For Immediate Release • March 1, 2003

INDIGO GIRLS & WINONA LADUKE
BRING SPEAKING/PERFORMANCE TOUR TO COLLEGES TO BENEFIT HONOR THE EARTH

Honor the Earth Tour Is A Call To Action:
Support Wind Power on Native Lands

Grammy-award winning musicians Indigo Girls and Native environmental activist Winona LaDuke team up in April to take a message of alternative energy and cultural preservation to college campuses from Minnesota to Colorado. The Honor the Earth Tour is a cross-country speaking and performance tour aimed at educating college students and the general public on current issues related to Native environmental activism and the development of wind power on Native lands, in particular. The tour will also include visits to Native reservations currently implementing wind power and other alternative energy projects in their communities.

In 1991, Winona LaDuke met Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers backstage at an Earth Day benefit near Boston, MA. Out of that first meeting, a long-lasting friendship and working partnership was born, and the national Native foundation, Honor the Earth, was created. Indigo Girls have since headlined four Honor the Earth concert tours to raise money for Native groups working on front-line environmental issues in communities across the country. This year, Indigo Girls and LaDuke will embark on their fifth benefit tour together, but this time, they are taking a message of environmental activism directly to college campuses. "When I was in college one thing that was sorely lacking from my education was exposure to the indigenous perspective and approach to activism, specifically around cultural and environmental sustainability," says Ray. "I don’t believe we can be activists without contemplating the effects of manifest destiny on the development of our country and its relationship to all aspects of our current movement for human and environmental dignity. The struggle for a sustainable and tolerant world community has always been embraced by student activists."

The tour targets colleges located close to Native lands in an effort to bridge what is often an isolating gap between college students and the communities that exist very close to them. The Honor the Earth Tour will draw connections not only between local colleges and regional Native environmental issues, but between the imminent war on Iraq and the need for more sound energy policy and technology across the United States. Each campus presentation will feature talks by Ray, Saliers and LaDuke, followed by a 45-minute acoustic performance by Indigo Girls. This innovative, "living room style" tour combines talks with music to generate political dialogue and action around the energy future of this country. "The current energy paradigm of the United States is not sustainable. It is time to recognize the connection between the burning of fossil fuels, bad energy policy, and ultimate injustice and violence. College campuses provide venues of dialogue where student activists are looking and working towards a clean energy future. This tour will speak to them, provide specific guidance on how to get involved, and encourage their efforts and the efforts of their neighboring Native environmentalists as they implement clean energy production such as wind power," states Saliers.

The Honor the Earth Tour will kick off April 10 at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, wind its way through the Great Plains, into the Pacific Northwest and down towards the Southwest with shows at various colleges and visits to Native communities such as Rosebud, Pine Ridge, Columbia River, Yakima, Western Shoshone and Ute. The tour will highlight wind turbine development projects on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations in particular and other Native environmental issues along the tour route, ending with a grand finale on Earth Day, April 22, at the University of Northern Colorado, just north of Denver.

All tour proceeds will support Honor the Earth’s Energy Justice Initiative to support alternative energy – and especially, wind power – in Native America. "Native people have borne the brunt of America’s past energy policy, from uranium mining in the southwest to massive hydro-electric projects in the sub-arctic. It is time for energy justice, and it is time for a new energy policy," states two-time Green Party Vice-Presidential Candidate LaDuke, who serves as Honor the Earth’s Program Director.

With the tour’s proceeds, the Energy Justice Initiative will provide capital and technical support for wind projects on Great Plains reservations, while continuing the fight against culturally and ecologically destructive energy projects. Today, present installed U.S. electrical capacity is at 600 gigawatts of power. The wind potential of 23 Native nations in the Great Plains alone is about 300 gigawatts. "Our communities could power this country with wind. Financing wind energy in the economically poorest communities in the country is Energy Justice," explains LaDuke.

"The environmental movement is inextricably connected to the current anti-war movement," says Ray. "The United States’ over-consumption of all resources has created an imperialistic dynamic that has no room or respect for human life, dignity or the mother earth."

The Honor the Earth Tours seeks to restore that dignity through education, fundraising, advocacy and organizing.

This Honor The Earth college tour is produced by The Spitfire Agency. The Spitfire Agency is a full service production, promotion & marketing agency dedicated to non-profits, socially/environmentally responsible brands, and other activist related ventures. The Spitfire Agency works with a variety of conscious celebrities like the Indigo Girls, including Woody Harrelson, Julia "Butterfly" Hill, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rosie Perez, and more.

For more information on the organization, the participants & the issues, go to: www.honorearth.org or www.indigogirls.com

For a list of dates, locations, and tickets, please go to www.spitfiretour.org/dates