LaDuke stated in an interview with Salon.com in 2000: "I'm Harvard-educated, I'm an economist by training. I'm an author, a journalist."
LaDuke is the daughter of an Anishinabeg (Ojibwe) ("Chippewa") father and Jewish mother. She was raised on the west coast of the United States, but after graduating from Harvard with a degree in native economic development, she accepted a job as principal of the high school of the White Earth Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota. She soon became an activist, involved in the struggle to recover lands promised to the Ojibwe by a 1867 treaty.
LaDuke was named Woman of the Year by Ms. Magazine in 1997 and won the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1998. She is the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project in Minnesota, the founder of the Indigenous Women's Network, and an organizer of the Honor the Earth annual music tour.
LaDuke is the author of the novel, Last Standing Woman, and the non-fiction book, All our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life.