Indigenous Knowledge Systems

Decolonial Sketches and Intercultural Approaches to Truth: Corporeal Experiences and Testimonies of Indigenous Women in Colombia

Citation:

Santamaría, Angela, Dunen Muelas, Paula Caceres, Wendi Kuetguaje, and Julian Villegas. 2020. "Decolonial Sketches and Intercultural Approaches to Truth: Corporeal Experiences and Testimonies of Indigenous Women in Colombia." International Journal of Transitional Justice 14 (1): 56-79.

Authors: Angela Santamaría, Dunen Muelas, Paula Caceres, Wendi Kuetguaje, Julian Villegas

Abstract:

This article explores the corporeal and testimonial memories of a group of female indigenous ex-combatants and victims in the Colombian Caribbean and Amazon. Although these groups have often been analyzed in the transitional justice literature, our primary objective is to analyze two local processes for retrieving indigenous women’s memories and possible feminist participatory action research methodologies in the Colombian postconflict context. We examined empowering intercultural and intersectional methodologies to promote the political participation of indigenous women – both ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ – in the Colombian Truth Commission implemented after the peace agreement was enacted. We explain how participatory action research should be used, including techniques such as indigenous women’s body mapping, creating testimonial spaces and conducting ethnographic observations. The article is based on a transitional justice ‘from below’ perspective as well as local transitional justice practices.

Keywords: indigenous peoples, women, ex-combatants, Colombia

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Justice, Transitional Justice, Peace Processes, Political Participation, Post-Conflict Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2020

Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration

Citation:

Oswald, Úrsula. 2020. Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration. Mosbach: Springer International Publishing.

Author: Úrusla Oswald

Keywords: engendered peace and security, analysis of peace, security and environment, risk of survival in the 21st century, interdisciplinary reflections on climate change, water, food, health, energy security with nexus, alternative proposals from the Global South, adaptation to climate change from bottom-up, gift economy and solidarity, indigenous wisdom, care between humankind and Earth

Annotation:

Summary:
Earth at Risk in the 21st Century offers critical interdisciplinary reflections on peace, security, gender relations, migration and the environment, all of which are threatened by climate change, with women and children affected most. Deep-rooted gender discrimination is also a result of the destructive exploitation of natural resources and the pollution of soils, water, biota and air. In the Anthropocene, the management of human society and global resources has become unsustainable and has created multiple conflicts by increasing survival threats primarily for poor people in the Global South. Alternative approaches to peace and security, focusing from bottom-up on an engendered peace with sustainability, may help society and the environment to be managed in the highly fragile natural conditions of a 'hothouse Earth. Thus, the book explores systemic alternatives based on indigenous wisdom, gift economy and the economy of solidarity, in which an alternative cosmovision fosters mutual care between humankind and nature.
• Special analysis of risks to the survival of humankind in the 21st century.
• Interdisciplinary studies on peace, security, gender and environment related to global environmental and climate change.
• Critical reflections on gender relations, peace, security, migration and the environment
• Systematic analysis of food, water, health, energy security and its nexus.
• Alternative proposals from the Global South with indigenous wisdom for saving Mother Earth.” (Summary from Springer International Publishing)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Contextualisation on Gender, Peace, Security and Environment
 
2. On Peace and Security
 
3. Peace and Sustainability in a Globalised World
 
4. Ahimsa and Human Development: A Different Paradigm for Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution
 
5. On Environmental Security and Global Environmental Change
 
6. Ecology and Threats to Human Survival
 
7. Water Conflicts, Megalopolises and Hydrodiplomacy
 
8. Peace, Environment and Security: A Gender Perspective from the Global South
 
9. Environmental Management in a Globalised World
 
10. Gender Security
 
11. On HUGE Security: Human, Gender and Environmental Security
 
12. On Engendered-Sustainable Peace from a Feminist and Bottom-Up Perspective
 
13. A Gender Perspective on Climate Change
 
14. On Water Security
 
15. On Health and Water Security
 
16. Agroecology for Food Sovereignty and Security
 
17. Energy Security: Policies and Potentials in Mexico
 
18. Analysing Migration and Environmental-Induced Migration with the PEISOR Model
 
19. Environmentally-Induced Migration from Bottom-Up in Central Mexico
 
20. The Nexus among Water, Soil, Food, Biodiversity and Energy Security
 
21. The Global South Facing the Challenges of an Engendered, Sustainable and Peaceful Transition in a Hothouse Earth
 
12. Conflict-Related Sexual Violence against Men and the International Criminal Jurisprudence

 

Topics: Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Climate Displacement, Migration, Economies, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Health, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Peace and Security, Security, Food Security

Year: 2020

The Colombian Transitional Process: Comparative Perspectives on Violence against Indigenous Women

Citation:

Acosta, Monica, Angela Castaneda, Daniela Garcia, Fallon Hernandez, Dunen Muelas, and Angela Santamaria. 2018. "The Colombian Transitional Process: Comparative Perspectives on Violence against Indigenous Women." International Journal of Transitional Justice 12 (1): 108-25.

