My body, my territory: Indigenous women, territoriality, and the rights of cultural minorities

Abstract

ABSTRACT Scholars often frame questions of cultural pluralism as a simple binary: Is the protection of “illiberal cultures” detrimental to the rights of women and other internal minorities within these cultures? In this article, I argue that this reductive binary is insufficient and show how Indigenous women from Peru actually navigate the simultaneous articulation of their collective cultural rights and their individual rights as women. I build on interview and ethnographic research during two months of fieldwork (2019) in Peru to argue that Indigenous women in this country strategically engage the concept of territoriality in their dual struggle for collective Indigenous rights, and individual rights as women within the realm of patriarchal traditions. Using the idea that “our body is our territory,” Peruvian Indigenous women transcend the limitations of liberal rights by reimagining them in a culturally specific vocabulary of sovereignty. In contrast to critics of multiculturalism who fear for the individual rights of women and vulnerable populations from minority cultures, I find that the protection of “illiberal cultures” does not necessarily reinforce oppression, but may, in fact, have unexpected democratic potential.