Indigenous Women as Preservers of Knowledge and Care for Life
Indigenous women play a role as guardians of intergenerational justice through the transfer of knowledge and daily life practices to the young generation of indigenous people. They are a “school of life” that stores and transmits knowledge about the principles of natural resource management while maintaining natural ecosystems. Nature and forests as a source of life in supporting indigenous women to carry out their productive and reproductive roles ranging from providing food, health guardians, and supporting their religious and spiritual rituals.
Indigenous women take care of ecosystems because they have spiritual and ecological connections. For them, the earth is the mother, the forest is the breath, water is the blood, and the rock is the bone; this perspective shapes the practice of nature management that is in harmony with ancestral heritage values such as honesty, responsibility, and respect for the rights of others in managing the land.
In the context of food sovereignty, indigenous women play a central role in the reproduction and preservation of superior local seeds; these seeds are planted, harvested, ritualized, and stored for family or community consumption, not for sale, in order to ensure food security and availability for future generations and maintain a local food system that is not dependent on the market. The practice of concocting medicines and carrying out traditional rituals also preserves regional terms related to nature so that they do not disappear.
Indigenous Women’s Leadership in Communities
In the midst of a disaster situation and the threat of deprivation of customary territory, indigenous women are present as frontline community leaders to restore and defend their territories. Figures such as Aleta Baun and Yosefa Alomang are examples of women who defend their customary territories. In areas such as Seko, Sagea and Dongi, women even use their bodies as community shields by standing in front of the authorities to protect rice fields, gardens, and shared living spaces; their presence is not only a symbol of courage, but also a protection strategy because it is considered more difficult to disband repressively than men. Thus, the role of indigenous women as caregivers of the earth from generation to generation makes them the key to the resilience of indigenous communities in facing various crises, ranging from pandemics to environmental damage, so that the recognition and protection of their collective rights is very important so that this ecological, social, and cultural role is not interrupted.
Collective Rights of Indigenous Women
Indigenous women’s collective rights are a set of rights that originate from the knowledge of women’s groups in Indigenous Peoples who are closely related to their managed territories within their customary territories. These rights are not individual rights, but rights that are owned and exercised jointly as a group of women who have a special, historical, cultural, and spiritual relationship with land and natural resources. These collective rights are translated as a form of access to the utilization, management, maintenance, development, exchange, and efforts to ensure intergenerational sustainability of land and natural resources. This right is not based on the control or ownership of property rights, but on legal relationships in the form of use rights and control rights that give indigenous women the authority to make decisions about how the territory is managed.
Substantively, there are three main elements that define the collective rights of indigenous women. First, the area under the management of indigenous women, which is a landscape or a certain cultural unit that is the main living space where indigenous women live, work, and depend on their daily livelihoods. Second, knowledge, which is the right to use, control, preserve, and develop their distinctive knowledge, including those related to food sovereignty through local seeds, traditional medicines, energy sources, and customary practices and rituals. Third, authority in decision-making, namely the political power of indigenous women to decide or influence decisions related to their bodies, identities, knowledge, and management areas, both within the internal scope of the community and in relations with external parties such as the state or corporations.
This respect for collective rights aims to ensure that indigenous women are free from interference in carrying out their crucial roles as custodians of knowledge of food and energy sovereignty for families and communities, as holders of authority over the sustainability of life and livelihoods, and as protectors of managed areas that ensure survival
Indigenous Peoples as a whole. These rights are referred to as “collective” and are special because they consider the intersectionality or intersectionality of identities experienced by indigenous women. The forms of oppression they experience are different from those of indigenous men and women in general, and often their rights are considered fulfilled when the rights of Indigenous Peoples in general are recognized, whereas in practice indigenous women are still often marginalized from decision-making within their own communities due to patriarchal views. Therefore, the proposed legal formulation emphasizes that the state, indigenous peoples, and third parties are obliged to respect and respect the right of indigenous women to self-determination and to be fully and meaningfully involved in every decision-making process within the unity of Indigenous Peoples.
Why Should It Be Regulated in the Indigenous Peoples Bill?
The regulation of the collective rights of indigenous women in the Indigenous Peoples Bill is very crucial for a number of fundamental reasons. Without a regulation that explicitly recognizes the collective rights of indigenous women, the ideals of the Indigenous Peoples Bill to realize the full recognition of the position and rights of Indigenous Peoples will not be achieved. So far, the existing legal recognition often only covers some members of the community, while women’s rights as an integral part of Indigenous Peoples entities tend to be ignored.
As a result, the recognition given does not fully reflect the reality of the social structure and power relations within the indigenous community itself. The urgency of this regulation also departs from the intersection of identities (intersectionality) experienced by indigenous women. They bear a dual minority identity, namely as part of Indigenous Peoples and as women. The forms of oppression and injustice they experience are not the same as those of indigenous men, and are also different from the experiences of women in general. So far, regulations have tended to reduce the problems of indigenous women to a single category, both as part of “Indigenous Peoples” in general and as subjects of “women’s rights” individually. In fact, the fulfillment of Indigenous Peoples’ rights in general does not automatically solve the specific problems faced by indigenous women, because there are patriarchal dynamics and power imbalances that work specifically against them.
In addition, indigenous women face discrimination and violence that are layered in three domains at once, namely domestic, public, and state. Therefore, the provisions in the bill are important to address social exclusion stemming from patriarchal views within communities, which often marginalize women from decision-making forums or customary assemblies. These arrangements are also needed to protect indigenous women’s living spaces, especially from the deprivation of management areas that often occur due to concessions to companies or the implementation of government programs without their consent. Without firm legal protection, indigenous women remain vulnerable to the loss of access to the land and resources on which they live.
Furthermore, the regulation of the collective rights of indigenous women in the Indigenous Peoples Bill is also important to prevent the criminalization of traditional knowledge and practices that have been considered to violate state law. In traditional farming practices, for example, indigenous women often feel afraid of being arrested by the authorities when they cultivate their land by burning their land in a limited way, which is actually strictly regulated by customary law, because it is considered an act of environmental destruction. Similarly, in the context of food sovereignty, their knowledge of local seeds is often harmed by the intellectual property law regime that does not recognize the communal knowledge system. Without special protections, practices that support the sustainability of community life are at risk of being criminalized.
This arrangement is also needed to fill the legal vacuum, as there are currently no specific regulations, either at the national or international levels, that specifically protect the collective rights of indigenous women. International legal instruments such as the United Nations
The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is also considered to have not fully accommodated traditional knowledge that is typically owned and managed by women in indigenous communities.
In the end, the recognition and protection of the collective rights of indigenous women is a prerequisite for ensuring the sustainability of the community as a whole. Indigenous women are the guardians of knowledge about the sovereignty of food, traditional medicines, and rituals, as well as the holders of authority over the survival of families and communities. If their collective rights are not regulated and protected, the process of knowledge transfer between generations will stop, which ultimately threatens the resilience and sustainability of Indigenous Peoples themselves. Therefore, the inclusion of the collective rights of indigenous women in the Bill is not just an administrative addition, but an absolute requirement for the realization of gender justice as well as the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ sovereignty as a whole.
Disclaimer: This article was written in Indonesia and has been translated by Google Translate. In case of dispute or discrepancy, the original language of the article should prevail.
