winona's hemp

Winona's Hemp News

"Jane Fonda Knows She Isn't Chill" - The Green Revolution

Jane Fonda Knows She Isn't Chill

"I'm pretty intense."

By Samantha Simon Sep 10, 2020

“A friend of mine, an indigenous leader named Winona LaDuke, is trying to make hemp a major part of the American materials production.” - Jane Fonda

“ It was a big deal early on—many of our founding fathers used it. Henry Ford even built a car out of hemp! It ran on hemp oil too.”

Winona's Hemp News, Conferences

Building Indigenous Food Sovereignty in 14 First Nations in Northern Superior region

THUNDER BAY— Indigenous rural development economist Winona LaDuke spoke about heading to the sugar bush when the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic hit during the Building Indigenous Food Sovereignty virtual meeting on Sept. 16.

The Building Indigenous Food Sovereignty in and around Anishinawbewi Gitchi-Gami and Animbiigo Zaagiigam meeting was held via Zoom by the Thunder Bay District Health Unit and the Indigenous Food Circle, which works with 14 First Nations in the Thunder Bay area.


Conferences

2020 Indigenous Hemp Conference gathers industry leaders by Lynn Mizner

2020 Indigenous Hemp Conference gathers industry leaders

Crystal Owen holds a bag made from hemp as she talks about the new hemp industries being developed at the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate nation. By Lynn Mizner

Winona's Hemp News, Anishinaabe Agriculture

Winona's Hemp Spring Update: Iskigamizigan - the Maple Syrup making.

I hope you are well at this time, and I wanted to share with you some of our thinking here at Winona’s Hemp and Heritage Farm, and pray that we will all work together for that future that we see

Crisis is opportunity. The Chinese characters for crisis are 危机 “wēijī,” danger and opportunity. That’s now. Take a breath, maybe look at the night sky and see stars clearly. Enjoy this moment and breathe while Mother Earth gets a rest from our closed factories.

Let’s be better when we come out of this cluster of crises. Let’s appreciate each other, localize our economy, get cleaner, healthier, and grow some victory gardens of this millennium. Let’s continue to shut down dirty industries. Indeed, that’s our dream at Winona’s Hemp. Rowen White, the Seed Saver, calls them Resilience Gardens. With allies like the Indigenous Seed Savers, we are starting seeds.

Many of them. Nationally, seed sales are rocketing and people understand that localizing is an essential part to solving these world problems.

Conferences

Announcing 3rd Annual Indigenous Hemp Conference with Winona LaDuke

Dear Friends, I’m so pleased to invite you to the third Indigenous Hemp Conference on the White Earth reservation hosted by the Anishinaabe Agriculture Institute and Winona’s Hemp. The conference – March 4, will offer an opportunity to collaborate , learn together and makes plans to grow our future.

VIDEO: Why we should get on a biodiverse, greener path | Winona LaDuke | FLOW TALKS: CANNABIS AS A CATALYST FOR CHANGE

Why we should get on a biodiverse, greener path | Winona LaDuke - Winona’s Hemp. Thought Leaders, Influencers and Luminaries Come Together to Share, Discuss, Inspire and Revel Around the Topic of Healing the Planet at Flow Kana’s Inaugural Event: FLOW TALKS: CANNABIS AS A CATALYST FOR CHANGE.

Opal Tometi, Jason Silva, Steven Kotler, Snoop Dogg, Winona LaDuke, Karim Webb, David Bronner, and More Deliver Powerful Calls to Action

Winona's Hemp News

Winona LaDuke Walks the Walk by TheHempMag.com

Winona LaDuke Walks the Walk

By JULIA CLARK-RIDDELL

HEMP talks with the renowned activist about her efforts to bring hemp back to the forefront on Native lands, build a post-petroleum economy, and more.

This article was originally published in Issue 7 of HEMP in August 2019. Subscribe HERE or find in a local grocery store.

Winona's Hemp News

Indigenous Rights and Climate Justice Leader Winona LaDuke Urges Textile Industry to Protect the Earth: Advocates for Hemp Clothing

Indigenous Rights and Climate Justice Leader Winona LaDuke Urges Textile Industry to Protect the Earth: Advocates for Hemp Clothing

The Once Forbidden Fiber Takes Center Stage in Short Film for Patagonia Featuring LaDuke’s Mission for a Hemp-Based Society on Native American Soil as part of a New Green Economy.

