Indigenous women | Women of Green

What’s Missing from #MeToo and #TimesUp: One Indigenous Woman’s Perspective

By wogwpa1358 on January 23, 2018 / Featured Post, Heart, Leadership / Leave a comment

Tags: #MeToo, #MMIW, #TimesUp, Indigenous women, Land Body Defense, Mother Earth, Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, Patriarchy in America, women of green

As I have watched the national dialogue unfold around sexual harassment and sexual violence, I can’t help but take notice of the lack of tie in to a much larger picture: namely, how men have abused their power to dominate and inflict violence upon not only women (and women of color in particular), but our Mother Earth. And they absolutely are related.

The roots of colonization and patriarchy in the Americas included the strategy of stealing lands from Indigenous peoples, inflicting violence and domination over women, and further exploiting those lands for monetary gain. But this is not some distant past — it is happening at an alarming rate today. Both the land, water, and Indigenous women have been ‘othered’ and devalued in our society. Native American women are 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault and rape than any other ethnic group and the unsolved cases of Murdered & Missing Indigenous Women (#MMIW) are staggering. Extractive industries play a major role in this violence and I encourage you to visit www.landbodydefense.org for a report and toolkit on how to support these resistance efforts. Another resource on MMIW community-led work is at It Starts With Us.

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Why Native American Women Are Going After Europe’s Banks to Divest From Big Oil

By wogwpa1358 on October 31, 2017 / Featured Post, Heart, Leadership / Leave a comment

Tags: Defund Big Oil, Divest from Fossil Fuels, Divestment DAPL, European Banks Divest, Indigenous women, Jackie Felder, No DAPL Movement, women of green

Indigenous Women Divestment European Banks

Now, the movement that began at Standing Rock has gone global, since much of the DAPL funding came from overseas banks. Some European banks such as BNP Paribas have taken steps to stop funding fossil fuel projects that trample Native peoples’ rights. Others such as Norway’s DNB and ING have done some divesting. Last week, a delegation of Indigenous women returned from a trip to Europe where they met with leaders of financial institutions in Norway, Switzerland, and Germany, the “home bases for several of the world’s largest financial and insurance institutions supporting dangerous extraction developments,” according to the news release. The delegation was organized by Indigenous women leaders in partnership with the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network.

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‘This Is My Land’: The Indigenous Women Chiefs Protecting the Amazon

By wogwpa1358 on July 3, 2017 / Family, Featured Post, Leadership / Leave a comment

Tags: Brazil, Deforestation, ecological sustainability, Indigenous Rights, Indigenous women, Kayapo, Mining, Mother Nature, PEC 215, Ranching, Standing Rock, women of green, Xingu River

For decades, Brazil’s Kayapo tribe has battled deforestation of their home. Now women are at the frontlines of the fight to save the rainforest. Concealed among dense Amazonian rainforest and grassy savannas are the simple palm-thatched dwellings of the Kayapo, one of Brazil’s best-known indigenous groups. Their scattered villages along the banks of the Xingu River are so remote that until the 1950s, the Kayapo people had virtually no contact with or knowledge of the outside world. Over the past three decades, Kayapo communities have been increasingly exposed to the outside world, bringing major shifts in the tribe’s social structure. One of the more recent and unexpected changes has been the emergence of three women chiefs, who are now in charge of villages spread across a vast swath of Amazonian rainforest.

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UN Intersessional Report: How will the Green Economy affect women?

By wogwpa1358 on April 9, 2012 / Family, Featured Post, Leadership / 2 Comments

Tags: bio energy, biodiversity, Carolyn Parrs, climate change, eco moms, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous women, market based approaches, Rio+20, toxic release, women in green, women of green

From Global Forest Coalition

Keith Brunner from Gears of Change Youth Media Project reports back from the side event “Women’s critical perspectives on the green economy” carried out during the UN Rio+20 intercessional (March 25-27) at the UN headquarters in New York.

The “green economy” will be a shot in the arm for ailing global markets- a rush of new commodities and investment frontiers, packaged neatly within a UN mandate for “sustainable development.” But how will it affect those who are already the most marginalized?

This afternoon I attended an event entitled “Women’s critical perspectives on the ‘green economy.” Participants painted a picture of a future far different from the heady visions on display at the corporate side events. The “green economy,” according to the panelists, will exacerbate already growing gender violence, urban migration and loss of traditional skills and knowledge amongst women, with women in the Global South being hit the hardest.

Isis Alvarez, with Global Forest Coalition, began the panel by noting that: “Biodiversity and the environment turned into marketable goods seems to be the current approach to conservation. And markets necessarily need privatization. But what are the consequences for women, if a resource which used to be accessible is now privatized?”

She continued: “Women usually provide their families with key resources for their livelihoods, such as fuel wood, medicinal plants, fodder, food, nuts, they collect seeds, so biodiversity means everything to them, as they depend on the non-monetary benefits of biodiversity.”

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