Indigenous Women Research Articles

Poverty among Indigenous Women in the Central Highlands of Vietnam: a Critical Analysis

Poverty characterizes the lives of indigenous women in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Due to a lack of opportunities and resources, indigenous women become more socially vulnerable. We argue that there is a reciprocal relationship between collective social change and the likelihood of ethnic minority women in the Central Highlands escaping poverty. The data presented in this paper was collected from our 2019 ministerial-level scientific research study on creating a poverty reduction model for indigenous women in the Central Highlands, based on a sustainable livelihood framework. Historically, change occurs when individuals are part of a collective. Our findings suggest that the motivation to escape poverty increases collective action through social work, a strategy to overcome poverty.

Dynamics of Industrialization: Leadership Transformation in Indigenous Papuans

This research explores the dynamics of industrialization and leadership transformation in indigenous Papuans, focusing on the Comoros Mimika Tribe in Papua Province, particularly in the context of the relationship with PT Freeport. This research uses a qualitative approach to explore it. Data collection was conducted through in-depth interviews with various stakeholders, such as indigenous leaders, youth, women, NGOs, and the government in the Comoros Mimika Tribe. In addition, participatory observations and document analysis were also conducted to gain a holistic understanding of the dynamics of leadership and social change in the community. The results show that diverse perspectives are presented through the views of indigenous leaders, youth, women, NGOs, and governments on this change. Indigenous leaders stressed the need to preserve traditional values while accommodating the realities of modernization, while youth saw change as an opportunity to improve social and economic conditions. Women fight for gender inclusion and protection of their traditional roles, NGOs and governments seek to unite economic development with the preservation of indigenous peoples' cultures and interests. These findings reflect the complexity of the relationship between tradition and modernity and highlight the challenges and opportunities in maintaining a balance between the two in the context of PT Freeport in indigenous Papuans.

Integrating Indigenous women’s traditional knowledge for climate change in Canada

Traditional Ecological Knowledge has historically been appropriated by White settler societies across the globe. It has an important role to play in environmental decision-making, particularly in climate policy. Due to past colonization and continued neo-colonial pressures, Indigenous women’s Traditional Ecological Knowledge has an even less prominent position in environmental policies. Traditional Ecological Knowledge can help build local expertise, formulate research questions, and provide insights into community adaptation and monitoring. We explore the case of Canadian environmental policy, arguing that although Canadian rhetoric seems to consider Traditional Ecological Knowledge, both women’s and otherwise, it rarely does so. When included, it is only done in a superficial manner within legal requirements. We suggest that the lack of attention paid to Indigenous women’s Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Canadian environmental decision-making (1) ignores the disproportionate impacts that Indigenous women experience because of climate change, (2) perpetuates gender blindness, and (3) does not recognize the key insights that women’s Traditional Ecological Knowledge can offer.

Peer and land-based approaches for fostering empowering and healthy relationships with Indigenous and northern young people in the Northwest Territories.

Indigenous and Northern women in Canada experience high rates of intimate partner violence (IPV), and this is particularly true in the Northwest Territories (NWT). Adolescents are also at increased risk of IPV, which has far-reaching, lifelong effects. Indigenous youth are particularly vulnerable to IPV due to ongoing effects of intergenerational trauma caused by colonialism, racism and residential school legacies. We explored attitudes towards IPV and the healthy relationship knowledge, skills, and experiences among participants of Fostering Open eXpression among Youth (FOXY) and Strength, Masculinities, and Sexual Health (SMASH) Peer Leader Retreats in the NWT. Multi-method approaches included quantitative surveys youth completed before and immediately following retreats. Quantitative analysis from retreats (2018-2021) included 240 participants aged 12-19 (mean age 14.5) who reported ever having an intimate partner. Most were from the FOXY program (64.2%), Indigenous (69.6%) and heterosexual (66.4%). Qualitative methods included Focus Group Discussions (FGD) (n = 69) conducted with peer leaders and apprentices (n = 311) and youth and adult staff (n = 14 FGDs, n = 165 participants). We thematically analysed FGDs to explore healthy relationship knowledge and skills, alongside paired t-tests to examine pre/post retreat changes in attitudes towards IPV. Qualitative findings suggest that leadership and embodied learning were effective in equipping youth with violence prevention and healthy relationship skills. While young women were committed to sharing knowledge and skills about healthy relationships in their communities, young men resonated with values of respect and appreciated support to identify and express emotions. Participants across programmes demonstrated their belief that healthy intimate relationships have communal, relational and intergenerational benefits. Quantitatively, we found a statistically significant reduction in attitudes accepting of IPV among young women, but no changes were noted among young men. Findings contribute to emergent evidence on strengths-based, culturally-responsive IPV prevention programming. Components of effective IPV prevention programming with young men merit further exploration.