Natural. Misunderstood. Legal. This is the story of hemp in the United States. A forbidden fiber in the U.S. since 1970, hemp has taken the heat for almost five decades. Until the Farm Bill passed in December of 2018, hemp was federally illegal to grow for commercial purposes, making it risky for businesses to invest in a new crop that was incorrectly classified as a drug.

White Earth Reservation, Minnesota (October 28, 2019) ─ Activist and author Winona LaDuke wants to inspire change, respect the Earth and make industrial hemp a worldwide regenerative material available to everyone, everywhere. LaDuke urges the textile industry in the short film produced for Patagonia by Little Village Farms, Misunderstood: A Brief History of Hemp in the U.S., to take the hemp plant seriously and approach it the right way. Once banned as an illegal fiber in the U.S., hemp has not been a part of the textile landscape for decades. Today, LaDuke believes the power of hemp will pave the way for a new green economy.

“Hemp is not something we should take for granted, and if we treat this plant with respect, this plant will help us change our world. If we continue to treat it like they did in the past industrial economy, it won’t help us,” explains Winona LaDuke, Indigenous Rights, environmental and climate justice leader. “I want to be a part of a group that does the right thing and wears clothing that will not destroy the environment."

For the past 80-plus years, hemp (containing little to no THC, hemp is the non-intoxicating variety of cannabis) was a forbidden crop and not allowed for commercial purposes, due to the prohibition of its intoxicating cousin, marijuana. However, unlike marijuana, the hemp plant has experienced a resurgence after the Farm Bill passed in December 2018, which gave hemp agriculture the green light to move forward as an industrial crop. Vote Hemp, a Washington D.C. -based advocacy group, estimates 115,000 – 138,000 acres of hemp were harvested in 2019. 

Also, more than 34 states were licensed in 2019 to legally grow hemp for commercial purposes, prompting more states to increase efforts for hemp innovation across the country. Currently used in 25,000 products globally, industrial hemp-based goods include automotive parts, furniture, fiber and textiles, food, beverages, dietary supplements, beauty products, musical instruments, bio-plastics, construction materials and more.

Hemp, Food, and Balance

In addition to the filmLaDuke was recently recognized in the Sierra Club's online magazine for the foreword she wrote in a new book, Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health. Published in August 2019 by the University of Oklahoma Press as part of its Native American Studies Series, the book addresses social, political, economic, religious, and climate concerns associated with Indigenous food and health. "If we are unable to feed ourselves, we will not survive, and if we lose our whole being to our minds, policy work, and scholarly discussions, we will have lost our direction. We need to strike a balance,” LaDuke adds, “I feel that hemp can help undo the mess we have made, but we have to approach it right. We will get nowhere if we continue with the same aggressive industrial behavior.”

Winona LaDuke (left) on her farm in Minnesota being photographed by internationally acclaimed photographer Annie Lieibovitz.

Winona LaDuke (left) on her farm in Minnesota being photographed by internationally acclaimed photographer Annie Lieibovitz.

LaDuke and Leibovitz 

LaDuke is no stranger to hemp cultivation and believes the next economy will be hemp-centric. That’s one reason why famed photographer Annie Leibovitz visited LaDuke at her farm this past Summer, where she captured Winona's genuine connection to her ancestor's land through photography. "Hemp is a cornerstone of a post-petroleum economy and needs to be reintegrated into rural farming, particularly Indigenous farming," says Winona LaDuke.

Winona’s Hemp & Heritage Farm

Winona’s Hemp & Heritage Farm, located near the White Earth Reservation in Northern Minnesota, is working with the Anishinaabe Agricultural Institute to build a new locally grown economy based on food, energy, and fiber through a new hemp production facility on LaDuke's independent land adjacent to nearby tribal areas. The farm utilizes solar power for its buildings and horse-based energy in the fields. Vegetables and supplying food to the community is another passion of Winona’s. “We grow food such as corn, potatoes, squash, beans and other vegetables that focuses on regenerative farming and most importantly focuses on reduced petroleum agriculture,” explains LaDuke. “The future is organic; it’s green and local.”