Authors: Monica Acosta, Angela Castaneda, Daniela Garcia, Fallon Hernandez, Dunen Muelas, Angela Santamaria

Abstract:

Colombia has a comprehensive system of truth, justice and reparation stemming from its history with the justice and peace process and its most recent peace agreement. Although indigenous women are the most affected before, during and after conflict, their participation is marginalized within this political context. This article discusses how Colombian transitional justice can be reconfigured when indigenous women's practices and knowledge travel 'from the margins' to the center. We seek to demonstrate how these practices legitimize gender and other types of violence in the name of tradition and also how indigenous women's experiences go beyond the gendered perspective of violence as a 'weapon of war.' Working within the context of the peace process, we gathered data through learning and teaching techniques with indigenous women in three indigenous contexts (Sierra, Pan-Amazon region and Chocó). Our focus is on the interaction between local transitional justice practices and the violence against indigenous women, their resistance practices and the peacebuilding agendas used to implement transitional justice in Colombia.

 

Keywords: Colombia, indigenous women, intersectionality, transitional justice 'from below'

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Intersectionality, Justice, Reparations, Transitional Justice, Peace Processes, Peacebuilding, Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2018

African Indigenous Food Security Strategies and Climate Change Adaptation in South Africa

Citation:

Tlhompho, Gaoshebe. 2014. “African Indigenous Food Security Strategies and Climate Change Adaptation in South Africa.” Journal of Human Ecology 48 (1): 83-96.

Author: Gaoshebe Tlhompho

Abstract:

The paper used a participatory and case study research approach to investigate the role of African Indigenous Food Security Strategies for climate change adaptation in Ganyesa Village, South Africa. The study revealed that local people, especially women, have over the years developed local food security strategies for climate change adaptation. These included knowledge of behaviours of living organisms, wind directions, position of stars as early warning indicators of changing weather conditions, selection of appropriate seeds and animal species, mixed cropping, and water harvesting technologies and food preservation techniques such as fermentation and sun drying for food security. These knowledge systems tend to be marginalized in the search for sustainable solutions for food security and climate change. The study recommends their documentation to inform policy, incorporation into educational curriculum. This will also assist in identifying gaps to be improved through interface with other knowledge systems.

Keywords: indigenous knowledge systems, climate change, women, food preservation, early-warning systems, educational curriculum

Topics: Agriculture, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Households, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Infrastructure, Information & Communication Technologies, Livelihoods, Security, Food Security Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2014

Between Pachamama and Mother Earth: Gender, Political Ontology and the Rights of Nature in Contemporary Bolivia

Citation:

Tola, Miriam. 2018. "Between Pachamama and Mother Earth: Gender, Political Ontology and the Rights of Nature in Contemporary Bolivia." Feminist Review 118 (1): 25-40.

Author: Miriam Tola

Abstract:

Focusing on contemporary Bolivia, this article examines promises and pitfalls of political and legal initiatives that have turned Pachamama into a subject of rights. The conferral of rights on the indigenous earth being had the potential to unsettle the Western ontological distinction between active human subjects who engage in politics and passive natural resources. This essay, however, highlights some paradoxical effects of the rights of nature in Bolivia, where Evo Morales’ model of development relies on the intensification of the export-oriented extractive economy. Through the analysis of a range of texts, including paintings, legal documents, political speeches and activist interventions, I consider the equivocation between the normatively gendered Mother Earth that the state recognises as the subject of rights, and the figure of Pachamama evoked by feminist and indigenous activists. Pachamama, I suggest, has been incorporated into the Bolivian state as a being whose generative capacities have been translated into a rigid gender binary. As a gendered subject of rights, Pachamama/Mother Earth is exposed to governmental strategies that ultimately increase its subordination to state power. The concluding remarks foreground the import of feminist perspectives in yielding insights concerning political ontological conflicts.

Keywords: rights of nature, Pachamama, extractivism, decolonial feminism, indigenous political ontology, Bolivia

Topics: Environment, Extractive Industries, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Women, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Rights Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Bolivia

Year: 2018

An Ethos of Responsibility and Indigenous Women Water Protectors in the #NoDAPL Movement

Citation:

Privott, Meredith. 2019. “An Ethos of Responsibility and Indigenous Women Water Protectors in the #NoDAPL Movement.” American Indian Quarterly 43 (1): 74–100.