“‘Keep the Fire Burning’: Applications and Culturally Congruent Research Strategies for Research on Sexual and Reproductive Health With Indigenous Women”

Because of the long history of exploitative research with Indigenous groups, an ethical and empirical imperative exists for researchers, especially non-Indigenous scholars, to reflect on their own positionality and to use culturally congruent methodologies and strategies when conducting research. A simultaneous need is for research on the reproductive and sexual health experiences of Indigenous women, who experience extensive reproductive health disparities and reproductive injustices. The purpose of this article is to provide an example of a best practice in conducting community engaged research to explore the reproductive and sexual healthcare experiences of Indigenous women, through the identification of factors that promote and that act as barriers to health. We first provide an overview of the literature describing the history of researcher exploitation before providing an in-depth discussion of the methodology used in this study. We then describe an application of the qualitative description methodology in 31 semi-structured life-history interviews with Indigenous women. The strategies used in this study facilitated the provision of rich qualitative information about reproductive health, which will be used to develop interventions for tribal members. This study addresses gaps by providing an example of a culturally appropriate methodology and its application with Indigenous women.

Indigenous Women on the Frontlines of Climate Activism

Abstract In this public address, transcribed and translated from the Portuguese, two leaders of Brazil’s pan-ethnic Indigenous rights movement, Sônia Bone Guajajara and Célia Xakriabá, describe their respective formation, their involvement in environmental and human rights struggles, and the global stakes involved in the recognition and protection of the traditional territorial claims and land-use practices of Indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon and beyond.

A Strategy To Support Perinatal Mental Health By Collaborating With Tribal Communities In Montana.

Among Indigenous women and birthing people, reported rates of perinatal mental health complications are consistently higher than in the general US population. However, perinatal mental health programs and interventions tend to focus on the general population and do not account for the unique experiences and worldviews of Indigenous Peoples. We highlight a collaborative strategy employed by a Montana nonprofit to engage Tribal communities in completing a statewide online resource guide designed to help pregnant and parenting families find resources, including mental health and substance use treatment options, within and beyond their local communities. Based on this strategy, cultural resources relevant to Tribal communities were added to the resource guide. Agencies committed to addressing perinatal mental health disparities among Indigenous populations should consider similar strategies to share power with Tribal communities and collaboratively create culturally congruent programs and interventions.

The Silenced “Other” Talks Back from Jungle: A Study of Hunting Ritual by Indigenous Women in Mahasweta Devi’s “The Hunt”

