ANN ARBOR—More than 200 students and young activists from around the country are expected to attend the 1999 National Student Environmental Justice Conference at the University of Michigan March 26-28.

Sponsored by U-M’s Environmental Justice Group and featuring Winona LaDuke as the keynote speaker, the conference is designed to bring together students and activists interested in increasing the awareness of environmental justice issues, developing techniques for community activism, and creating a National Student Coalition for Environmental Justice.

LaDuke is a renowned Native American activist and writer who was selected by Ms. magazine as its 1997 Woman of the Year. She is co-chair of the Indigenous Women’s Network and a board member of Greenpeace, USA. She is Anishinabe from the Makwa Dodaem of the Mississippi Band of the White Earth Reservation in Northern Minnesota and became involved in Native American environmental issues while studying at Harvard University. She will speak on “Sustainable Wisdom” as the keynote speaker for the conference and as part of U-M’s Winter Term Lecture Series on Sustainable Development, Community, and Business sponsored by U-M’s Corporate Environmental Management Program.

Various workshops will stress practical information and skill-building through the sharing of ideas, strategies and visions.

The workshops will cover such topics as mobilizing the community; recruiting involvement; identifying environmental justice issues on local, state, national, and international levels; bringing the grassroots and academic environmental justice communities together; examining migrant farm worker issues and the agriculture industry; conflict resolution and its role in environmental justice; the ways in which demographic data can be used by community groups to strengthen an environmental justice argument; creating sustainable changes; and how to use university resources. Other topics include recognizing rights as protected by law, understanding zoning laws and restrictions and influencing the local planning and zoning processes.

A complete list of all the workshops and a schedule for each day is available through the group’s Web page at http://www.umich.edu/~umej.

http://www.umich.edu/~umej