Winona LaDuke – Part One

Over a career spanning 40 years of activism, Winona LaDuke, an enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg in Minnesota, has led movements for climate justice and indigenous rights. Over the years she published ten books, ran for vice president, led innovative grassroots environmental movements, fought and delayed the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline from the Alberta tar sands through northern Minnesota. In this episode, Winona articulates an indigenous worldview, grapples with the traumas of colonization, and imagines a path toward healing.

Winnemem Top Doctor Florence Jones

Native California healer Florence Jones (1907-2003), was the top doctor of the Winnemem Wintu and a fierce protector of Mt. Shasta, known to the Winnemem as Buliyum Puyuk—the Great Mountain. In 1994, Florence gave the Sacred Land Film Project unprecedented access to film her conducting ceremony, healing her people and protecting her territory. In this episode, we return to that footage to tell the story of this powerful medicine woman.

Satish Kumar

We interviewed Satish Kumar, editor of Resurgence magazine, as one of the “big-thinkers” for our Standing on Sacred Ground film series. In this episode Satish discusses sacred places, pilgrimages, global warming, Indian sacred groves, and the much-needed cultural shift “from EGOcentric to ECOcentric.

Remembering Malcolm Margolin

For more than five decades, Malcolm Margolin was a fixture at the heart of Berkeley’s intellectual community. As the founder of Heyday Books, he was instrumental in publishing hundreds of titles. Most significantly, in 1978 he published his own groundbreaking book, The Ohlone Way, which woke an entire region up to the amazing natural and human history of the greater Bay Area. He passed away from complications with Parkinson’s disease on August 20, 2025 at the age of 84.

Edward Abbey

On the spring equinox in 1981, Toby McLeod interviewed the reclusive, rabble-rousing author Edward Abbey as the founders of Earth First! staged their first guerrilla theater, direct action at the much-despised Glen Canyon Dam. The footage was edited into Toby’s first film, The Cracking of Glen Canyon Damn—with Edward Abbey and Earth First!

In this episode of Sacred Land Speaks we bring you Toby’s interview with Abbey, and the dramatic tale of a real life Monkey Wrench Gang. Also included are highlights from Jessica Abbe’s 1985 interview with the renowned author, one of the few other on-camera interviews Abbey ever gave.