Kyle/Pierre, USA. Celestine Stadnick is an Oglala Lakota woman who works as a Waldorf educator, school principal and artist in the Pine Ridge Reservation. This autumn she is running for the South Dakota Senate. An interview.
What shapes your political work?
My political activism comes from the social responsibility I was raised with. As an Indigenous person, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, it is natural for me to feel responsibility for all living beings. And as a former Waldorf school student and a Waldorf school teacher with a degree from the Academy of Anthroposophic Pedagogy in Dornach, I was always taught that all humans carry social responsibility.
What is the vision you are working towards?
Indigenous people across the world have been genocided, colonized, and assimilated— unsuccessfully, but still very detrimental. Today, it is our job as humans to decolonize the world by freeing societies across the globe from the ideas of corporate capitalism, industrial exploitation, and governments that act as large corporations themselves.
The world belongs to all living beings, and as long as human rights aren’t protected, the environment is being exploited, and consumerism and wealth are valued, it is our responsibility to actively resist. We will otherwise lose all foundations that carry life, and the climate catastrophe will kill billions of humans over the next century, simply because we allowed large corporations to run over the world and had superpowers like the USA fight their wars for them.
I see no way around changing the system from within. But it is everybody’s responsibility to protest, join their own political scenes, and protect the environment in their individual country.
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Translation Paula Boslau
Image Celestine Stadnick
