Indigenous Women on Stage: Retracing the Beijing Conference from Below

Abstract

In a remote Quichua community, thirty-five kilometers away from Tena, the capital of the Amazonian Province of Napo, forty-five indigenous women of the Ecuadorian Amazon met to construct a position platform for the World Women's Conference in Beijing.' The workshop, convened by the Confederation of Indigenous Organizations of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE) and the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Napo Province (FOIN), drew together women representing six different ethnic groups, each with its own language; some of the participants did not speak Spanish. Most of the delegates, ranging in age from twenty-one to sixty-two, had little or no previous experience with such political gatherings. Given this last characteristic, one might ask what relationship this group of indigenous women might have to forming an international feminist environmental agenda. International economic and political concerns in the post-Cold War era have privileged discussions about the conservation of natural resources and ecologically sound technologies and practices; the contribution of indigenous peoples to sustainable development alternatives; and the role of women in caring for the environment, maintaining biodiversity, and advancing a rhetoric of sustainable development. In the last five years there have been five major conferences to discuss global problems and policies: the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, which was followed by the Population Meeting in Cairo, the Social Summit in Copenhagen, the World Conference on Women in Beijing, and the Habitat Conference in Istanbul.