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Today is International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples so I'd like to #pressforprogress for the millions of indigenous women around the world by making them visible and raising awareness of some of the issues affecting their lives.
Although several years ago I managed to find a feminist book with a chapter on indigenous people and gender, nonetheless, I think intersectional feminism would benefit from being more explicitly inclusive and knowledgeable about indigenous women around the world. There is still more to be done to educate people about indigenous cultures. On several occasions, I have been surprised to hear highly educated women in the UK assuming there have never been any matriarchal societies because they haven't read about any existing at any point in time. This, I think, is partly because matriarchies are often structured differently, for instance are less hierarchical, so don't neatly fit our assumptions about what one would look like. In this way, they go unnoticed. Last summer, I raised awareness about this by posting articles on my facebook page about women and their indigenous cultures around the world, ranging from the matriarchal Mosuo tribe to a group of tribal women in Africa who left their patriarchal tribe to escape abuse and oppression by setting-up their own women's tribe called Umoja Uaso. An excellent website where you can click on the links at the top to find out more about matriarchies in various areas of the world is:
There is an abundance of fascinating detail and rigorous examination of matriarchies, for instance, in their sections on Central Africa and the Mosuo tribe in China. You can also watch a video I shared last year on facebook on the Mosuo tribe here:
For a commentary on the Khasi tribe which argues against misclassifying them as only matrilineal, see:
Here's a positive, inspiring article which describes the matriarchal village Rebecca Lolosoli founded in Kenya called Umoja Uaso and shows how we as feminists can draw on their example of sisterhood to empower women against oppressive patriarchy in the West, such as America:
There is also a great deal of silence and ignorance about what issues indigenous peoples, and especially women, face if they migrate to urban areas or go to live in another country so the theme for 2018 is 'Indigenous peoples' migration and movement'. For more on this see:
The United Nations also have a collection of informative articles on a variety of topics related to indigenous peoples. Here are three articles I found pertinent to feminism. The first one is mainly about the impact of western companies on indigenous peoples in the Arctic and how these companies have impacted on their ability to provide food for themselves as well as the adverse way their health has suffered as a consequence of pollution from their shipping and drilling. Although this applies to everyone not just women, Charlene Apok is using her voice to lead the way as an indigenous peoples' rights activist to highlight problems/issues facing the Inupiaq community. She wants her community to have a voice. 'Take action! Being silent is dangerous' is the title of this article and it's a message that isn't just for indigenous peoples but for all women wherever they are in the world, whatever their circumstance. She brings out the same tension that women everywhere share with indigenous peoples and that is knowing you have human rights yet facing discrimination and injustice when trying to enforce those rights. This is especially clear when she says:
“But we are all people and we should be able to access these things. We are also not waiting to be given rights either. That should always be clear. We’re not ‘asking for’ the rights-, we already have them. But our ability to exercise our rights is what’s being hindered.”
Like all women, indigenous women suffer discrimination simply because they are women but they also suffer further discrimination because they are indigenous. This article on indigenous peoples in Mexico illustrates this point. Very much as above, indigenous people in Mexico have rights, their problem is enforcing them!
The next link is very relevant to the 2018 theme of migration. Many indigenous peoples are forced to migrate to cities in order to survive. However, this migration is particularly dangerous for indigenous women which is an issue often forgotten when talking about migration.
Following on from this is an example of how dangerous cities can be for indigenous girls/women. This video documents the murder of an indigenous girl by a white man in Winnipeg, Canada. She is, unfortunately, not a rare case. In this video, we also hear of other cases of indigenous women who have been murdered or gone missing. It's racism, colonialism, sexism/misogyny and a toxic patriarchy that has caused so many indigenous women to go missing or be murdered, over 1100 reported cases, over 36 years! What is the real number if we included all the unreported cases.
Women may think staying silent is the safer option but it is always a dangerous one!
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