Unearthing conscious intent in women’s everyday resistance to mining in Indonesia

Ethnography ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146613812110393
Author(s):  
Tracy Glynn ◽  
Siti Maimunah

Resistance to nickel mining in Sorowako, Indonesia has existed since the operation started taking land from farmers in the 1970s. However, in Sorowako and beyond, little is known about the gendered nature of everyday resistance to mining. We conducted a photovoice study with women from two Indigenous communities affected by the same mine to uncover conscious intent in everyday resistance. Some scholars call for abandoning intent and consciousness in analytical frameworks for everyday resistance, but by pairing photovoice with a conjunctural exercise, we found women’s awareness of how dispossession and exploitation for mining affects them and their responses to mining as rural Indigenous women. The participants used photovoice to show that their everyday acts, such as accessing forbidden land, intend to lessen their domination and better their conditions, a kind of quiet encroachment of the ordinary theorized by Bayat.

Author(s):  
Claradina Soto ◽  
Toni Handboy ◽  
Ruth Supranovich ◽  
Eugenia L. Weiss

This chapter describes the impact of colonialism on indigenous women with a focus on the experience of the Lakota women on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation in South Dakota. It explores the experiences of indigenous women as related to history, culture, intrapersonal violence, and internalized oppression. A case study of a Lakota woman is provided as an example of strength and triumph in overcoming adversity and being empowered despite the challenges of marginalization faced by many Native Americans in the United States and indigenous women throughout the world. The chapter discusses how readers can be advocates and actively engage in decolonizing and dismantling systems of oppression to protect future generations and to allow indigenous communities to heal and revitalize.


2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Eduardo Climaco Tadem

This article examines a traditional upland peasant community subjected to change-oriented interventions from external state and nonstate forces. As a result, various modifications took place in the villages with the introduction of new technologies, crop diversification, market contacts, social differentiation, formal governmental structures, decline in the number of farmers, growth of a working class, increased contacts with and knowledge of the non-peasant external world, and physical separation of families. Using various analytical frameworks on the nature of peasant society via a modified peasant essentialist approach, agrarian change, rural development, social movements, everyday resistance, moral economy, and a history from below approach, this article depicts and analyzes how traditional peasant society is able to withstand the changes brought about by external factors and essentially retain its household-based small farm economy, socially-determined norms and practices, and feelings of community and solidarity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-228
Author(s):  
Ashlea Gillon (Ngāti Awa)

This article explores re-representations of fat Indigenous bodies and subsequently the ways in which access becomes restricted through multiple systems of oppression and biopower. I suggest a move away from body positivity movements in favour of body sovereignty as a response to racism, sexism, fatism and biopolitics. While body sovereignty and Indigenous sovereignty are not mutually exclusive, and body sovereignty is not a new phenomenon in Indigenous communities, it is proposed as a means to seek equitable rights of access for all bodies, particularly marginalised bodies. A Kaupapa Māori and Mana Wāhine perspective on body sovereignty is outlined and a discussion around how these understandings can conflict with societal messages is touched upon also. Utilising an account of Hine-Nui-Te-Pō, this article explores re-presentations of Indigenous women and our bodies.


Author(s):  
S. Ashley Kistler

As cultural mediators, Chamelco's market women offer a model of contemporary Q'eqchi' identity grounded in the strength of the Maya historical legacy. Guatemala's Maya communities have faced nearly five hundred years of constant challenges to their culture, from colonial oppression to the instability of violent military dictatorships and the advent of new global technologies. In spite of this history, the people of San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala, have effectively resisted significant changes to their cultural identities. Chamelco residents embrace new technologies, ideas, and resources to strengthen their indigenous identities and maintain Maya practice in the 21st century, a resilience that sets Chamelco apart from other Maya towns. Unlike the region's other indigenous women, Chamelco's Q'eqchi' market women achieve both prominence and visibility as vendors, dominating social domains from religion to local politics. These women honor their families' legacies through continuation of the inherited, high-status marketing trade. This book describes how market women gain social standing as mediators of sometimes conflicting realities, harnessing the forces of global capitalism to revitalize Chamelco's indigenous identity. Working at the intersections of globalization, kinship, gender, and memory, the book presents a firsthand look at Maya markets as a domain in which the values of capitalism and indigenous communities meet.


