Why we all lose when Indigenous women suffer: an ecological perspective

Indigenous women are the guardians of the environmental foundations of life on Earth. From the Idle No More movement to the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline to countless camps, sit-ins, political campaigns, and litigations, Indigenous women defend Earth from the extractive onslaught she experiences. Importantly, they are not just “climate leaders” who function at the proverbial altitude of 30,000 feet: they also organize to protect the lives and livelihoods of individuals. For 37 years, I have been present with Amazigh, Nubian, Coptic, Waorani, Lakota, and Levantine Bedouin women as they stood in the paths of bulldozers and soldiers eager to destroy the lands of families in their communities.

Indigenous women also restore what was taken. From traditional fire to Tatanka (the Lakota term for bison) to seed rematriation to LandBack, Indigenous women are the bees—both workers and queens—of ecological restoration. As living repositories of ecological knowledge, they hold the collective intelligence of ancestral lands, waters, and cultures. Were it not for my grandmothers and aunties, I would be ignorant of the traditional foodways of my Amazigh and Nubian ancestors: foodways that were in use over 30,000 years ago and today allow me to store food without refrigeration.

Among Indigenous women, one common quality that makes them effective environmental leaders is that they do not remain neutral or objective. While in Ecuador working with Kichwa and Waorani communities in 2023, I joined a protest against illegal mining. I stood by the side of Indigenous women, filming them as they took over a city, faced down the local governor's soldiers, forced the governor out of his office, and made him answer to the people. The reason I had the privilege of a front-row seat to the action was because these women were not only my Kichwa and Waorani language teachers but also ecological knowledge holders in the communities with whom I was staying. They also frequent Ecuadorian courtrooms to litigate against the predatory industries that exploit their resource-rich lands in the Amazon (eg agribusiness, logging, oil, mining). These mismatched battles often involve legions of well-paid commercial lawyers facing off against local leaders from rural communities. The women shoulder these burdens while often working more than one job to pay the bills and simultaneously acting as caretakers, mothers, and community leaders.

The natural resource abuses by the Global North often involve blurred lines between governments, multinational corporations, and criminal enterprises such as drug cartels. State-sponsored terrorism on Indigenous lands, supported by companies with regional interests, is—when not conducted by soldiers—seized upon by opportunistic criminal enterprises. In the Amazon, oil and mining companies put constant pressure on local governments and Indigenous communities to allow roads to expand ever deeper into the forest. These tentacles of exploitation in turn provide drug cartels with access to hitherto impenetrable Indigenous territories, where they are encouraged by the companies and corrupt government officials to carry out campaigns of intimidation against local populations. Because Indigenous women are the nurturers of both land and people, and the primary voice of resistance, they tend to suffer the brunt of the consequences of this ecological terrorism. During the past decade in Ecuador, the rate of kidnapping of Kichwa and Waorani women and girls has sky-rocketed, mostly driven by oil and mining activities in the region.

The degree that Indigenous women suffer for their heart work (not a typo) illuminates the depth of colonialism. Though accounting for only 5% of the global population, Indigenous people make up 40% of the climate activists who are assassinated every year. Those individuals and communities who are targeted for violence are vilified through “alternative facts” reported by state- and lobby-funded media, the willful ignorance of a majority settler population, and flagrant political corruption. For example, the Mapuche of Chile and Argentina, who maintain their distinct Indigenous culture and defense of their ancestral ecologies, have been labeled as terrorists by non-Indigenous “educated” elites who propagate ersatz multiculturalism and sustainable development. Certain Philippine officials too have deemed Indigenous climate activists as terrorists for supporting community land rights in the Cordillera region. This settler-colonial tactic of “red-tagging” is a common weapon used to intimidate, vilify, and dehumanize Indigenous environmental leaders, the majority of whom are women.

The persecution of Indigenous women, politically and existentially, is another silent spring! Their suffering reverberates for generations in their communities and stifles efforts to protect lands, waters, and cultures. Because such efforts are ubiquitous worldwide and across ecoregions, the well-being of Indigenous women should be a top priority in global climate action and policy, for everyone's sake.