control and underwriting. Because it’s such a diverse country, there are a lot of divisions … if you look at a place like Germany — they obviously have had their share of problems historically. But they ran out of space — and America is so huge — and for so long in the United States there’s been this philosophy, "Well, I’m gonna motor outta here," which is a peculiarly American philosophy. That’s a part of [the survival of the two-party system]. And we’re all so different. That’s our beauty, on the one hand, but on the other, politically, maybe it also makes it more difficult to organize. How would we organize? Along racial lines, along class lines? Back to the example of Germany, they’re not homogeneous, but there are a lot more Germans there than anyone else!

MODE: What are your hopes for change in this campaign?

LaDuke: I hope that Ralph and I reinvigorate the dialogue about where we are going. We are asking questions that need to be asked in a democracy. If you listen to the sound bites that are coming out of those two parties, they are almost unintelligible. The rhetoric has become just so much electionese. Second, Ralph and I are talking about the issues which need to be confronted and we need to challenge that "largest party in America" to come out and vote on those issues. I remember that old saying, "Don’t vote, it only encourages them." Well, you know what? Actually, because so many of us have taken that position — even I didn’t vote until 1996 — what has happened is that they pretty much have it, now, and in the end we all have to live here with all of their bad policies.

MODE: [Our conversation ended as LaDuke’s son walked through the door …]

Winona LaDuke

Winona LaDuke, born in 1959, is an Anishinabe from the Makwa Dodaem (Bear Clan) of the Mississippi Band of the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota. She grew up in a bicultural family — her mother is a Russian Jew from New York and her father is an Ojibwe. As a teenager, she addressed the United Nations on mining issues and multinationals on reservations; in the late ‘70s, she attended Harvard University and graduated in 1982, having taken several interim semesters for activist work at home and abroad.