Reflections: Indigenous Women Transforming Power

Today I attended MADRE's parallel event, "Indigenous Women Transforming Power." MADRE advocates for women's human rights by partnering with sister organization worldwide. I appreciate this model, because it centers marginalized women as the experts on their own experiences and communities. Yifat Susskind, executive director, moderated the panel, which contained Yasso Kanti Bhattachan of Nepal (Vice Chair of the National Indigenous Women's Forum and Thakali Indigenous),  Lucy Mulenkei of Kenya (leader of Indigenous Information Network and member of the Maasai community), Aminatu Samira of Cameroon (youth activist and member of the Mbororo Pastoralist community, and Rose Cunningham, a Miskito indigenous leader who is the first indigenous woman mayor of Waspam, Nicaragua (pictured below). 

Rose Cunningham, mayor of Waspam (Source)

Yifat began the event by asking those in the audience who felt that their community was under threat by the Trump administration to raise their hands. Looking around, almost everyone in front and behind me had a hand raised. She also described how indigenous women have more of a right to be skeptical about electoral politics than almost anyone, but that electoral politics are at least one site of power and one approach to advocacy. Yifat asked how we can resist our current material situation while being both protective and proactive. In other words, how can we protect those who are most threatened without letting our vision of a better future go by the wayside?

The panelists had some insights. Rose Cunningham spoke to the necessity of autonomy, both in a democratic sense, and for people as individuals. Lucy Mulenkei described how important it is for women simply to be able to assemble together, and spoke to the value of indigenous women's traditional knowledges. Aminatu Samira described the necessity of opportunities for personal development and education for youth. Yasso Bhatachan described education as the "main equipment of empowerment," and discussed an initiative for trilingual education so that indigenous youth could learn Nepalese, English, and their mother tongue.

In terms of my personal reflections, I found navigating the experience of trying to get limited translation resources quite profound, because about 30% of the event was in Spanish. The organizers actually ran out of translation equipment for the native English speakers. As a native English speaker, everything is usually tailored to my needs, and I thought it was meaningful to be in a space where that wasn't fully the case as just a small taste of what folks who speak English as a second language experience every day.