Halito akana (Hello friends),
Please join us in celebrating a major milestone—with humble origins as a quarterly newsletter in 1976, this issue of the Cultural Survival Quarterly marks 50 years since we began publishing! From the beginning, we have documented urgent problems facing Indigenous Peoples worldwide and publicized infringements of individual and collective human rights. While this remains fundamental to our work, so is amplifying the voices, brilliance, and resilience of Indigenous Peoples. At the center of our work are Indigenous women, femmes, and youth. Women are the hearts of our families, backbones of our communities, and bedrock of our movements. Indigenous Peoples honor the sacredness of women who create life, the love of women who nurture our families and traditions, the strength of women who protect and defend our homelands, and the wisdom of women who align our communities with the sacred laws of Mother Earth.
Traditionally, many Indigenous Peoples were matriarchal and matrilocal with powerful women in important decision-making roles. Disrupted by colonization, our Peoples were pressured to assimilate into lifeways that no longer center women, youth, and our reciprocal relationships and responsibilities to Mother Earth. This destructive trajectory of humanity is fueled by colonialism, extractivism, hyper-individualism, overconsumption, and misogyny and has led to terrible imbalances as the sacredness of Mother Earth and her daughters has been violated and the importance of women’s roles have been denied. We are currently seeing an extreme manifestation of this come to light as a vast sex trafficking network of powerful people around the world is being exposed. We also know that gender-based violence disproportionately affects Indigenous women, femmes, and girls, as seen in the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. In the U.S. and Canada, 4 out of 5 Indigenous Women have experienced violence, 56.1% have experienced sexual violence, and 40% of sex trafficking victims are American Indian or Alaska Native women.
Thankfully, despite this oppression and extreme imbalance, Indigenous women continue to listen to the heartbeat of Mother Earth and are rooted in her wisdom as they lead the change the world needs! In this issue, learn about how women are revitalizing traditions, cultures, and lifeways while nurturing intergenerational knowledge transfer; protecting and defending their territories and homelands despite mounting pressures and ongoing persecution; and supporting each other’s leadership and initiatives. Indigenous women are at the forefront of cultivating balance and sustainable lifeways through rematriation— restoring right relationships with Mother Earth, within our communities, and across genders, while focusing on the well being of the collective and future generations.
For many years, Cultural Survival has prioritized projects that center Indigenous women, femmes, and girls and engage their leadership. We continue to be inspired by those who are leading their communities’ healing and renewing collective responsibilities related to caretaking of Mother Earth. While we focus on supporting them and uplifting their voices and work, we are also working to ensure healthy relations within our organization, including through our Gender Balance Policy. Thank you for joining us on this journey to create a more just and equitable world and to support Indigenous women’s leadership in guiding the way. Help us build this movement, and please give generously at www.cs.org/ donate. We cannot do what we do without friends like you!
Hטchi yakoke li hoke (I thank you all so much),
Aimee Roberson (Choctaw and Chickasaw), Executive Director.
P.S. As a CSQ reader, you are among the first to hear that we are launching a new podcast on Earth Day! Stay tuned for “Mother Earth Medicine: Ancestral Intelligence for Healing Our Future.”