The idea of “nature” as something pure, pristine, untouched by humans, a pastoral piece of land, creates an exclusivist version of nature preservation. Likewise, performance is also thought to be exclusive, executed only on stage, removed from ordinary life, but in reality, the human body is continuously in a state of performance; we are continuously acting according to or “performing” our cultural beliefs, functions, gender roles, politics, etc. This paper intends to present a postcolonial ecocritical study of the short story “The Hunt” (1995) written by Mahasweta Devi, by focusing on the Indigenous ritual of hunting or performance of hunting named Jani Parab and its importance in the scenario of postcolonial environmentalism. At the “Jani Parab” festival, the tribal protagonist of this story hunts (or performs the hunting ritual) the capitalist broker who had been deforesting their land. This hunting alters several metanarratives regarding colonizer/colonized, hunter/prey, civilized/uncivilized, male/female. The story’s protagonist, an illegitimate, tribal woman, becomes “other” in every possible way. By hunting, she moves from being the “other” and becomes the hybrid subject. She becomes oppressor and oppressed, hunter and prey, nature and culture at the same time. She is the voice talking back from the jungle. This paper will focus on cultural and environmental issues, ecological and sociological aspects of tribal communities in modern India, and how they are structurally dehumanized altogether by the Caste system, capitalism, government corruption and colonial legacy. It brings together colonial inheritance, environmental issues, caste issues and capitalism – all the concerns of postcolonial ecocriticism very clearly.

On Their Own Terms: How Cocalera Organizing Expanded Indigenous Women’s Rights in Bolivia

Abstract A key element in the historically unprecedented advances in indigenous women’s political representation under Bolivia’s Evo Morales’s administration (2006–2019) was the influence that women coca growers played in the rural women’s indigenous organization known as the Bartolinas. Driven in no small measure by their resistance to the US-financed War on Drugs in the Chapare region, the cocaleras became both Bolivia’s strongest indigenous women’s organization and its most dedicated advocates for indigenous women’s rights. This article contends that intersectionality—of gender, class, and indigenous identities—is at the heart of understanding indigenous women’s transformation from “helpers” of a male-dominated peasant union to government ministers in the space of ten years. Not only did they effectively deploy chachawarmi, the Andean concept of gender complementarity, to advance their rights in a way consistent with their cultural identity and political loyalties, but they also benefited from the gains of a predominantly urban middle-class feminist movement even though they formally rejected the feminist movement’s composition and perceived orientation.

Ritual dance, authentic movement and dance movement therapy among indigenous Wiwan females in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Colombia)

This article presents results of a collaborative research with indigenous women from Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombian. Here, I discuss the possibilities of the intercultural dialogue between authentic movement, dance movement-therapy and rituals and communitarian Wiwa dances. I seek to answer certain questions such as: How does an authentic movement from dance movement therapy dialogue with the ritual dances of Wiwa women in Colombia to restore human and nonhuman sexualities in the postconflict scenario? What functions do the roles of mover and witness discharge? What challenges and possibilities emanate from such a dialogue vis-à-vis the deep healing of our sexualities and the reconceptualization of dance movement-therapy and authentic movement? The results presented here are the mixture of a fieldwork in Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta during the last four years and the intercultural authentic movement experience with Wiwa Elders and women.

Abstract 3929: Comparative genomics of breast cancer in indigenous African and western populations first results from the E-Predict study

