Winona LaDuke (born August 18, 1959) is an American environmentalist, writer, and industrial hemp grower, known for her work on tribal land claims and preservation, as well as sustainable development.

Until 2023 she was the executive director and a co-founder (along with the Indigo Girls) of Honor the Earth, a Native environmental advocacy organization that played an active role in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

[3] Her father was from the Ojibwe White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, and her mother of Jewish European ancestry from The Bronx, New York.

Under the Nelson Act of 1889, an attempt to have the Anishinaabe assimilate by adopting a European-American model of subsistence farming, communal tribal land was allotted to individual households.

[3] In 1989, LaDuke founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) in Minnesota with the proceeds of a human rights award from Reebok.

Its goal is to buy back land in the reservation that non-Natives bought and to create enterprises that provide work to Anishinaabe.

[3] WELRP also works to reforest the land and revive cultivation of wild rice, long a traditional Ojibwe food.

[7] LaDuke was also the executive director of Honor the Earth, an organization she co-founded with the non-Native folk-rock duo the Indigo Girls in 1993.

It works nationally and internationally on issues of climate change, renewable energy, sustainable development, food systems and environmental justice.

[8]On March 30, 2023, the Becker County, Minnesota, District Court ordered Honor the Earth and LaDuke to pay a former employee $750,000 in damages in a sexual harassment and abuse complaint, based on actions from 2015.

[22] LaDuke has promoted the growth of both marijuana and industrial hemp on Indigenous tribal lands for financial profit and the localization of the economy.

[23][24] Her position can be considered controversial given experiences of other reservations, such as the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who were raided by the DEA in relation to hemp farming.

No one was injured, but all her personal property burned, including her extensive library and Indigenous art and artifact collection.