28-4 Women the World Must Hear

Revista de Cultural Survival Quarterly

 

What Makes Culture: Cwik'em

Teaching Tradition Each year our people, the Xáxl’ipmec (from Xáxl’ip), St’át’imc Nation, gather at Scet’ on the Fraser River in British Columbia to catch and dry sockeye salmon. Scet’ means “drop-off,” and the place has earned this name because the river drops about 10 feet at the rapids. Due to the conditions on the river, Scet’ is the ideal location to preserve salmon by drying it in the sun...

Stella Tamang Discusses the Growth of the Indigenous Women's Movement in South Asia

Cultural Survival Quarterly: Can you tell us about the path that brought you to the United Nations? Stella Tamang:I was born into a small minority within a very small ethnic group in Nepal, but when I married a Tamang, I became a part of that family. Tamang is one of the largest groups of indigenous peoples in Nepal. I come from a family of four sisters and two brothers; my husband has seven...

Review: Indigenizing the Academy

Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship & Empowering CommunitiesBy Devon Abbot Mihesuah & Angela Cavender WilsonUniversity of Nebraska Press 2004ISBN 0-8032-8292-3 Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities, a collection of provocative essays, was gathered partly in response to the controversy that followed publication of Devon Abbot...

Peoples of Mpimbwe Fund Opens Beekeeping and Milling Operations

The Peoples of Mpimbwe Fund celebrated the opening of two of its inaugural projects this summer and has begun planning for a third in the Mpimbwe Division of Tanzania. The goals of the Peoples of Mpimbwe Fund are to help the indigenous people of the region adjust to contemporary challenges, protect their natural environments, and preserve their ways of life and cultures. The fund relies on...

Peace Teachers: The History of Tamang Women as Conflict Mediators And Why the Human Rights Movement Must Listen to Them

On March 10, Stella Tamang participated in a special workshop on the participation of indigenous women in conflict prevention, management, and resolution and post-conflict peace building. Tamang, of Nepal, is the chair of the Indigenous Womens Caucus of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the chair of the South Asia Indigenous Women Forum, and an adviser of the Nepal Tamang Women...

Passamaquoddy Group Demands Delay of Liquified Natural Gas Terminal Construction and More Information Second African Indigenous

Four hundred years after Champlain sailed up Maine’s St. Croix River, another ship is coming. Its impact threatens to be as deadly to the indigenous people of the coastal Wabanaki region as small pox was in 1600. Life on this bay can be traced back 12,000 years. To honor this historic truth the Native organization Ntulankeyutmonen Nkihtaqmikon (We Take Care of the Homeland) has declared...

More Than Paper: Protecting Ainu Culture and Influencing Japanese Dam Development

The violation of indigenous rights in the process of national development, particularly in dam construction projects, is a familiar story. But in the 1980s when the Japanese government decided to expropriate land from the Ainu people and build the Nibutani Dam on the Saru River without considering the impact on Ainu culture, the story had a somewhat different ending than indigenous peoples have...

Legislating Gender Equality: Sara Larsson

In Saami Land, Women Are Encouraged to Become Lawyers— But Many Would Rather Be Reindeer Herders I have been a member of the Swedish Saami Parliament since 2001. I am from the southern Saami area and from a traditional reindeer herding family. My father herds reindeer and I have a few of my own, but my father cares for them because I am too busy with my other work. Only a minority of the Saami...

It Seems Impossible To Believe: A Survivor Describes the Massacre that Destroyed Her Wayuu Community

After living with paramilitaries for several months, one morning in April the village of Bahía Portete, in Colombia’s northern Guajira peninsula, suffered a massacre that left 12 people dead, 20 missing, and 300 displaced, according to the National Indigenous Organization in Colombia (ONIC). On August 4, Francisco Ramírez Cuellar, president of Colombia’s Sindicato de Trabajadores Mineros (...

Indigenous Women's Empowerment Begins with Communication

How often do we say something important only to find that the person we were speaking to did not understand a word of what was said? We repeat ourselves, raise our voices, use body language to express our frustration, but to no avail. More often than not, one of the two cardinal rules of good communication—Speak to be Understood and Listen to Understand—has been broken. If we speak...

Indigenous Woman Honored With Human Rights Award

Joênia Batista de Carvalho, 30, a Wapixana woman, mother of two, and Brazil’s first female indigenous lawyer, received a Reebok Human Rights Award in May 2004. The award recognizes her efforts to secure indigenous people’s rights to their ancestral lands against the encroachment of outside commercial, farming, and hunting interests, and her work to defend indigenous victims of human rights...

Indigenous Peoples, Governments Continue to Lack Consensus As Draft Declaration Deadline Approaches

With only months left in the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People, the movement to adopt an international instrument to secure indigenous peoples human rights received a rare opportunity this fall. Multiple extra sessions were scheduled by the United Nations so that indigenous peoples and governments could negotiate and adopt a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. At...