Abstract Breast cancer (BC) stands as the foremost female malignancy globally and is the most prevalent cancer in numerous developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Over the past decade, significant strides in comprehending the pathobiology of the disease and tumour dynamics have greatly enhanced treatment options, particularly in industrialized nations. Regrettably, SSA countries have witnessed only marginal, if any, improvements, with mortality rates surpassing incidence rates. Unfavourable outcome, early onset and high-grade tumours are predominant in SSA. Despite these challenging clinical phenotypes, there is currently a limited understanding of the primary molecular drivers, primarily due to a dearth of reliable data. Furthermore, there is a paucity of research conducted in, and pertinent to, the challenges of the disease in low-income countries (LICs), despite a rising incidence and higher mortality-to-incidence ratios. We thus established an international translational cancer research consortium in five distinct African countries. This initiative has contributed to the creation of a high-quality repository of biomaterials. Additionally, we have conducted whole exome sequencing on the initial 100 cases of breast cancer, comparing the molecular architecture of these tumors with data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We examining and compared the clinical disease phenotypes between indigenous African women and Western patients. A higher proportion of grade III tumors was observed in African patients aged between 30 to 59 years as compared to other patients within the same age group. In comparative molecular analyses, we found a significantly elevated tumor mutational burden in African patients (median of >15/MB) in contrast to other populations within the TCGA (median ~ 0.7/MB). Gene sets featuring co-occurring mutations, predicted to be associated with survival using the TCGA dataset, showed high mutation rates in the African cohort. Notably, co-occurring mutations between PIK3CA and genes linked to genomic instability, such as BIRC6 (HR: 11.7, p = 2.7e-05), KMT2C (HR: 4.7, p = 4.01e-04), NEB (HR: 3.84, p = 0.48), and PCLO (HR: 4.9, p = 0.016), among others, strongly correlated with poor overall survival and were highly mutated within the African cohort. Interestingly, within the TCGA, patients with early breast cancer onset exhibit twice as many mutations in KMT2C, a gene known for its association with DNA damage repair, genomic instability, and showed an improved response to immune checkpoint inhibition. These initial findings suggest that breast cancer genomics in indigenous African populations may exhibit substantial differences, potentially warranting consideration for distinct therapeutic modalities for these patients. Citation Format: Smiths Sengkwawoh Lueong, Pamela Derliche Tonouo Derliche Tonouo, Arnol Auvaker Tiofack, Rovaldo Nguims Kenfack, Jules Roger Kuiate, Esther Dina Mbassi, Sidonie Noa Ananga, Etienne Okobalemba Atenguena, Gustave Simo, Abdel Jelil Njouendou, Walters Ndaka, Zacharie Sando, Emmanuella Mayemi, Rachel Tayou, Gilles Gael Aghoagni, Anne Sango, Benjamin Pokam, Augustin Tozoula Bambara, Jens T. Siveke. Comparative genomics of breast cancer in indigenous African and western populations first results from the E-Predict study [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 3929.

The political ecologies of fire: Recasting fire geographies in British Columbia, Canada

How fires burn across British Columbia (BC), Canada is shaped by settler coloniality, timber capitalism, state forestry regimes, criminalization of burning, and Indigenous resistance. Despite the urgency of confronting the fire suppression paradox embedded in settler colonial fire management laws and practices, approaches to studying fire in Canada that foreground Indigenous law and de-center settler colonial governance is scarce. As political ecologists and geographers working and living in the context of unceded and ancestral lək̓ʷəŋən, W̱SÁNEĆ, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, səlilwətaɬ, and syilx territories, we engage with Indigenous feminist scholarship to expose how coloniality and gender intersect in attempts to erase Indigenous sovereignty to structure and naturalize provincial fire policy and its emplaced impacts on Indigenous legal orders. Our analysis contextualizes settler-colonial provincial fire management policy in the purview of Indigenous legal orders to foreground how racial-colonial and gendered politics are obscured when colonial fire and wildfire practices are naturalized. Revisiting key moments in the political development of fire suppression across so-called BC, we contend that the suppression paradox is embedded in and reproduces a colonial logic that widens existing social and economic gaps. These gaps are uniquely gendered, as settler coloniality operates upon patriarchal lines that have actively attempted to erase Indigenous women and Two-Spirit peoples, including the laws and legal authorities that they possess and practice. Considering the 1910 Fulton Commission, we highlight an example of how women and Indigenous people were excluded from the political decision-making structures that shaped colonial fire management practices in BC. These gendered and racialized exclusions bear directly on the exclusion of Indigenous women and gender-diverse folx, and Indigenous legal orders guided by matriarchal lines of fire knowledge.

Teaching about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People: Implications for Canadian Educators

The 2019 National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls called on educators at all levels to raise awareness about the phenomenon of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people (MMIWG2S) and its root causes as connected to centuries of colonial violence and ongoing systemic discrimination. This article responds to that call by showcasing the experiences of eight teachers already teaching about MMIWG2S, the recommendations of 11 adolescent Indigenous girl activists, and the guidance provided in the Their Voices Will Guide Us teaching and learning guide, published alongside the National Inquiry’s final report. We draw upon the combined perspectives to encourage teachers in Canada to address the issue of MMIWG2S with their students, moving past representations of colonial violence as historical to examining how it affects the lives and deaths of far too many Indigenous people in Canada today.

