Alliance Building
Since the non-Indigenous global feminist movement began, victories in the struggle for women's rights have significantly affected the way women participate in society. But even within the feminist movement, clear biases and gaps remain. One of these is the tendency to homogenize women's struggles under a single banner, suggesting that emancipation is the same for all women. This denies the cultural, linguistic, and social implications of women's struggles in other cultures.
Today, one of the biggest challenges facing the feminist movement is the creation of a plural feminist identity that can integrate the vision of Indigenous women. This is necessary if the feminist movement is to discard its homogenized version of struggle which, at times, repeats the same patterns of discrimination and cultural degradation that the State has inflicted on Indigenous Peoples and, in particular, Indigenous women.
Any inclusive feminist analysis must recognize that present-day inequality—not only social and economic, but also ethnic—has its foundation in paradigms imposed during the colonial era. These paradigms continue to function today in globalized social systems that homogenize and, thus, re-invisibilize the cultural and linguistic diversity of Indigenous Peoples.
FIMI is working within the global women's human rights movement in an attempt to make it more sensitive to and reflective of cultural, racial, and economic diversity among women and, in particular, to incorporate the views of Indigenous women.