NEWS RELEASE

Contact: Jan Fiderio at 603.283.2107

March 16, 2010 for Immediate Release

Winona LaDuke to Give Antioch University New England's May Commencement Address

Human rights and Native American environmental issues leader to speak May 15

Outspoken advocate for Native American environmental issues, co-chair of the Indigenous Women's Network, and two-time vice presidential candidate for the Green Party, Winona LaDuke, will give Antioch University New England's May 15 commencement address. At the ceremony AUNE will award more than two-hundred master's degrees in applied psychology, education, environmental studies, and management; as well as doctoral (PsyD) degrees in clinical psychology; and doctoral (PhD) degrees in environmental studies.

About Winona LaDuke
Winona is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservation, and is the mother of three children. As program director of Honor the Earth, she works on a national level to advocate, raise public support, and create funding for frontline Native environmental groups. She also works as founding director for the White Earth Land Recovery Project; a reservation based non-profit focused on land, cultural, and environmental issues.

In 1994, she was nominated by Time Magazine as one of America's fifty most promising leaders under forty years of age. She has been awarded numerous honors, including the Reebok Human Rights Award, the BIHA Community Service Award, the Thomas Merton Award, and the Ann Bancroft Award for Women's Leadership. She used the proceeds from the Reebok Human Rights Award to launch the White Earth Land Recovery Project in l989. In l998, she received Ms. Magazine's Ms. Woman of the Year Award with the Indigo Girls for her activism on Native environmental issues.

A graduate of Antioch University Midwest (formerly McGregor) and Harvard University, she has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues. Her publications include a widely acclaimed novel, Last Standing Woman (Voyageur Press l997), All Our Relations (South End Press l999), a work of non-fiction, and In the Sugarbush, (Rigby Communications) a children's book written with her daughter. She has received a number of literary and writer's awards for her non-fiction and fiction writing. She is a former board member of Greenpeace USA, and continues to serve as a co-chair of the Indigenous Women's Network. She also serves as a Director of Tasting for the Muskrat Coffee Company, a tribally-owned fair trade coffee roaster on the White Earth reservation.

In l996 and 2000, she served as the vice presidential candidate for the Green Party, Ralph Nader's running mate, raising awareness on issues ranging from a " living wage," to the challenges of democracy in a world where many of the largest economies are actually those of multinational corporations, environmental justice, and other issues. She is an advocate for a Constitutional amendment entitled the Seventh Generation Amendment. She lectures on issues ranging from electoral reform to the rights of Native people, women and the environment.

About Antioch University New England (AUNE)
This is Antioch University New England's forty-sixth year as an institution of higher education. Located in Keene, New Hampshire, AUNE offers rigorous, practice-oriented, values-based master's, doctoral, and certificate programs to more than one thousand students. Degrees in education, leadership and management, environmental studies, and psychology reflect a dedication to activism, social justice, community service, and sustainability. Antioch University New England is the oldest and largest of Antioch University’s graduate campuses. For more information about Antioch University New England visit our web site at: www.antiochne.edu.

About Antioch University
Antioch University, a visionary academic community composed of five campuses in four states, is uniquely capable of bringing its students' brightest ideals and highest ambitions to life. Each campus has its own distinct academic programs, community life, and regional or national identity. Antioch University is founded on principles of rigorous liberal arts education, innovative experiential learning and socially engaged citizenship. The multiple campuses of the University nurture in their students the knowledge, skills and habits of reflection to excel as lifelong learners, democratic leaders, and global citizens who live lives of meaning and purpose. For more information visit: www.antioch.edu.

Last Updated: 7/26/10