Author: Meredith Privott

Abstract:

This work builds upon Elizabeth Archuleta's (Yaqui) term “ethos of responsibility” by contextualizing it within the #NoDAPL movement and applies a cultural rhetorics methodology to constellate an understanding of an ethos of responsibility utilized by Indigenous women water protectors in the #NoDAPL movement, as seen in video-recorded interviews selected from the #NoDAPL digital archive. This study attempts to understand the rhetoric of Indigenous women water protectors through the lens of Indigenous feminism(s), Indigenous rhetoric(s), and Dakota/Lakota/Nakota history and worldviews. When speaking from an ethos of responsibility, the water protectors featured in this study locate agency in traditional teachings and in the experience of Indigenous women, including responsive care in/to the interconnectedness of life, the special role of women in the care of water, and the collective survival of Indigenous women in colonial and patriarchal violence.

Keywords: indigenous women, Indigenous feminisms, cultural rhetorics, water protection, Standing Rock, activism, decolonization, ethos, sexual violence, #NoDAPL

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Rights, Indigenous Rights Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2019

Digging for Rights: How Can International Human Rights Law Better Protect Indigenous Women from Extractive Industries?

Citation:

Morales, Sarah. 2019. "Digging for Rights: How Can International Human Rights Law Better Protect Indigenous Women from Extractive Industries?" Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 31 (1): 58-90.

Author: Sarah Morales

Abstract:

FRENCH ABSTRACT:
L’expansion des industries extractives dans les territoires des peuples autochtones a été et continue d’être un processus éprouvant pour les gouvernements, l’industrie et les peuples autochtones du monde entier. Bien que les avantages économiques liés au développement des ressources soient substantiels, on donne trop souvent priorité à ces considérations au lieu de voir les effets profonds et durables des répercussions pour les collectivités, sur le plan social et culturel, en particulier pour les nations autochtones. La recherche a démontré que ces répercussions sont aggravées quand les personnes se trouvent à la croisée de plusieurs collectivités, comme c’est le cas pour les femmes autochtones. Dans le présent article, on se demandera si les lois internationales concernant les droits de la personne peuvent ou non protéger efficacement les femmes et les filles autochtones contre les effets négatifs du développement de l’industrie extractive. En réfléchissant au droit à l’autodétermination, tel qu’il est présenté dans la Déclaration des Nations Unies sur les droits des peuples autochtones, l’auteure soutient qu’à notre époque d’extraction croissante, la meilleure façon pour faire en sorte que les lois internationales protègent les droits des femmes autochtones est de prévoir un mécanisme qui rendra opérationnelles les lois et les coutumes autochtones. Pour cela, il faut faire de la place aux femmes autochtones dans les processus de consultation afin qu’elles y partagent leur savoir et qu’elles puissent en influencer réellement le cours. La promotion des droits procéduraux des femmes autochtones est la meilleure façon d’assurer la protection de leurs droits substantiels corolaires.
 
ENGLISH ABSTRACT:
The expansion of extractive industries into the territories of Indigenous peoples has been, and continues to be, a challenging process for governments, industry, and Indigenous peoples all over the world. While the economic benefits of resource development are important, too often these considerations are emphasized at the expense of appreciating the deep and lasting social and cultural effects of these impacts on communities, in particular, Indigenous communities. Research has illustrated that these impacts are compounded when one considers those individuals at the intersection of these communities, such as Indigenous women. This article will examine whether or not international human rights law can effectively protect Indigenous women and girls from the negative effects of extractive industry development. By focusing on the right to self-determination, as captured by the United Nations Declaration on the Right of Indigenous Peoples, it argues that the most effective way international law can work to protect Indigenous women in this period of increased extractive development is by providing a mechanism through which Indigenous laws and practices can be operationalized. This means creating space during consultative processes for Indigenous women to share their knowledge and influence the process in a meaningful way. The promotion of the procedural rights of Indigenous women is the best way to ensure the protection of their correlating substantive rights.

Topics: Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, International Law, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Organizations, Political Economies, Rights, Indigenous Rights

Year: 2019

Conceptualizing Subsistence as a Response to Capitalist Violence against African Indigenous Women

Citation:

Ahmed, Fathima. 2018. “Conceptualizing Subsistence as a Response to Capitalist Violence against African Indigenous Women.” Agenda 32 (4): 22-31.

