Wrestling with Fire: Indigenous Women’s Resistance and Resurgence

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-84
Author(s):  
Melissa K. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Women Activists ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Management Culture ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Indigenous Land Management ◽  
Unique Approach ◽  
Regenerative Power

Indigenous activist movements are often articulated through the concepts of struggle, resistance, and resurgence. Indigenous women activists often tie these concepts to vocabularies of responsibility and obligation. Nelson examines the root meanings, contested uses, and pragmatic roles of struggle and resistance in Indigenous women’s activism, including her own experiences as a Native woman and scholar-activist. She articulates this struggle through the concept of “wrestling with fire,” which serves not only as a metaphor for activism, but also as a unique approach by Indigenous women who have specific responsibilities to the natural elements. Real fire and the fire of activism can bring both destruction and renewal, and these interrelated and complex processes have always played important roles in indigenous land management, culture, and spirituality. An ethnopoetic analysis on the role and power of fire in ecological processes and Indigenous oral literatures concludes the essay, with a proposal for how to incorporate Indigenous ways of being in reciprocal relationship with the regenerative power of fire.

Testimonio at 50

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Guadalupe Escobar
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
The Political ◽  
Extractive Industry ◽  
The Past ◽  
Colonial Capitalism ◽  
Revolutionary Period

A reassessment of the testimonio genre over the past five decades reveals continuities of state-sponsored violence from the revolutionary period to the present. An analysis of Pamela Yates’s 500 Years: Life in Resistance (2017) and Katia Lara’s Berta vive (Berta Lives, 2016) shows Cold War reverberations, unfolding deeper histories of dispossession and legacies of resistance. The first uncovers entangled issues of Guatemalan genocide disavowal and extractive industry while the second denounces the political feminicide of the Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres. Both testimonial documentaries mobilize an “archive effect” to contest the optic of colonial capitalism through the ecofeminist perspectives of indigenous women activists. Una reevaluación del género del testimonial durante las últimas cinco décadas revela la continuidad de la violencia estatal desde el período revolucionario hasta el presente. Un análisis de 500 Years: Life in Resistance (2017) de Pamela Yates y Berta vive (2016) de Katia Lara da cuenta de las reverberaciones de la Guerra Fría, desplegando historias más profundas de desposesión y legados de resistencia. La primera obra muestra los intrincados hilos en torno a la negación del genocidio guatemalteco y la industria extractiva, mientras que el segundo denuncia el feminicidio político de la activista ambiental hondureña Berta Cáceres. Ambos documentales testimoniales utilizan un “efecto de archivo” para impugnar la óptica del capitalismo colonial a través de las perspectivas ecofeministas de las activistas indígenas.

From Ink to Web and Beyond

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather McKee Hurwitz
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
History Of ◽  
Feminist Movements

Mainstream media ignores the breadth and diversity of women’s activism and often features sexist, racist, and sexualized portrayals of women. Also, women hold disproportionately fewer jobs in media industries than men. Despite these challenges, women activists protest gender inequality and advocate a variety of other goals using traditional and new social media. This chapter examines the history of women’s media activism in the United States from women activists’ use of mainstream and alternative newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, to how activists adopted Internet technologies and new digital media strategies starting in the 1990s, to how contemporary feminists protest with Facebook and hashtag activism today. I argue that women activists’ use of new social media may necessitate significant shifts in how we research continuity and diversity in women’s and feminist movements, and how we conceptualize resources, micromobilization, and leadership in social movements broadly. I conclude with several suggestions for future research.

Feminism, Activism, and Scholarship in Global Context

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy A. Naples ◽  
Nikki McGary
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Nancy Fraser

The histories of women’s studies and feminist scholarship reveal the lack of distinction between feminist activism and feminist scholarship. The term “feminism” consists of multiple theories and agendas depending on regional, historical, and individual contexts. Broadly speaking, feminism includes theoretical and practical challenges to gender inequality and multiple forms of systemic oppression. However, the political projects that make women their objects are not always feminist; and political projects that address women’s issues are not always framed around the concept of feminism. Women activists and organizations do not always explicitly identify as feminist, although they might be participants in struggles aligned with broad feminist goals, including women’s empowerment, autonomy, human rights, and economic justice. A major theme that runs through feminist scholarship on women’s activism relates to the question of what difference women’s participation and feminist analyses make for progressive struggles. Feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser argues that there are “gender dimensions” to all struggles for social justice, and “feminists better be in these struggles and bring out those dimensions because certainly nobody else will.” Feminist scholars have also long debated what counts as a women’s movement. Revisioning women’s movements to include the diversity of women’s political analyses and strategies requires rethinking the labels used to categorize feminisms more generally.

scholarly journals Agents of Change

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-92
Author(s):  
Kaja Borchgrevink
Keyword(s):  
Women Activists ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Class A ◽  
Gender Complementarity ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Global Norms

Abstract This article examines the intersection of religion, gender and development through an analysis of religious practice and development engagement among women activists in two religio-political aid organizations in contemporary Pakistan. Situated on the margins of the mainstream aid and development field, these women are rarely conceded agents of development. Yet focusing on improving women’s position and wellbeing, their activities are similar to those of many other development NGO s. As part of religio-political movements advancing gender complementarity and segregation, women’s activism and conceptions of development reflect a particular intersection of religion, gender and class. A close read of women’s discourse and practice reveals how women interpret and appropriate Islamic teachings, local cultural practices, and global norms by balancing ideology and pragmatism. In the process of negotiating, upholding and resisting norms and practices, these activists can be seen as active agents of change in their local contexts.

