Strategic Framework
As the underlying assumptions that form the basis of FIMI's work, the strategic framework constitutes the theoretical underpinnings of FIMI's objectives.
Collective rights are critical to realizing the human rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The collective rights of Indigenous Peoples include the right to full recognition as Peoples with our own worldview and traditions, our own territories, and our own modes of organization within nation-states; the right to self-determination through our own systems of autonomy or self-government based on a communal property framework; and the right to control, develop, and utilize our own natural resources. Our collective patrimony—which includes our territory, land, and natural resources—is the basis of our identities, our cultures, our economies, and our traditions. Indigenous Peoples are entitled to these rights in addition to the rights guaranteed to all individuals by the full body of internationally agreed-upon human rights laws and standards. FIMI does not advocate supplanting individual rights with collective rights, but rather calls for overcoming the dichotomy between individual and collective rights and recognizing collective rights as a necessary complement to individual rights, integral to safeguarding the individual rights recognized in international human rights law.
Individual human rights of Indigenous women should be understood within the context of collective rights.
The fight for Indigenous women's rights cannot be separated from the struggles of Indigenous Peoples. The creation of an Indigenous women's identity requires equilibrium between her position within the collectivity of her people and her individuality as a woman. Moreover, unless social exclusion and discrimination of Indigenous Peoples is ended it will be impossible to ensure the specific rights of Indigenous women.
FIMI relies on two foundational principles of the human rights framework as a basis for the rights of Indigenous women: the universality and the indivisibility of rights. The universality of human rights implies that every woman in the world is entitled to exercise the full range of her rights, without exceptions based on culture, tradition, or religion. At the same time, FIMI believes that the indivisibility of human rights means that for Indigenous women, exercising our rights both as Indigenous Peoples and as women depends on securing the recognition of our collective rights. It is also important to recognize that Indigenous women commonly experience human rights violations at the crossroads of their individual and collective identities. Therefore, it is critical to continue working on the concept of self-determination for Indigenous Peoples from the perspective of Indigenous women, which means developing the capacity of women, especially young women, to exercise control with respect to their bodies, their families, and their communities, and to participate fully and effectively in the decision-making, definition, and implementation of plans, projects and programs that affect them.
Cultural rights of Indigenous Peoples are part of the foundation of Indigenous women's rights.
The recognition and exercise of cultural rights and traditional knowledge are collective rights of Indigenous Peoples. Asserting the value of traditional knowledge is important to combating the colonialist denial of Indigenous values, ways of life, and cosmovisions. Moreover, because the current dominant paradigm of development is based on a model of neo-liberalism and cultural homogeneity that marginalizes and discounts Indigenous women, it is important to redefine development policies such that they depart from a vision of equity and are sensitive to the cultural and linguistic diversity of Indigenous Peoples. In particular, the traditional notion of duality between men and women in Indigenous worldview is critical not only to the preservation of the social and cultural heritage of Indigenous Peoples, but also to returning to an egalitarian ethic that has been eroded over centuries of colonization. Thus, FIMI stresses the importance of respect for traditional knowledge systems, and of preserving the means of transmission of this knowledge between elders and younger generations.
The promotion of women's rights is essential to advancing the rights of Indigenous peoples.
FIMI's work is based on the knowledge that securing Indigenous women's human rights is integral to securing the rights of our Peoples as a whole. Feminism can be a useful tool not only in the promotion of our rights as Indigenous women, but also to inform our participation in Indigenous organizations and contribute to our development as women.
At the same time, 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. "Mainstream feminism," a conception of feminism that reduces women to individual, purely gendered subjects, must continue to be challenged to account for the multitude of forms and subjective experiences of oppression against women. Any 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.
Changes in public policy proposed by Indigenous women demand an integral approach.
Many studies1 have shown that women in Indigenous and ethnic communities share the experience of being valued less than men within their own cultures. Worse, women in these communities tend to internalize the idea that their contributions are worth less than those of men. In this context, a woman's self esteem is determined by four related elements:2 relationship to family, to bodies, to self, and to community. In the case of Indigenous Peoples, self-esteem is intimately tied to the recognition of a collective identity as a People.3
Thus, in the definition and implementation of policies to meet the demands of Indigenous women, diverse concepts of gender must be considered, and both cultural and socio-economic aspects must be fully taken into account. This also implies that changes in public policy must be accompanied by financial and material resources, and by the development of capacity.
End Notes
1.Consultations with Indigenous women in Guatemala, Panama, Peru, and Bolivia by BID, mentioned by Dixon and Gómez, 2002.
2.Dixon and Gómez, 2002.
3.Use of the term "Indigenous Peoples" in the process of establishing international standards has been one of the fundamental demands of the Indigenous Movement, because of its legal implications of self-determination, collective communal property, and more.