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
Jaskiran Dhillon

Written from the perspective of a non-Indigenous woman of color “standing with” Indigenous communities through politicized allyship, this article explores the politics of becoming a comrade to Indigenous peoples in their struggles for liberation in the settler-colonial present. Dhillon highlights key moments in the development of her political consciousness by centering the fundamental leadership, knowledge, and guidance of Indigenous women in decolonial activism and scholarship across a range of areas—including environmental justice, colonial gender violence, and the arts—that have been foundational to the anticolonial framework informing her scholarship and organizing.


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-135
Author(s):  
Stacy Nation-Knapper

Dr. Barman’s award-winning study is a resource to the Indigenous and non-Indigenous people of the Columbia River Plateau and the Pacific Northwest, an environmentally and culturally diverse region that now encompasses two countries, two provinces, three states, and many Indigenous communities. For Indigenous communities of the region, French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest provides an important context of colonialism, global economics, and the complicated nature of cross-cultural encounters. For non-Indigenous communities, the book also encourages an appreciation for the complexities of history often overlooked by celebratory histories of colonization. French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest is a resource in which people see themselves and their families in a complicated, accessible, and inspiring story of the past.


Author(s):  
Leonor Tereso Ramírez ◽  
Marcos Sandoval Cruz

El objetivo de la investigación es comprender el acceso a espacios políticos de las mujeres indígenas, mediante la historia oral de la primera mujer agente municipal de la Región Triqui Alta, Oaxaca, México. Se traen como referencia teórica los conceptos de poder, comunalidad y resistencias, así mismo posicionamos la crítica desde una lectura del feminismo comunitario, que reconoce los procesos por los cuales las mujeres indígenas resisten las múltiples opresiones derivadas de diversas intersecciones como clase, etnia y género. El diseño de la investigación es exploratorio-descriptivo, utilizando un enfoque cualitativo basado en el método de casos que recupera la historia Oral de la primera mujer agente municipal de la región Triqui Alta en Oaxaca México. Una de las características de las comunidades indígenas es que rigen por el sistemas de usos y costumbres en donde la asamblea es el máximo órgano para la toma de decisiones y, fue en 1992 que se decidió que fuera Marcelina la primera mujer Agente Municipal de Santa Cruz Progreso, uno de los catorce pueblos que pertenecen a la Región de San Andrés Chicahuaxtla. Para Marcelina, estar en un espacio de poder desarrollando roles asignados culturalmente a hombres, negociando con toda la comunidad y realizando gestiones sociales para el bien común, ha sido un proceso difícil pero que a su vez deja claro la capacidad de mujeres de ocupar estos puestos que les han sido negados por mucho tiempo. The objective of the research is to understand the access to political spaces of indigenous women, through the oral history of the first female municipal agent of the Triqui Alta Region, Oaxaca, Mexico. The concepts of power, communality and resistance are brought as a theoretical reference, likewise we position the criticism from a reading of community feminism, which recognizes the processes by which indigenous women resist the multiple oppressions derived from various intersections such as class, ethnicity and gender. . The research design is exploratory-descriptive, using a qualitative approach based on the case method that recovers the Oral history of the first female municipal agent of the Triqui Alta region in Oaxaca, Mexico. One of the characteristics of indigenous communities is that they govern by the system of uses and customs where the assembly is the highest decision-making body and, it was in 1992 that it was decided that Marcelina would be the first woman Municipal Agent of Santa Cruz Progreso, one of the fourteen towns that belong to the San Andrés Chicahuaxtla Region. For Marcelina, being in a space of power developing roles assigned culturally to men, negotiating with the entire community and carrying out social efforts for the common good, has been a difficult process but which in turn makes clear the ability of women to occupy these positions that have been denied them for a long time.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Zacharia Matinda

The UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007, marking the culmination of thorough negotiations, lobbying and advocacy involving indigenous peoples’ representatives as key actors. Among other rights, the UNDRIP affirms the right to self-determination for indigenous peoples. Also referred to as the right to self-determined development, the right to self-determination, as stated in the UNDRIP, encompasses indigenous communities’ rights to determine their development trajectories. To indigenous peoples, the significance of the right to self-determination includes the promotion of cultural distinctiveness, which is central to their survival as communities. However, women’s rights scholars and activists are sceptical about the emancipatory potential of realising the right to self-determination for indigenous women. In contrast, exercising this right might also entail the perpetuation of gender-based violence and other forms of discrimination, thus heightening women’s fragility and subordination among indigenous communities and beyond. Using UNDRIP and other relevant international and regional human-rights instruments as vantage points, this paper seeks to juxtapose the implementation of the right to self-determination and the realisation of indigenous women’s rights in Tanzania. The article posits that the protection of indigenous women’s rights should form the central pillar of the enjoyment of the right to self-determination. This is because the cultural survival, vitality and continuity of indigenous peoples’ distinctiveness largely hinges on respect for the rights of indigenous women.


2019 ◽  
pp. 179-216
Author(s):  
Rauna Kuokkanen

Indigenous feminist discourse links the realities of multilayered violence faced by Indigenous women to questions of self-determination, self-government, and the survival of Indigenous communities. This chapter considers how Indigenous political institutions and leadership address gendered violence. Nearly all interviewees agreed that violence against women is a self-determination issue, but pointed out that existing self-government institutions do not address the problem as such (if at all). Another problem, also mentioned by some interviewees, is the limited resources. There are, however, increasing attempts to address violence against Indigenous women by Indigenous political institutions, including self-government bodies, although there is considerable variance between the three regions examined here. Building on existing considerations of gendered violence and gender justice in Indigenous contexts and using interview data, the author advances a theory of Indigenous self-determination that affirms Indigenous women’s rights and gender justice.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0247198
Author(s):  
Julia M. Bryson ◽  
Kaitlin Patterson ◽  
Lea Berrang-Ford ◽  
Shuaib Lwasa ◽  
Didacus B. Namanya ◽  
...  

Background Climate change is expected to decrease food security globally. Many Indigenous communities have heightened sensitivity to climate change and food insecurity for multifactorial reasons including close relationships with the local environment and socioeconomic inequities which increase exposures and challenge adaptation to climate change. Pregnant women have additional sensitivity to food insecurity, as antenatal undernutrition is linked with poor maternal-infant health. This study examined pathways through which climate change influenced food security during pregnancy among Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in rural Uganda. Specific objectives were to characterize: 1) sensitivities to climate-associated declines in food security for pregnant Indigenous women; 2) women’s perceptions of climate impacts on food security during pregnancy; and 3) changes in food security and maternal-infant health over time, as observed by women. Methods Using a community-based research approach, we conducted eight focus group discussions—four in Indigenous Batwa communities and four in non-Indigenous communities—in Kanungu District, Uganda, on the subject of climate and food security during pregnancy. Thirty-six women with ≥1 pregnancy participated. Data were analysed using a constant comparative method and thematic analysis. Results Women indicated that food insecurity was common during pregnancy and had a bidirectional relationship with antenatal health issues. Food security was thought to be decreasing due to weather changes including extended droughts and unpredictable seasons harming agriculture. Women linked food insecurity with declines in maternal-infant health over time, despite improved antenatal healthcare. While all communities described food security struggles, the challenges Indigenous women identified and described were more severe. Conclusions Programs promoting women’s adaptive capacity to climate change are required to improve food security for pregnant women and maternal-infant health. These interventions are particularly needed in Indigenous communities, which often face underlying health inequities. However, resiliency among mothers was strong and, with supports, they can reduce food security challenges in a changing climate.


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