Connecting U.S. Intervention with Social Injustice, 1970–1972

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica M. Frazier
Keyword(s):  
Women Activists ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
The United States ◽  
Viet Nam ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
The North ◽  
Vietnamese Women ◽  
Peace Activists ◽  
The World

After peace talks began in Paris, the female delegation of Nguyen Thi Binh, foreign minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) of South Viet Nam, spearheaded people's diplomatic efforts as Binh’s own poised, determined, and feminine presence on the world stage inspired countless women around the world. Complementing the PRG women's efforts, U.S. women activists continued to travel to Viet Nam—both North and South. The context of American women's activism had shifted in two significant ways, however. First, the incarceration of Vietnamese political prisoners in South Viet Nam in "tiger cages" came to light in July 1970. Second, the context of growing feminist sentiment colored the views of women peace activists. The U.S. military's complicity in the deplorable prison conditions in the South led women peace activists to perceive social inequalities in the United States as they also noted the distinguished positions of women in North Viet Nam. They came to describe Vietnamese women in the North as having gained "liberation" and claimed South Vietnamese society had actually deteriorated because of U.S. intervention.

Taking minority women’s activism seriously

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Bassel ◽  
Akwugo Emejulu
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Minority Women ◽  
Migrant Women ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Participant Characteristics ◽  
Citizenship Regimes ◽  
Key Terms

In this introductory chapter, we discuss the three national contexts in which our research project was based, highlighting the particular citizenship regimes of each country and the implications for our minority women activists. We then move on to provide further details about the research, detailing our methods, sampling, participant characteristics and coding and analysis frame. We define the key terms that we will be using throughout this book. Finally, we conclude with an overview of how the 2008 economic crisis and subsequent austerity measures impacted on minority and migrant women in France and Britain.

scholarly journals Islamophobia and Arab and Muslim Women's Activism

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-76
Author(s):  
Tara Povey
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Women's Role ◽  
Experiences Of Women

The aim of this article is to compare women’s activism in Diaspora communities in Muslim majority countries, such as Iran, with some of the experiences of women activists in Western counties such as Australia. This is by no means a definitive account of Arab and Muslim women’s activism in either country but an attempt to raise some questions and provide a framework in order to understand some of the issues facing Arab and Muslim activists today. I believe that it is important to look at these issues in a way that is contextualized in terms of the material circumstances in which women living in Diaspora communities find themselves. In doing so, I hope to reveal the complexity and dynamism of women’s activism and to take on critically, Orientalist, essentialist and racist arguments regarding the nature of Arab and Muslim women’s role in opposing war and neo-liberalism and in the struggle for gender equality. As Edward Said argues, exile forces us to “see things not simply as they are, but as they have come to be that way. Look at situations as contingent, not as inevitable, look at them as a series of historical choices made by men and women, facts of society made by human beings not as natural or God-given, therefore unchangeable, permanent, irreversible.”

scholarly journals Working Knowledge: characterising collective indigenous, scientific, and local knowledge about the ecology, hydrology and geomorphology of Oriners Station, Cape York Peninsula, Australia

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 53 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Barber ◽  
S. Jackson ◽  
J. Shellberg ◽  
V. Sinnamon
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Funding Sources ◽  
Local Case ◽  
Indigenous Land Management ◽  
Cape York ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Integration Project

The term, Working Knowledge, is introduced to describe the content of a local cross-cultural knowledge recovery and integration project focussed on the indigenous-owned Oriners pastoral lease near Kowanyama on the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. Social and biophysical scientific researchers collaborated with indigenous people, non-indigenous pastoralists, and an indigenous natural resource management (NRM) agency to record key ecological, hydrological and geomorphological features of this intermittently occupied and environmentally valuable ‘flooded forest’ country. Working Knowledge was developed in preference to ‘local’ and/or ‘indigenous’ knowledge because it collectively describes the contexts in which the knowledge was obtained (through pastoral, indigenous, NRM, and scientific labour), the diverse backgrounds of the project participants, the provisional and utilitarian quality of the collated knowledge, and the focus on aiding adaptive management. Key examples and epistemological themes emerging from the knowledge recovery research, as well as preliminary integrative models of important hydro-ecological processes, are presented. Changing land tenure and economic regimes on surrounding cattle stations make this study regionally significant but the Working Knowledge concept is also useful in analysing the knowledge base used by the wider contemporary indigenous land management sector. Employees in this expanding, largely externally funded, and increasingly formalised sector draw on a range of knowledge in making operational decisions – indigenous, scientific, NRM, bureaucratic and knowledge learned in pastoral and other enterprises. Although this shared base is often a source of strength, important aspects or precepts of particular component knowledges must necessarily be deprioritised, compromised, or even elided in everyday NRM operations constrained by particular management logics, priorities and funding sources. Working Knowledge accurately characterised a local case study, but also invites further analysis of the contemporary indigenous NRM knowledge base and its relationship to the individual precepts and requirements of the indigenous, scientific, local and other knowledges which respectively inform it.

Peace and Security from a Feminist Perspective

2018 ◽  
pp. 14-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Ann Tickner
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
World War ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
History Of

Almost one hundred years ago women from both sides of World War I came together to design a postwar peace plan, the principles of which were remarkably similar to UN Security Council Resolution 1325. Since then, women activists have worked to place gender issues on the United Nations agenda. In the late 1980s, feminist international relations began to address peace and security from a gendered perspective. With this in mind, this chapter traces the history of the intersection between women’s activism and this emergent feminist scholarship. Feminists scholarship defines security as the physical and economic security of individuals as well as states. The scholars question the essentialist association of women and peace and advocate seeing women as agents in all aspects of peacemaking, positions that the international community is finally beginning to recognize. This chapter, as such, explores how feminist scholars have constructed knowledge that contributes to our understanding of the deeper reasons why women suffer particular physical and structural insecurities.

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