Indigenous women and political organization: union, fight, strength and resistance

Abstract

The article seeks to point out the challenges presented to indigenous women when they enter the political field and how this action expands and takes on new contours from their positions as community leaders and representatives of indigenous women’s organizations. Based on this objective, the analysis seeks to highlight the contexts that favor the institutionalization of certain organizations and departments of indigenous women in the Brazilian Amazon and the purposes thad drive associations, as well as demonstrating the necessary attributes for women when the occupy leadership positions. In addition, I present the main agendas of organized indigenous women and highlighting how the promotion of rights by indigenous women comprises different fronts of struggle, based on which policy proposals and action strategies are formulated from the local level to the international context. The purpose of these discussions is to point out the uniqueness of indigenous women’s political participation and the specificities of their claims and how these factors can contribute to a feminism that contemplates the diversity of women.