Helping Victims of Ethnocide: Akuthi Okoth

Some 400 members of the Anuak ethnic group in Gambella in southern Ethiopia were killed on December 13, 2003, by government security forces and members of highland ethnic groups. The assault followed the deaths of eight Ethiopian and foreign refugee workers traveling in a United Nations vehicle. The Ethiopian government dismissed the killings as "inter-ethnic" violence among "backward elements."...

Guatemala Court Rules Against UN-Led Human Rights Investigation

On August 6, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court ruled against the creation of a United Nations-led International Commission to Investigate Illegal Bodies and Clandestine Security Forces (CICIACS) to investigate crimes that have mostly targeted the nation's indigenous Maya population. The Constitutional Court deemed CICIACS unconstitutional on the grounds that it would have powers that Guatemala’s...

Getting the World's Attention: Mirian Masaquiza Jerez

Mirian Masaquiza Jerez benefited from a unique upbringing in a Quichua family of women. Today, at 28, she works in the United Nations to ensure young indigenous voices are heard. Mirian Masaquiza Jerez, a Quichua woman from Ecuador, has worked since 1998 with the Confederación Nacional de Campesinas, Indigenas y Negras del Ecuador (Confederation of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-Ecuadorians, and...

Finding her Place: Anoush Ter Taulian

I am an Armenian American who was raised in an assimilated household that taught me nothing about the Armenian language, culture, or history. I was in college when I first learned about the 1915 Armenian Genocide, in which over 60 percent of the Armenian population was killed by Ottoman Turks and 90 percent of Armenian land was stolen. Both of my parents are Armenian. During the genocide, my...

Film Festival Brings Together Indigenous Artists

Hundreds of indigenous and non-indigenous film enthusiasts from around the globe met from October 20 to 24 for the fifth-annual imagineNative Film Festival. The festival is one of the few solely indigenous-run and programmed festivals in the arts community. With some of the most innovative aboriginal creators of film, video, radio, and new media in attendance, more than 90 films were screened,...

FGM: Maasai Women Speak Out

Introduction by Ledama Olekina A major international movement has developed over the past 20 years to eradicate the cultural practice of female circumcision that takes place in many African and Asian countries. At the Nairobi International Conference on Female Genital Mutilation in September, attendees from nations where female circumcision is practiced urged states to adopt political, legal, and...

Facing the Legacy of the Boarding Schools:

Eulynda Toledo-Benalli Has Devoted Her Life to Saving Diné Knowledge   Eulynda Toledo-Benalli is my Western name. My Navajo name is Nídeezbaa’. It’s a warrior woman name. All Diné women have warrior women names signifying the way we go to war and the way we behave in confrontation—the warrior-ness in us. My father, who did not speak a word of English, was snatched from his hogan at age six...

Expanding the Fair Trade Market for Diné Wool and Weavings

Working with the Diné community, Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land, a Cultural Survival Special Project, has found innovative ways to expand the market for wool produced from the fleece of churro sheep on Black Mesa. Churro fleece is unique and particularly suitable for weaving because it is not as greasy as other wools, meaning it requires less water (a precious resource on Black Mesa) and a...

Defending Paradise: The Apology Bill

Passed on November 23, 1993, by the 103rd U.S. Congress, and signed by President William Clinton. To acknowledge the 100th anniversary of the January 17, 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, and to offer an apology to Native Hawai’ians on behalf of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai’i. Whereas, prior to the arrival of the first Europeans in 1778,...

Defending Paradise: Seeking Solutions Through Legislation

The Trask family has been continuously active in the cause of Native Hawai’ian sovereignty since the United States overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai’I in 1893. Mililani Trask has taken that cause to the international level, and has expanded her work to defend indigenous peoples throughout the world, with a special concern for those in the Pacific Basin. She is an attorney and has been...

Defending Paradise

Lilikala Kame’eleihiwa has seen the effects of the U.S. invasion of Hawai’i spread and intensify throughout her lifetime, and now works to educate the younger generation about Native Hawai’ian culture and the challenges it faces. She is the director of the Center for Hawai’ian Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Leiali’i Mano’i was born and raised in Honolulu and received her...

Cultural Survival Adopts 5-Year Strategic Plan

Over its 32 year history, Cultural Survival has adapted to major transformations concerning the protection of indigenous peoples’ human rights. Anticipating the urgent needs ahead in the 21st century, the organization recently adopted a new strategic plan. The planning process involved over 100 stakeholders and indigenous advisors. While its mission – to promote the rights, voices, and visions of...

Conflicts Between Indigenous Politicians and Conservationists in the Upper Orinoco-Casiquiare Biosphere Reserve

On August 1, 1991, the largest biosphere reserve in the tropical world was created in the Upper Orinoco region of southern Venezuela. The creation of the Upper Orinoco Biosphere Reserve (RBOAC), encompassing an area the size of Maine, was meant to protect the headwaters of the Orinoco River and the livelihoods of the two ethnic groups who live there, the Yanomami and Ye’kwana. Although...

A Museum for the Americas

On September 21, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), the first U.S. national museum dedicated exclusively to Native Americans, opened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Festivities included a procession of more than 11,000 American Indians in traditional regalia, a dedication ceremony, a marketplace featuring Native-made arts and crafts, and an evening concert with Cree...
 

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