Hemp Mill Fundraiser Campaign 

Join Winona LaDuke and her fundraising efforts to fight climate change, build community, stimulate a new economy, and preserve the Anishinaabe Akiing territory, beautiful land of biodiversity and pristine waters in Minnesota. 



Winona's Hemp News

My Courtship of Cannabis, by Winona LaDuke

She’s an amazing plant. You can learn a lot from a plant. For the past four years I’ve been hanging out with cannabis plants. I have a bit of a maternal streak which seems to translate well to animals and plants (children, I am not so sure), and I’ve been growing cannabis. That’s the plant’s name. We all say industrial hemp so that we are not demonized, and people don’t think I have a big marijuana farm out there by Osage. There’s apparently some “stigma” attached to cannabis. So, let me just say it loud and proud. I’m a cannabis grower.

Winona's Hemp News

The conversation ahead by News Review

While Tometi’s message honed in on social justice, Winona LaDuke’s also wove in protecting the environment. LaDuke, a member of the Ojibwe White Earth tribe in Minnesota and also a hemp farmer, said the cannabis conversation needs to include more than what we smoke or consume.

Winona's Hemp News

Farming brings new life at Winona's Hemp & Heritage Farm this Summer!

This week our hemp rope making machine arrived from China, we built the frame for our new “ high tunnel” a Waaginoogin, and we made the press- big time; both the Star Tribune and the cover of Hemp Magazine. We’re proud of our work and wanted to share all of this with you. 

Farming brings new life.

Winona's Hemp News

MIIN GIIZIS - BLUEBERRY MOON 2019

Winona’s Hemp and Heritage Farm is growing.  The winter seemed endless for us here in Northern Minnesota, temperatures ranged far, and the storms were brutal.  We are grateful for the warmth of this time.  

Spring is here, summer now, and the crops are in. More are coming.  Cannabis, or hemp is one of many crops we grow here, to produce cordage, and soon textiles.

This year, we are growing fifty female CBD plants, all to offer food, textiles and health products.  We also grow corn, beans, squash, potatoes, tobacco and a host of garden vegetables.  We are interested in growing food for future generations- Indigenous foods, biodiverse foods, and foods in a time of climate change.   Read more

Winona's Hemp News

The last tar sands pipeline by Winona LaDuke

In early May, I traveled to Enbridge’s Shareholder meeting in Calgary, in Alberta Canada. Outside, laid off oil workers screamed, “Build that Pipe” over a bullhorn, and asked people to honk if they supported Canadian oil. Those tar sands workers will likely never have jobs in the industry again – economists, and even the oil fairy government of Alberta, are sobering up to the Boom Bust economy of energy projects. It’s the bust and there is no boom in sight. That’s the problem. It’s really a race to the bottom and to the end ­– that is to be the last tar sands pipeline. For the past four years Canada has been trying to run tar sands pipelines through the US, to the Coast, to anywhere, and it has not gone well. And it’s not going to, and here are the reasons why …

Winona's Hemp News

Indigenous Leader Winona LaDuke & Yoshi Ota Discuss the Environment, Mermaids and the Nuances of Indigenous Knowledge

Indigenous Leader Winona LaDuke & Yoshi Ota Discuss the Environment, Mermaids and the Nuances of Indigenous Knowledge

May 11, 2018 | Latest NewsEcology and BiodiversityCoastal and Indigenous

By Victoria Pinheiro, Nereus Program Strategic Communications Lead

Winona: Go places that need you. Go back to your communities. Be coherent, be critical, be connected, use your privilege. You have a lot of privilege going to UW. I think the world of these guys, they’re so smart you know? And I tell them, you’re my retirement plan. Ya’ll get going. I don’t want to be stressed out, you know? I want to sit back and sell regalia soon. I’m good. I want to grow hemp and make goat cheese. That’s my plan.



Winona's Hemp News

The Renaissance of Tribal Hemp

This spring, after gathering on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northwestern Minnesota and then in Colorado, tribal “hempsters” are working toward a renaissance of the plant that once clothed much of Europe and North America. Tribal hemp growers from the Meskwaki, Lakota, Menominee, Mandan, Hidatsa, Colville and other Native nations are planting the seeds of a new economy—responding with an innovative and holistic approach to the many challenges Native and non-Native communities face.

Read more …