Indigenous female leaders promote dialogue between traditional knowledge and legal rights, expanding support and protection networks in their communities
Between November 11 and 13, the second module of the Indigenous Popular Legal Promoters brought together around 80 female leaders from the five regional coordinators of the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro (Foirn) and the headquarters of the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira to discuss women's rights in connection with local cultures. The main objective was to help them replicate this knowledge in their communities and grassroots organizations and promote the fight against gender-based violence, especially that practiced against women.
The initiative, promoted by the Department of Indigenous Women of Rio Negro (DMIRN/Foirn) in partnership with the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), the Faculty of Public Health of the University of São Paulo and the Observatory of Gender Violence in Amazonas (OVGAM) of the Federal University of Amazonas, combines legal knowledge with indigenous knowledge and practices, considering both the reality of women in communities and in the urban context.
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Dulce Morais, anthropologist and gender advisor at ISA, explains that the first module, held in the second half of 2021, after the most intense period of the Covid-19 pandemic, sought to detail information on women's rights and legal tools aimed at their protection, and also helped to identify collective strategies associated with the system of knowledge, care and practices of Rio Negro for preventing and confronting violence against women, young people and children.
The second module followed the same proposal and the beginning of the program was dedicated to the recovery of several actions to confront the problem carried out in Rio Negro since 2018. Carla Dias, an anthropologist at ISA, was one of the organizers of the training and says that the moments of collective exchange provide the sharing of individual experiences and the joint construction of care and reception strategies, based on the ways of life, practices and indigenous knowledge of each people and region where Foirn operates.
“It was also an opportunity to strengthen support networks and partnerships in the prevention and combat of violence against women in Rio Negro,” he highlighted.
Elizângela Costa, a Baré leader and organizer of the activity, emphasized the importance of combining knowledge of Western laws, government services, and traditional knowledge in combating violence against indigenous women. “Today, we live in two worlds: the traditional and the contemporary. To continue existing in these two spaces, we need to walk with both types of knowledge,” she said.
According to her, it is necessary to create an understanding and name violence. “We often say that we do not suffer violence because we think it is something cultural. But I always emphasize: culture is not violence. We need to know what culture is and also identify what violence is,” she highlights.
Strengthening local practices, such as valuing the mother tongue, healthy eating practices, blessings and the use of medicinal plants and the resumption of blessings by families were strategies mentioned by the groups during the mapping of support networks and care and reception strategies, combined with the presence and action of structures such as the Special Indigenous Health District (Dsei), Psychosocial Care Center (Caps), hospital, police station and social organizations present in the territories.
Natália Farias, a doctoral student at the research center of the Faculty of Public Health of São Paulo, contributed with the presentation of public health services offered in the municipal headquarters of São Gabriel da Cachoeria, especially for cases of sexual violence.
Renata Vieira, a lawyer for the Rio Negro Program of the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), presented information on Brazilian laws that guarantee rights and protection for women and the public services available for their protection, together with Mayitê Fontes Ambrósio, a lawyer on the technical team at Foirn.
“It is important for women to know their rights, as well as the public policies offered by the State, so that they can claim their rights and demand specific policies for their reality. However, we know that there are limits both from a legal perspective and from the public services offered, which are mostly inadequate for the sociocultural and geographic specificities of indigenous women living in the Amazon. Therefore, it is important for them to use their own knowledge and strengthen local and family support networks to combat violence within their territories,” said Renata.
On the last day of the meeting, through the activity of studying fictitious cases based on real situations, the participants, divided into groups, identified the types of violence or vulnerabilities faced by the characters and discussed how to act in these situations. “They were able to practice combining local practices with the public services and policies available to manage the situations, a powerful collective production for the participants”, concluded Carla.
Flavia Melo, coordinator of the Amazonas Gender Violence Observatory (OVGAM), presented the research work in a dialogue with the participants. “Weaving Life Under Strong Arms: characterization of violence against women in the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira”, carried out within the scope of this inter-institutional partnership, which brings together a compilation of data and analyses of police reports involving female victims collected at the São Gabriel da Cachoeira police station between 2010 and 2019.