Meaningful Positioning

Indigenous women and birthing parents in Canada disproportionately face mistreatment in their maternal healthcare experiences due to systemic anti-Indigenous racism, ongoing harmful impacts of settler colonialism, and power differentials inherent in many healthcare relationships. Indigenous midwives and doulas are important leaders in resisting these conditions and reclaiming traditional Indigenous birth knowledge and practices. Ultimately, they work to uphold Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty. Grounded in an understanding of historical and current challenges regarding Indigenous maternal health, this qualitative study explored how best to situate oneself as a settler researcher and maternal health practitioner to support Indigenous maternal health in a culturally safe, anti-racist manner. In this article, key insights are shared from semi-structured interviews conducted with five prominent Indigenous scholars, midwives and community leaders. These consultants emphasized the central importance of intentional relationships in advancing the reclamation of traditional birth practices and providing culturally safe care, along with the indispensability of Indigenous midwives and doulas in these processes. Consultants also stressed the critical need for increased numbers of, and accessibility to, Indigenous practitioners in communities across the country. Settler practitioners are urged to understand the historical and contemporary impacts of settler colonialism, and the significance of building culturally safe, anti-racist relationships with their Indigenous colleagues and clients.

Addressing gender-based violence in Saskatchewan through second-stage housing: an overview of research and setting new directions

Saskatchewan, Canada, has some of the highest rates of gender-based violence (GBV) in Canada, with statistics double the national average. The government of Saskatchewan does not substantively fund second-stage housing – a key mitigating solution to GBV. Nor does the province have a related action plan to reduce this violence and enhance the safety of women, gender non-conforming people, and children who are disproportionally targeted by GBV. This article demonstrates the outcomes of a knowledge synthesis on the intersection of GBV and second-stage housing across Canada. This research used an intersectional feminist approach to guide a literature review and NVivo analysis. This article’s results section demonstrates the importance of second-stage housing as it relates to the mitigation of GBV. The discussion section offers various recommendations collected across Canada that can be used in Saskatchewan to bolster the existing non-profit sector that supports victims and survivors of GBV through enhanced public funding and related supports from the provincial and federal governments. The article concludes by identifying three viable and urgent areas for future research: first, investigate the potential correlation between GBV rates and second-stage housing to examine whether support for second-stage funding impacts GBV rates. Second, identify and develop alternative assessment and evaluation metrics that shift quantitative reporting standards to qualitative understandings of success. Third, examine the interconnection between settler colonization and GBV that disproportionality targets Indigenous women through strengths-based, decolonial, Indigenous-led frameworks that are culturally appropriate and responsive.

Murdered Native and Indigenous Women: A Comparison Study of Victim and Perpetrator Patterns and Characteristics.

The rate of violent crimes against Indigenous people, including murder and rape, is significantly higher than national averages. Even more concerning, Indigenous women and girls represent a large proportion of murdered and missing individuals in the United States. In addition to the murder rate of Indigenous women being higher than the national average, they are significantly more likely to experience rape or other types of sexual violence. The main goal of this study was to gain a better understanding of cases involving the homicide of Indigenous women and identify patterns associated with the violence committed against them. Cases of Indigenous women between the ages of 18 and 55 years were pulled from the database. Cases were coded and analyzed for information pertaining to victim, perpetrator, and crime characteristics. Descriptive analysis and test of association were performed. There was a statistical association between the nature of the relationship between perpetrators and victims and whether the crime occurred on a reservation, the race/ethnicity of the perpetrator, a victim's history of domestic violence, and the method and motive of murder. Indigenous women are at an increased risk of victimization, including intimate partner violence and homicide. They also represent a group that has been marginalized, receiving little attention from the media, clinicians, researchers, and policy makers. The findings in this study highlight specific factors that may help to mitigate risk factors and/or enhance culturally competent clinical and forensic nursing practice.

