Ms. LaDuke will speak at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 10, in the Lutheran Heritage Room of the Howard Miller Student Center.

Ms. LaDuke, a renowned Native American Indian activist and advocate for environmental, women's and children's rights, also ran as Nader's vice presidential candidate in 1996.

Founder and campaign director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, a reservation-based land acquisition, environmental advocacy and cultural organization, Ms. LaDuke is also founder and co-chair of the Indigenous Women's Network. In 1994 Time Magazine named her one of America's 50 most promising leaders under the age of 40.

Ms. LaDuke organizes and hosts the annual Honor the Earth tour in conjunction with the folk-rock group, the Indigo Girls, with whom she was named 1997 Woman of the Year by Ms. magazine She has written extensively on national environmental issues and is the author of "All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life" and the novel "Last Standing Woman" in which she chronicles a Native American reservation and its people's struggle to restore their culture.

Ms. LaDuke earned a bachelor's degree in native economic development from Harvard University in 1982, was in the Community Fellows Program with the Department of Urban Studies at MIT in 1983, and earned a master's in rural development from Antioch University in 1989.

Ms. LaDuke resides with her family on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. Her presentation at Thiel College is sponsored by Thiel's Women's Leadership Center.

The lecture is free and open to the public.