Winona LaDuke resigns from Honor the Earth

Decision follows lawsuit & questioning of her leadership involving sexual harassment allegation.

CC BY-SA 4.0

The Anishinaabe activist and former Green Party VP candidate explains why in a letter below, issued today. Board member Paul DeMain, chair of the Indigenous justice-focused organization and former publisher of News from Indian Country, adds: “On Monday April 3th, 2023 the Honor The Earth Board of Directors received and accepted the resignation of Winona LaDuke as Executive Director of the organization. All other official statements at this time will come from Honor The Earth Executive Director, Krystal Two Bulls, HTE media or legal representatives.” LaDuke’s letter follows:

I have some words to say.

As you go through life, you try and do your best. Sometimes you make mistakes. For those of us in movement leadership positions, there are added pressures to always do the right thing, to always live up to the ideals of the movement, and to those who believe in our leadership. I have tried to do my best. But in 2014 - 2015, I failed Molly Campbell. She was a contract employee and the laws were not clear to me. For that, I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the hurt caused to Ms. Campbell, and I am sorry for the broader harm that resulted too.

In 2014 - 2015, Honor the Earth was a small organization. We were a handful of staff with a limited budget, working tirelessly to make much of scarce resources. Native organizations and grassroots organizations need capacity, and sometimes they just do not have it.

When Ms. Campbell first raised her claim of sexual harassment, we had no policies in place to deal with the situation. At the same time, our community was facing Enbridge's Sandpiper, a large oil pipeline that would run between our two largest wild rice lakes. I and others were working around the clock to stand up to the outside threat posed by Enbridge, doing everything from community outreach to legislative engagement to judicial interventions to protect the water.

As a result, I did not rapidly and adequately act on the complex personnel and sexual harassment issues our organization faced internally. The panic of an immediate attack on our community made it difficult to focus on internal issues while a war was raging outside. This is an explanation for context, but it is no excuse and is not a stand-in for accountability. I firmly believe that everyone deserves a workplace free of sexual harassment, and I deeply regret not responding to Ms. Campbell’s claims with the appropriate level of care and urgency as I should have. I was overwhelmed.

I hope that this experience can become a lesson to others and, ultimately, strengthen our relationships with one another and our liberatory movements together—we must resist an exclusive focus on external movement goals that prevent us from taking care of each other first.

I take personal responsibility for the mistakes made i. I was the Executive Director, and it was my job to create a good foundation to heal and move forward. The mistakes made and harms caused were not the result of the Board of Directors of Honor the Earth. After meetings with concerned community members and Ms. Campbell, the Board rapidly adopted workplace policies in February 2015, including a zero-tolerance sexual harassment policy that applies to both contract and regular employees.

The Board has continued to improve and deepen our labor policies in striving to create a caring organizational culture, including hiring a qualified investigator to handle harassment or complaints in the future. The art of working together for a common good is a complex one, but Honor the Earth is serious about its commitment to its employees and to our work as a whole.

As an individual, I had reached out for a reconciliation process, a restorative justice process, as I believe that litigation and colonial carceral court systems are not the best ways to handle these disputes. But Ms. Campbell did not agree and sought redress in the State legal system. She first brought her case to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, which determined, after a full investigation of the matter, that there was no probable cause to believe Honor the Earth had engaged in an unfair discriminatory practice and thus dismissed the case and later reaffirmed its decision after an appeal.

As an organization, Honor the Earth tried to work with mediators every step of the way to help everyone come to a resolution. That did not happen.

Instead, Ms. Campbell sued Honor the Earth in State court, seeking monetary damages. Ms. Campbell, represented by Gender Justice, brought this case to trial in State court, in a northern county, in the same region where we fought the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, with a white judge and a nearly all-white jury. In Becker County, where Native people make up only 7% of the population, 38% of the people in jail are Native. The court system is a punitive, white, carceral system that targets Native Peoples. In such a forum, it was unsurprising that the result would be a staggering and disproportionate fine against Honor the Earth.

I am disappointed that Honor the Earth was forced to address these issues through litigation in the State court system. I do not believe that Honor the Earth is an enemy of Gender Justice or Molly Campbell, and I believe there are many better forums for conflict resolution than those prioritized by a colonial system of justice.

I am thankful, at least, that this case is finally over. I sincerely wish and hope that Ms. Campbell finds joy in her life. And I hope there will be peace among us all moving forward.

I am sorry for disappointing my organization, Native women, and our friends, as this eight-year-old case comes to a conclusion. It was certainly not my intention to hurt Ms. Campbell or my friends and colleagues, but I am sorry that was the outcome.

I am, at this time, resigning from the national leadership of the organization to allow Krystal Two Bulls to assume the position of sole Executive Director. Prior to the trial, I had been working with the Board on a transition plan when Ms. Two Bulls was hired as a Co-Executive Director of Honor the Earth in December 2022. I am ready to support her leadership in Honor The Earth. I am sure that with Ms. Two Bull’s excellent and principled leadership, and incoming new board members, this 30-year-old organization will continue well. Honor the Earth was born of the commitment of the Indigenous Women’s Network and the Indigo Girls and can continue to flourish and provide support for Indigenous environmental justice work. That will grow.

I intend to support this transition fully while returning to the north, and my farm. I will deepen my writing work, as there is much history to record and more to make. As well, I remain a defendant in two other counties of the Deep North, Aitkin, and Wadena, where I continue to face criminal charges for my efforts to resist Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline as a Water Protector.

As the long winter comes to an end, I intend to enjoy the soil and warmth ahead and to grow and create a better way.

Miigwech,

Winona LaDuke