Author: Fathima Ahmed

Abstract:

Africa, a continent whose economy is constrained by state and capital, fails to meet the basic needs of the population amidst worsening inequalities and violence. Subsistence producers globally, including indigenous small-scale farmers, pastoralists and hunter gathers, meet the basic needs for the majority. Two-thirds of these producers are women who work autonomously of the state and the market using relations of commoning. These are systems of sharing, collective labour and equal access to and care over nature. ‘Commoning’ is important to indigenous livelihoods, identity and survival, reflecting a strong relationship with the land. Resource-rich indigenous lands are as crucial to capitalist production as they are to anti-capitalist alternatives found in subsistence, and to life itself. African indigenous claims represent grassroots mobilisation for cultural self-determination in the wake of recent enclosures. Enclosures are turning commons into militarised zones, threatening the existence of indigenous peoples. These zones reflect a deliberate cultural packaging of misogynistic violence. Women are an important socio-ecological medium through which corporate-state violence impacts indigenous lives, livelihoods and bodies. As their reproduction and care responsibilities are land-dependent, ecological destruction harms women first. Using indigenous knowledge and practices, women are at the forefront of defending relationality with the land from capitalist destruction. They symbolise both an alternative and a threat to capitalism. As this article demonstrates, violence on the land and violence on women’s bodies are linked. Hence, feminist Lierre Keith contends that “militarism is a feminist issue, rape an environmental issue, and environmental destruction a peace issue” (Rebecca Weiss, ‘Sexism in the Olympics? You shouldn’t be surprised’, Patheos Catholic: Suspended in Her Jar, August 15, 2016). This activist article, using indigenous and anti-capitalist transnational feminism, highlights women’s agency and knowledge in providing life-centered and peaceful alternatives to the socio-ecological crisis across the continent, through a subsistence perspective.

Keywords: subsistence, indigenous women, commons, relationality, anti-capitalism

Topics: Economies, Environment, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Rights, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa

Year: 2018

Larger Than Life? Decolonising Human Security Studies through Feminist Posthumanism

Citation:

Hudson, Heidi. 2018. "Larger than Life? Decolonising Human Security Studies through Feminist Posthumanism." Strategic Review for Southern Africa 40 (1): 46-64. 

Author: Heidi Hudson

Abstract:

Binary thinking is one of the features of coloniality, manifesting in a zero-sum game between 'our' and 'their' security. The development of human security as an antidote has, however, been marked by a continuation of such divisions in a much subtler way. This state of affairs is exacerbated by the fact that concepts held up as possible solutions, such as the gendering of human security or the broader tool of decolonisation, are often also trapped in unimaginative oppositional thinking which runs the risk of recolonising knowledge and harming those who are supposed to be secured. The focus in this article is therefore on the coloniality of human security scholarship and practices and how this concept can be reinvigorated through a feminist 'post'-humanist lens. I argue that a feminist posthuman security approach that decentres the human (by going beyond asking for the inclusion of women only) and underscores agentic relations between (all) humans, the natural environment, technology and objects more adequately captures the entangled nature of human security practices, especially in the postcolony. The approach draws on a blend of six conceptual pillars, namely a poststructuralist understanding of agency as the product of intra-action rather than interaction; feminist critiques of equating what is male and what is human; the emphasis on intersections between race and gender in feminist postcolonial theory; the importance of situated knowledge; the agency of matter and objects in the construction of security and/ or insecurity; and an acknowledgement of indigenous Africa-centred knowledge forms. I conclude that this kind of posthuman security frame, which merges feminist posthumanism and new materialist posthumanism, not only allows a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of the human condition but also offers a foundation for developing a decolonised human security research agenda.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Education, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Security, Human Security

Year: 2018

Falling Between Two Stools: How Women’s Land Rights are Lost between State and Customary Law in Apac District, Northern Uganda

Citation:

Adoko, Judy, and Simon Levine. 2008. "Falling Between Two Stools: How Women’s Land Rights are Lost between State and Customary Law in Apac District, Northern Uganda." In Women's Land Rights and Privatization in Eastern Africa, edited by Birgit Englert and Elizabeth Daley, 101-20. Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, James Currey. 

Authors: Judy Adoko, Simon Levine

Annotation:

Summary: 
"As in other countries in Africa, there are two parallel and competing histories of land tenure in Uganda. The indigenous systems evolved to suit the needs of different local groups, or at least certain elite members in those groups, in a variety of different ecological and economic circumstances. They worked on rules which have never been written down, making it easy for outsiders to consider all these systems as ‘customary tenure’ a single, unchanging system of rules and administration. Another, written, history began with British colonialism. The British introduced a system of freehold title under which client chiefs and kingdoms (as well as missions) were granted formal land rights. All land which was not registered was considered by the British to be ‘crown land’. Although customary tenure continued to operate on this land, the customary owners had little protection from the arbitrary expropriation of their property. The British colonial administrators regarded customary ownership as backward and a constraint to economic development, which by the 1950s they intended to replace with the ‘modern’ system of freehold. However, colonialism ended before this could be implemented" (Adoko and Levine 2008, 101). 

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Governance, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Land Tenure, Rights, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2008

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