Indigenous feminism

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Indigenous feminism is an intersectional theory and practice of feminism that focuses on decolonization, Indigenous sovereignty, and human rights for Indigenous women and their families. The focus is to empower Indigenous women in the context of Indigenous cultural values and priorities, rather than mainstream, white, patriarchal ones.^[1] In this cultural perspective, it can be compared to womanism in the African-American communities.

Indigenous communities are diverse. While some women continue to hold considerable power within their tribal nations and traditional societies, many others have lost their leadership roles within their communities; others may live outside of traditional communities altogether. Women who hold power in their communities, or in the world at large, may also have differing goals from those who are still struggling for basic human rights.

Modern Indigenous feminism has developed as a communal worldview that prioritizes the issues faced by Indigenous women. Surviving generations of ongoing genocide, colonisation, and racism have resulted in priorities for Indigenous women that may differ from those of mainstream feminism. Mainstream feminists have often been unwilling to prioritize issues which are urgent crises in Indigenous communities. For example, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis, forced sterilization of Indigenous women, the struggle for land rights, and the disproportionate sexual victimization of Native American women by white men.^[2][3]

Indigenous feminism is related to postcolonial feminism as it acknowledges the devastating consequences of colonisation on Indigenous peoples and the lands they inhabit, along with the importance of decolonisation in dismantling oppressive systems that were introduced with colonisation.^[2] The central role of the ancestral landbase, and current land rights and environmental struggles, connect Indigenous feminism to some aspects of ecofeminism. Differentiating Indigenous feminism from mainstream white feminism and its related forms of feminism (including liberal feminism and Orientalist feminism) is important because "Indigenous women will have different concrete experiences that shape our relations to core themes"^[4] than those of non-Indigenous women.^[5]

Indigenous feminism is also known by other, geographically specific, names such as: Native American feminism in the United States, First Nations feminism in Canada, Aboriginal or Indigenous Australian feminism in Australia.^[6] Despite the use of the more globally-applicable word "Indigenous", the majority of text that refers to "Indigenous feminism" tends to focus on North American Indigenous populations - Native Americans in the United States and Indigenous Peoples in Canada (First Nations, Inuit and Métis - aka FNIM).