According to Flávia, “numbers are an important tool for political advocacy, whether to give more visibility to violence against women, to encourage specific public policies or to inform social control.”
José Miguel Olivar, a researcher and partner since the beginning of the initiatives to address gender-based violence in Rio Negro, highlighted that “from these meetings, it has been possible to perceive the exchange of information, affection and understanding about violence. This process has helped to expand and strengthen these networks of care and political struggle,” he commented.
The exercise of georeferenced mapping of the communities and neighborhoods of origin of the participants highlighted the extensive geographic distribution of the network of women from Rio Negro connected to the agenda of preventing and confronting gender violence. The geographic mapping of the participants supports the organization of the other modules of the training path of the Indigenous Popular Legal Promoters of Rio Negro and the monitoring of the multiplier potential of the initiative.
Multiplier network
One of the representatives of the Middle and Lower Rio Negro (Caimbrn) region, Carlinha Yanomami, from the Maturacá community, in the Yanomami Indigenous Land in Amazonas, said she was excited about participating in the workshop and that the knowledge acquired was of great importance to them.
“We, Yanomami women, often do not know our rights well. If they are hurting us psychologically or physically, then workshops like this will certainly contribute a lot to helping us. What we learn, what knowledge we have, we share with those who stayed (in the villages).”
Pedrina Gonçalves Gaspar, from Baré, representing the Alto Rio Negro and Xié region (Caibarnx), says that what she found most important was being able to understand issues regarding women’s rights. “We knew some things, but not everything. Here, some doubts were clarified. Being able to come, listen and share this knowledge with other women, with our associations. We work with associations of men and women, and I thought it was essential to participate in order to learn about our rights and pass them on to women at the grassroots level.”
Ivaneide Júlio Galdêncio, from the Baré people, lives in the municipality of Santa Isabel do Rio Negro and says that she had never heard of other types of violence and that the meeting was important for her to learn how to identify it and, therefore, also share this knowledge with other women, at association meetings and in the communities: “sometimes, we suffer [violence] and we don’t even realize it. We think that violence is just being beaten up, being punched. But it goes beyond that. Sometimes, men swear, treat us badly and we don’t even realize that this is also a form of violence, right?”
“A woman's place is wherever she wants it to be”
After the workshop ended, the program continued with the IX General Elective Assembly of Women of Rio Negro, which re-elected Cleocimara Reis to continue the work carried out over the last two years at the head of the Women's Department.
Cleocimara Reis received 44 votes, out of a total of 55 from the voting representatives of the FOIRN Regional Coordinators. She thanked them, emotionally, and spoke of the challenge of representing the women of 23 peoples from the 750 indigenous communities in the region, distributed across three municipalities - São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Santa Isabel do Rio Negro and Barcelos.
In her speech, she highlighted the importance of facing challenges together and strengthening the collective struggle. “May we be able to truly build our women’s movement. May we support each other so that we can achieve the gender equality we talk about so much. We follow the suffering and struggle of every woman, whether young, child, adolescent, adult or elderly. We need to work against inequalities and in favor of our collective strength,” reinforced the leader.
Cleocimara Reis also highlighted the importance and need to strengthen partnerships with government sectors and partners from organized civil society, given that the challenges facing DMIRN are many and complex, thus requiring work from many hands.
The ceremony was closed by the indigenous women of Rio Negro with a celebration and renewed hope. The representatives of each Regional Coordination Office presented gifts, such as necklaces and gourds, to Cleocimara and sang songs in indigenous languages, with strong messages of thanks, congratulations and wishes for a successful administration for the next four years. “And as we always say, a woman’s place is wherever she wants. Thank you very much,” concluded the reelected coordinator of DMIRN.
The second training module of the Indigenous Popular Legal Promoters and the IX Elective Assembly of the Department of Indigenous Women of Rio Negro were produced with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Nia Tero, and Google. The opinions expressed in the report do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the supporting partners.
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