On Motley feminism: A Decolonising Marxism for a thesis 14 of Marxism-feminism

The article enhances Frigga Haug’s theses on Marxism-feminism by discussing a silence in the theses regarding the internal colonialism of the feminist movement that continue creating racialised hierarchies among White feminist and indigenous people and women of colour and their struggles. The author contends that Marxism-Feminism is failing to find new ways to understand diversity due to the influence of traditional Eurocentric Marxism. To tackle the problem, Marxism-feminism requires a decolonising Marxism that draws on ‘late Marx’ and recent Marxist and feminist theoretical developments aiming to criticise and de-Westernise and de-Eurocentralise Marxism. The author explores four elements for a ‘decolonising’ Marxism (value theory, subsumption and social formation, linear development of radical change and temporality of struggles) and discusses its implications on Marxism-feminism towards a possible thesis 14 on Marxism-feminism.

The Participation of The Indigenous Women’s Association in The Recovery of Cultural Tourism in Bali, Indonesia

This research aims to determine the impact of technology transfer, cultural change, and feminist participation in the development of cultural tourism. The research method used is field research with the sampling technique used is random sampling and data collection techniques through document study, observation and interviews. Conducted in cultural tourism villages in Bali Province with a sample of 8 districts and 1 municipality. The research results show that technological transfer and cultural changes do not have a significant effect on the recovery of cultural tourism. On the other hand, participation has a significant effect on tourism recovery. Recovery of cultural tourism in this research; the emphasis is on the growth of tourist villages in cultural tourism. Culture forms the local wisdom of tourist villages which must be preserved and passed down from generation to generation. The participation of indigenous feminists as workers in tourist villages also supports the preservation of religious tourism, customs, culture and traditions in realizing the restoration of Balinese cultural tourism. Cultural changes and the transfer of technology have also changed the mindset of the Balinese traditional community, which was originally steeped in a patriarchal culture to become gender-responsive.

Injustice by design

ABSTRACT Systemic epistemic failings in institutions are often explained through settler epistemologies and settler colonial frameworks that both obscure and reproduce the conditions necessary for those failings to endure. What is never questioned in the standard picture of institutional epistemic injustice is the implicit origin myth of an ‘institutional big bang’ that spawned many modern social institutions out of presumably noble orienting goals for a well-functioning society in democratic nation-states. We are concerned with the functional outcomes of institutions in settler colonial societies, and how these outcomes consistently undermine whitewashed narratives of any inherent institutional design allegedly aimed at promoting testimonial justice in settler colonial societies. Institutions are built to target and maintain a status quo, especially (but not only) when they are charged with securing part of the social order or fabric of settler colonial societies. We will illustrate this concern through a discussion of various functional outcomes of the U.S. institution of asylum using Shannon Speed’s (2019. Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State. The University of North Carolina Press) analysis of the violence Indigenous women migrants from Latin America experience within the complex administrative web of U.S. migration and asylum systems.

Research ethics = You + me + “All our relations”

ABSTRACT Increasing awareness of racist and discriminatory structures, such as education and the penal system, is fueling a need for leisure scholars to reconsider their approaches to research. This article encourages readers to consider an alternative approach to doing research; one that is founded upon respect, trust, balance, and fairness. This alternative approach is described by authors as relational ethics. The manuscript discusses reciprocity, flexibility, and a readiness to respond as a part of the ethical protocols that were used throughout a research project that explored the healing experiences and needs of Indigenous women in a prison located in Quebec, Canada. The discussion includes the engagement of Indigenous and decolonizing research methodologies, the inclusion of medicine pouch workshops as an act of reciprocity, and a description of how the project was transformed; specifically, through changes in the delivery of workshop content, participation protocols, workshop length, interview guide, and additional resources.